The legislation the President signed is a travesty. The Republicans in Congress demanded that for every dollar of increase in the debt limit, a corresponding dollar’s worth of federal spending cuts must take place. Tax increases were entirely off the table. What we got was immediate increases in debt, with spending cuts over the next ten years, most of them in the out years. And who knows if future Congresses will be bound by the promises of spending “cuts” that this Congress has made? Meanwhile the total federal debt increases to over $17 trillion, and likely to be much more than that because of the slowdown in the economy. So much for “debt reduction”; and the Bush tax cuts (which Obama is determined to repeal) will be revisited very soon, by the “special congressional commission” — 12 politically hand-picked people — charged with negotiating the next round of “cuts.” Behind closed doors. So much for transparency.
This struggle was nothing but political circus. At the end, the Tea Party didn’t “win.” The American people did not win. But the Democrat Party has managed to craftily “shape the battlefield” for the next conflict in their decided favor, when that special commission meets.
Speaker Boehner — God bless him — at some point seems to have decided that his role was to achieve a bi-partisan political compromise. That he did. But that compromise does not touch the problem of out-of-control federal spending. Which I thought was the object of the game.
When the two sides of the political debate are so ideologically and morally divided, how can there be any kind of real compromise? The Progressives don’t want “compromise,” they want victory — by any means fair or foul, by hook or by crook. Victory, for them, is staying in power.
They hope to do this by exploiting the great divide in the American populace, so well described by John C. Calhoun in his Disquisition. Even now the American people are being divided by the language of class warfare and the demonization of political enemies. That seems to be all the social progressives really have to offer. Against all experience and history, they evidently believe that somehow their rhetoric can actually instantiate the “reality” they prefer, to which we, the American people, are being forcibly recruited and for which we are being forcibly fleeced.
“Divided government” doesn’t work anymore, if it ever did. The next presidential election will be the last best hope of the people who want to stop the further squeeze on the American middle class — which is, of course, the taxpayer class that funds everything the federal government does.
Just some thoughts, FWIW….
Nobody in DC wants to correlate the rising debt ceiling with declining jobs.
The rising debt ceiling has two consequences....
more regulation ...
to occupy employees in expanding federal bureaucracies...which expand because “they have more money” and another layer of bureaucrats need their 20 year promotions... Each round of regulatory expansion is the effective equivalent of another targeted tax increase on the object of the regulation.
more taxes...
The rising debt ceiling has demands and expectations of creditors for new elements of “revenue raising” by the Feds...taxes or fees.
In this strangling environment job creation is simply NOT possible.
In fact the only logical conclusion..can be ..is that the Federal apparatus -initially an asset to the United States..by virtue of its abilities to raise an effective Navy in the late 1700’s, and early 1800’s to facilitate overseas trade on behalf of the States, has become nothing other than the States greatest liability at this point in time. In the absence of profound regulatory and taxation reform-which is not capable of coming from the same minds that created the problem..we may well be at the end of the line.
For DC to face this fact...means the end of the K St-Congressional Party cycle in DC-the one that keeps repeating “2.4Trillion” as their mantra.
IMHO...the only solution is a 50 state secession from DC at this point...with a completely new “Constitutional Re-Federalization”..
FYI — if you feel like engaging in the “post mortems” re: this disgusting travesty of Congressional action....
It’s just simple math. We need a Senate majority and a new president...we don’t have enough of the right people. That’s all there is too it.
The entire “crisis” was created by and orchestrated by BH Obama and H Reid for their own purposes——to thrust the killing blow on the American economy! Now Obama squeals about jobs jobs jobs. Remember that jobs are the furthest things from his Marxist mind. Every word that issues from his mouth is to get re-elected. Anne Coulter reveals his method in “Demonic”.l Get it. Read it. Believe it!
The Washington aristocracy flourishes while the rest of the country suffers. And the MSM ignores this critical fact.
It’s time to rename MSM the “Minitrues” (as in George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in 1984), Guardians of the Washington Aristocracy.
Here is one of the fast ones Obama pulled while our eyes were on the “Crisis”, this from the Townhall Spotlight:
It’s Now Official!
Over The Counter (OTC) Bullion trading is now Illegal for all U.S. Residents.
The commodity futures trading Commission (CFTC) Now has a foot hold on the physical bullion market. A feat this Government Agency has tried to achieve since its 1974 inception.
Coincidentally, 1974 is when Americans were given back the right to own Bullion
(1933- Dec 1974 ban on Bullion) by executive order (11825), by then President Gerald Ford.
The CFTC’s June 14th, meeting on The Dodds Frank Act, set forth the final rules on all
Over The Counter markets, including retail commodity transactions of physical Bullion.
This is first step toward their ultimate goal.
Discover Their Ultimate Plot
Their reasons why and what you could do to protect your wealth.
Excellent presentation!
I hate sounding like a broken record but the record is what it is. The root of the present situation is the result of the determined and seemingly indomitable march of Socialism/Marxism?Communism for the last 100 years. Rather than recap that journey I will jump to the end.
I know you have said some of this but rather than use space quoting you I will just charge ahead. Marxism, to use the gentler term for Communism, is about destruction. It sees the world as already divided between the haves and the have-nots, and where none exists it creates the divisions. Rather than seeing this as the natural order of things it sees it as unfair. Therefore, the existing order must be destroyed.
There are many strategies, tactics and methods used to accomplish this, all of them devious and unfair. They are liars and they honor the lie. To them it is a trait to be admired.
Eventually, like a house built upon sand, a philosophy of destruction destroys itself. That is what happened to the USSR. Yet, the USSR did not disappear, it just lied and reorganized itself. The Communists leaders finally realized that Communism may be a good system for the rulers but it is a lousy economic system. So they went underground and tried to convert to a semi-free enterprise economy. That is like being a little bit pregnant and it won’t work.
China is also trying a hybrid system and so far it is working in that it is using its cheap, some say slave, labor to compete in a global market. Sooner or later they, too, will see that you can’t be a little bit pregnant and go one way or the other.
The goal at the moment, of Obama and Soros, is to collapse the USA economically, socially, and militarily in order to establish a One World Government, headquartered in the USA. That is what is playing out in front of us.
One thing I forgot in responding to you was discussing the rating institutions like Moody’s, etc. The Democrats were using the threat of a lowered rating for the country unless we increased their borrowing power. The same entities who were threatening to lower the rating are those who gave AAA to those worthless Mortgage Secured Derivatives. Therefore, how valuable was their judgement to start with. Very little it seems to me.
However, when you consider Fannie and Freddie, the Democrat involvement in their creation and perpetuation, their part in the financial crisis, the involvement of the Wall St. folks, like Goldman-Sachs and others, the in-the-middle-of-the-night withdrawal of money market funds which triggered TARP and the U.S. bailout of the international financial market, mostly to foreign banks and insurers, and then the expansion of the “crisis” by the Democrats who wanted more billions for “stimulus”, and the dots connect nicely to my original scenario. This is a Marxist generated global collapse.
There is no stalemate. Obama got everything he wanted, the ability to spend trillions of more dollars we don't have on his special interest constituencies. The people got nothing except more debt and the shaft.