Posted on 04/12/2011 12:39:47 PM PDT by OldDeckHand
The big news today is that the $38.5 billion in budget cuts announced with such fanfare on Friday night mostly aren’t real. A good deal of it involves money from previous years and previous budgets that hasn’t actually been spent. As the AP puts it, the budget deal is
financed with a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially ‘score’ as savings to pay for spending elsewhere,
-snip-
The total amount actually cut appears to be somewhere between $8 and $14 billion.
The politics here are very complicated now. On the one hand, polls suggest the public is overwhelmingly in favor of there having been a deal, around 60 percent or so. On the other, politically engaged people on both the Right and the Left are profoundly upset by what they take to be unprincipled caving on the part of the leaders of the two parties.
-snip-
And then, all of a sudden, there will be a shutdown. And no plan to end it. And make no mistake—the public will blame the GOP.
(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...
You're right about that.... but it's pretty clear that "political reality" does not figure greatly in a lot of people's thinking. It's easier to rant.
Although ... if Podhertz is correct that the current deal may collapse, it seems to me that the GOP needs to be looking at ways to keep control of the narrative, mainly by expanding the scope of the budget debate to more visibly include the deficit and debt.
Boehner has actually been talking that way, though you have to have read the right articles to have seen it.
But really, I think it's time to take the debate out of immediate Congressional action (although that's still very important), and move it into the realm of presidential politics.
Even if there's no declared candidate at this point, there's still an opportunity to put the issue in front of people.
I still recall an issue ad from about 1978 or 1979, with some earnest young fellow (Republican) riding in a car being driven by a cigar-smoking fat-cat who refused to listen to the young guy's warnings about the gas gauge. The car runs out of gas in the middle of nowhere..... and the punch line was, "Isn't it time to vote Republican for a change?" It got folks thinking, which wasn't all that hard given the Carter economy.
A similar sort of ad campaign could (and should) be mounted now, featuring debts, deficits, and the reckless ways of the Democrat spending spree; in my minds eye, I see a bunch of kids pushing around wheelbarrows full of debt. Done right, it could still frame the parameters of the debate in a way that challenges Obama directly.
Runs budget is a POS, we keep spending for twenty five years. And then magically we balance the budget. The tooth fairy would not believe that crap.
No, they can lose, and they can lose bigger.
This is playing out EXACTLY how the Dems planned it last year. It's why they didn't pass a budget. They knew the GOP would take back the House and then be put in this position of last year's budget battle.
As someone else said, if the GOP had any sense - and that included the usual cast of characters that pretends to be conservative talking heads - they'd declare victory on the 6-month CR and move onto the real fight - NEXT year's budget which starts on October 1.
Instead, we're going to shutdown the government, piss-off the political disinterested (the people who actually elect presidents) and give the Dems their 2012 political strategy on a silver platter.
We're idiots.
>>The Budget Deal May Collapse<<
Blah, blah, blah. I read headlines like that before the last agreement. The speculation just sort of gets comical - and feels a bit manipulative.
It’s like watching pro wrestling. It’s not real.
The budget “deal” is an insult to conservatives.
I hope its voted down and the freshman class and the sprinkling of conservatives who have been there a few terms refuse to vote for anything other than true and meaninful cuts. The sooner Blubbering Boehner learns that conservatives will no longer stand for the Gerald Ford/Bob Michaels/Dennie Hastert approach of Republican “leadership” go-along-and-get-along, the better.
Vote ‘er down and then shut ‘er down.
I don’t want them to shut it down. I want it to collapse of its own weight, and that day is rapidly approaching. I would not be surprised if it happens this year. This summer, actually.
That sounds like a good idea, but I’m losing faith that they will achieve any significant cuts in the next budget either. I don’t think they showed much backbone. The dems will ALWAYS play the shutdown game. And to threaten the military is beyond dispicable.
I’m just glad it isn’t for me to decide. I’m too much of a idealogue, and I know it.
Can you think of a time in the history of mankind when a government collapsed in financial ruin to then be replaced by a more classically liberal government?
When governments collapse because they can no longer pay their bills, or because inflation spirals out of control, what happens next is not more libertarian. Quit the opposite, in fact. The central government becomes stronger - think Germany 1933 or even the US circa 1929. FDR didn't stay in power for 3-terms preaching limited federal government, did he?
