As the debt ceiling debate heats up, with offers of spend, spend, and spend some more from Obama (as he increases taxes) and demands for spending cuts from the Republicans these statements from a few of the freshmen Republicans makes me so glad that we were able to get them into Congress:
If President Obama thought he could rattle House Republicans with his warning on Tuesday that Social Security checks might get held up in the event the debt limit was not raised soon, he was mistaken.
“That’s not leadership; that is sad and pathetic,” said Representative Allen West, a freshman Republican representing thousands of Social Security recipients in South Florida. He said the president and Treasury secretary could pay pressing federal obligations out of money still coming in, and if they say they cannot, “Then they are liars.”
…The clout of the freshmen and other House conservatives was clearly seen in the decision by Speaker John A. Boehner to pull back from trying to reach a sweeping deficit deal that would have taken new revenue while tinkering with Bush-era tax cuts that many House Republicans hold sacrosanct. Freshman lawmakers say it was their insistence that has also led House Republican leaders to set a vote for next week on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
“A month and a half ago, the leadership was laughing about the notion of a balanced budget amendment,” said Representative Joe Walsh, a freshman from Illinois. “They are not laughing now.”
Sad and pathetic describes President Obama’s administration to a T.
So what’s been happening today, other than Obama’s scaremongering? The Republicans were holding firm on their insistence that spending being reduced and NO tax being raised but then Senator McConnell came in with this monkey wrench:
In a nutshell, the President would get to raise the debt ceiling three times in the next year at several billion bucks a pop without making any spending cuts unless two-thirds of both houses of Congress disagree. In his press conference, McConnell says he would not give the President “unilateral authority to make spending cuts on his own,” but this plan would allow the President to raise the debt ceiling pretty much automatically. As the Politico notes,
Senate Republicans are actively pursuing a new plan under which the debt ceiling would grow in three increments over the remainder of this Congress unless lawmakers approve a veto-proof resolution of disapproval.
In effect lawmakers would be surrendering the very power of approval that the GOP has used to force the debt crisis now. But by taking the disapproval route, Republicans can shift the onus more onto the White House and Democrats since a two-thirds majority will be needed to stop any increase that President Barack Obama requests.
Yes, instead of putting the burden on the White House, McConnell would make it damn near impossible to block a debt ceiling increase. We’ve seen this before. The House once had the Gephardt rule that required the debt ceiling vote be attached to a more popular measure so members of Congress could escape a tough vote.
On first blush I’m not liking it.
There was a reason for the Republicans pretty much running the board in the 2010 elections and this is not it.
You know who is liking it? The Democrats:
A back-up plan proposed by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell that would keep the U.S. government from defaulting on its debts next month is viable and under consideration by Senate Democrats, according to Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber.
“We’re talking about it as one of the options, yes,” Durbin said in response to a question about whether the McConnell plan is viable.
This tells me quite enough about this “compromise”
His scaremongering is just that. Anyone who has taken a High School Civics class can tell you that Congress can only appropriate funds, it is up to the Executive branch to spend it….which means the President CAN prioritize spending. Where do you think he should send the money first? Foreign aid or the obligations made to the American people who have ALREADY put money in (and which was supposed to stay there). How about the porkbarrel projects that are federally funded? Think they should get paid before Social Security?
Dafydd: (read the entire thing especially his summation of the Obama presidency)
Money comes into the American treasury all the time: quarterly tax payments, corporate taxes, employee withholding, sales of government property, fees, licenses, and so forth. I understand that such continuous income greatly exceeds the bare-bones payment obligations of the United States government — entitlement payments and debt service. In other words, we have enough revenue to meet those obligations; just not enough to meet them in addition to all the other expensive projects that the Obamunists want to fund at the same time. (What’s most galling, of course, is that Barack Obama himself and his cronies in Congress are the very culprits who brought on this terrible financial catastrophe in the first place. “Look what I made you make me do!”)
The obvious solution presents itself.
Every large corporation must have a budget; and every such budget must, among other requirements, prioritize the corporation’s financial obligations: What gets paid first? What gets paid second, third, nth? I suspect that if a publicly traded corporation was so mismanaged that it didn’t even have a contingency plan for what bills to pay if it experienced a sudden revenue shortfall, not only would it be liable for massive lawsuits, but the SEC and the Justice Department might open a criminal investigation of the corporate officers.
Thinking of the federal government as the nation’s largest (if not the world’s largest) corporation, then mustn’t it, too, have a heirarchy of payments to guide the president during a temporary shortfall? Isn’t the obvious lack of such an emergency plan, resulting in threats to withhold pledged funds to those who could literally die from such embezzlement — which is what the president’s threat amounts to — the very definition of financial malfeasance and nonfeasance?
McConnell wants to walk hand in hand with the Democrats who have gotten us into this mess to “reassure the markets,”…I’m not buying it:
Politicians seeking to “reassure markets” and protect defaulters gave us TARP and AIG and Fannie Mae bailouts.
When is enough enough?
Exit video:
See author page