Posted on 07/28/2011 8:55:42 AM PDT by greatplains
Partisan politics, grandstanding and obstruction are making it difficult to reach an agreement to raise the national debt ceiling and begin to reduce federal spending, Sen. Ben Nelson said Wednesday.
"Partisan games continue to paralyze Washington," the Democratic senator said during a telephone conference call.
Asked if he believes tea party politics is driving the Republican position, Nelson said: "Yes."
"The so-called 'cut, cap and balance' plan is pretty close to being what you would label the tea party," he said.
That proposal, which included a statutory cap on spending and a proposed constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget every year, was approved by the Republican-controlled House, but rejected by the Democratic Senate.
Nelson said he believes a debt-reduction package needs to be composed of spending cuts without tax increases. But, he said, "some would like to balance the budget on the backs of seniors."
The Republican plan championed by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin would "privatize Medicare," Nelson said.
"There is no private insurance for sick old people," he said, and that's why Medicare was adopted in the 1960s. Some partisan proposals are so "far to the right (that) they would shock the economy," he added.
"Something needs to be done," he said, "but it needs to be done in the right way."
"The politics of this seems to be about the 2012 election," Nelson said. "You can adversely affect the economy (and) the future of the country if you obstruct."
Nelson said he has received an increasing volume of phone calls and e-mails urging Congress to raise the debt ceiling in time to avoid a national default.
"Most everybody is telling us to get a deal," he said.
Read more: http://journalstar.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/article_91cdc423-e518-5cb9-a205-fb402f38fedf.html?mode=story#ixzz1TPmMWyY5
You mean like in 2006, NelsonIdiot, when NONE of the Dems voted to raise the debt ceiling? Help me out here idiot cause all I see is “a failure of leadership”.....you, that which the AnointedIdiot asserted...also in 2006..... =.=
Gee, give Einstein Nelson a gold star. Politician engaged in politics! Will the wonders ever cease. Next Nelson will discover than many Gamblers really do engage in gambling.
He got this part right:
“The politics of this seems to be about the 2012 election,” Nelson said.
This entire thing is to get this past the 2012 election.
Nelson said this is from the Tea Party. It’s amazing how these professional politicians are so surprised that the tea party candidates are trying to do what they campaigned to do.
No...really?
Refreshing, isn't it.
I think that Ben's hair is obstructing his brain from getting oxygen. This guy is a dope.
Looking forward to him getting his walking papers real soon.
the rats want a compromise and more balanced approach- just like obummercare and the stimuloss where politics played no part in anything!!! LOL
—— YOU Ben!!!
April 14, 2011
Reid Admits 2006 Debt Ceiling Vote ‘Was a Political Maneuver by We Democrats’
ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today told ABC News that he feels “embarrassed” that four years ago he argued against raising the country’s debt limit.
“Why is it right to increase our nation’s dependence on foreign creditors?” Reid said on March 16, 2006. “Democrats won’t be making an argument to support this legalization, which will weaken our country.”
In an interview today on ABC’s “Top Line” with Jonathan Karl and Amy Walter, Reid said those comments were a mistake.
“I shouldn’t have done that. I’m kinda embarrassed I did. It was a political maneuver by we Democrats. The Republicans were in power – there were more of them,” Reid said. “The president voted when he was in the Senate the same way. I heard him apologize for it. We all should take a look at how we handle these issues, but that doesn’t take into consideration the numerous times, the numerous times I voted to raise the debt ceiling. The one time I tried to make a political issue of it, I wish I hadn’t.”
Politics are affecting the political process?
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322
"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
Obama: 2006 Debt Ceiling Vote Was Politically Motivated
April 14, 2011, 9:51 p.m.
President Barack Obama on Thursday framed his opposition as a Senator to raising the nation’s debt ceiling as a “political vote” and said he is coming at the issue from a different approach as commander in chief.
“That was just an example of a new Senator, you know, making what is a political vote, as opposed to doing what was important for the country. And I’m the first one to acknowledge it,” Obama told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, according to a transcript of the interview.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/obama_2006_debt_ceiling_vote_was_politically_motivated_-204986-1.html
I’m Shocked, Shocked that politics is being played in this bordello.
I’M A
P_LITICIAN
Wanna buy a vowel, Chief?
Hoyer joins Obama in calling past vote on debt ceiling ‘a mistake’
By Russell Berman - 04/12/11 06:45 PM ET
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer has joined President Obama in conceding that he blundered by voting against an increase to the government’s debt ceiling.
“I have voted against the debt limit in the past. That was a mistake,” Hoyer (Md.), the second-ranking House Democrat, said in an unprompted admission to reporters on Tuesday.
His comment came two days after White House adviser David Plouffe said Obama made a mistake by voting against raising the debt ceiling when he was a senator.
Gibbs: Obama only voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2006 because he knew his vote wouldn’t matter
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,” [Obama] said on March 16, 2006. “Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership . Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”
The debt limit was raised by a vote of 52-48.
Asked about that quote – and vote — today, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that it was important that “based on the outcome of that vote…the full faith and credit was not in doubt.”
Then-Sen. Obama used the vote “to make a point about needing to get serious about fiscal discipline….His vote was not necessarily needed on that.”
should nelson be back at his pizza joint
with people shouting at him?
Hey Nighthorse,
How do you begin to cut spending by raising the credit card limit?
Idiot.
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