There's absolutely no reason to believe something different would happen here, if we go down that path.
ODH, O’ Wise One, give us a lesson in political reality and political naivete; however, on the other hand, let me give you one and that would be, with the collusion between the ‘rats and the MSM, Conservatives will be the villains regardless of circumstancces/events. For example, who is the winner of the late “budget battle” today as opposed to Boehner’s brief flirtation with glory over the weekend? Why I believe it’s Obama, he’e running circles around those nasty Conservatives/GOP’ers
BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!
The last “shutdown” had some specifics about it:
1. Good economy
2. Fairly well-liked President
3. No counter-media
4. Barely any internet to speak of
5. It was Christmas
6. Newt got a bunch of attention for complaining that he didn’t get to ride on AF1
7. &c.
We only lost 5-7 House seats and picked up some Senate seats (1, or 2).
This isn’t very much like the last time, but even if it were so...
1. How bad was it really? I’m unconvinced that the sky will fall.
2. What was the November election about? Have the Democrats changed one thing that they were doing before the election that cost them to lose in the biggest slam since the 1930’s? I can’t think of one thing.
3. What exactly are they (Dems) going to run on in 2012 that will cause the American public to come clamoring to them and create the SECOND largest House turn-over since the 1930’s? Because that’s what it will take.
That being said - the Freshmen GOP need to hold new House elections for Speaker. And fast.
I’m sick of ‘em, too. This TAX & SPEND mentality of all the Washington elites is INSANITY. IF THEY WON’T GROW UP, they need to be MADE TO GROW UP (by not being re-elected). If that’s what the Republicans were afraid of if the “GOVERNMENT shut down” - then maybe what they greatly FEARED should come upon them! Those so-called “CUTS” are a JOKE! They PROMISED $100 Billion and should deliver $100 Billion OR MORE and quit JIVING US!! - The DEMOCRATS snookered them AGAIN!! - THOSE OF US WHO GIVE A RAT’S REAR END ARE TELLING THEM, BUT THEY SEEM TONE DEAF!!!! Like Obama, TONE DEAF!!!
Based on what I read in the news last week, the list of agencies/offices that will remain open appears to be much longer than the list of agencies/offices that would be closed in the event of a shut-down.
I was in a store today and listened to a conversation. One woman said how bad it was that they weren’t going to pay the troops The sales clerk agreed. I piped up and explained what happened and it went over both their heads.
I also read a yahoo financial story that told how the 32 billion cut could hurt the recovering economy.
The media will kill the GOP if they can and will use every weapon available and the sheeple will listen to them.
What is the point of having the House and or the Senate and or the White House if we’re afraid to change anything when we get it...lest the GOP is blamed for something? I like Governor Walker’s approach...just do it. Republicans can’t get everything they want with just the House, but it would be nice to see them stop wringing their hands and make the case and use the power they do have.
Obama, even with near double-digit unemployment, is more popular than Clinton was at any time during his first term, and look how that ended. Clinton wasn't black. The country is darker even today than it was in 1996. Antonin Scalia is no spring chicken, and it's likely Obama will get to nominate perhaps as many as two or three justices next term. Shall I go on?
The Democrats are hanging THEIR problem from last year around our necks this year, and it will surely be to their political advantage.
You have to admire their political jujitsu. They think twelve months ahead, and we barely think past breakfast.
Oh, BTW, do I really need to mention how the media, save for one cable channel and one newspaper (maybe) will spin it, continually around the clock?
They got a 46-year old man with absolutely no credible qualifications for the biggest job in the world, EASILY elected. What do you think they'll do when Grandma's social security checks starts to slowdown?
I’ve told my wife that we are either in for something like the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, but where the whole world is “Poland”, or what I refer to in my tag line. I’m praying for the latter.
But I do thing it’s pretty much one of those two without any serious “non-painful” options.
I guess Behner is proving to be incompetent.
Sure, if we had control of the Executive office and both houses of the legislature like Walker did, I'd say "just do it" too. We don't. We control 1/3rd of the non-judicial branches of government. We can't "do" anything without opposition approval.
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