Those aren't even demands, let alone "everything they want". Those are the status quo.

The Democrats haven't attached anything, let alone everything they want, to either bill.

In a theoretical "negotiation", what are the Republicans offering to give, in a give and take? All I'm seeing is take or take slightly less. Republicans are acting as if a functional government or paying our debts is a concession to Democrats.

A little balance to reality is always a good thing. Several reporters have interviewed the Occupiers, and they admitted they were paid anywhere from $15 to $40 per day, to be there and demonstrate with them.

I quite agree with Occupy, on some points. For instance, clearly Wall St. was coddled in the recession, despite the fact that they magnified the intensity of it, considerably.

But look at an Occupy demonstration after they're done, and it's utterly trashed, to say nothing of laws being broken, riot police being needed, and property being damaged.

Contrast that with the Tea Party demonstration. It's left clean, property rights are respected, and no laws are broken. There's no riot police needed, no tear gas, no molotov cocktails thrown - none of that. (and no rapes!)

I'll reluctantly admit that Anarchists are people, but since I have NO desire to live as the Cavemen did, I just can't follow their beliefs very far.

If that is "the status quo", then why is the gov't shut down? Why is the shutdown being blamed on the Republicans?

Ah! :cool:

Because the gov't has branches, and the branch of gov't that controls the purse strings for ALL gov't spending (as a whole), is the House - not the President, and not the Senate.

So in your status quo, the President and Senate can spend only as much as has been agreed upon BY THE HOUSE.

And that's the problem with Obama and the Democrats. They have not been listening to what the House majority party has been saying.

Obama and the Democrats have gotten a LOT of bills passed and made into law, that they wanted. Now the Republicans want to get some things done from their own bucket list.

If Obama doesn't want to negotiate, then Obama better be ready to run the gov't with the debt ceiling of the status quo. Of course, Obama can't do that, because his budgets have been a dismal failure. Time to start listening perhaps.

That's the problem with passing bills into law, when they haven't been studied, FIRST.

Now that Obamacare has started to roll out further, and a lot of exemptions have been made, and a lot of our biggest health care insurers have backed out of Obamacare, the people are not so happy with it. And that is what the House Republicans are reacting to. Remember, they had to vote on ACA before it's contents were even fully written up - "We'll vote on it first, and find out what's in it later", they were told.
So they did just that. And now the people they represent are not happy with what's in it.

House members, unlike the Senate, MUST respond quicker to the feedback they're getting from their district. They are up for election every 2 years, and it's coming up FAST. They have to respond, or they're out, as early as next year.

Don't you just love the way politicians talk out of both sides of their mouth, at the same time?

Latest example is Obama: "raising the debt ceiling does not increase the amount we owe".

That's a glorious double talk beauty! It's true, yet we all know that raising the debt ceiling is made necessary BECAUSE WE'RE SPENDING MORE MONEY THAN WE TAKE IN!

That doesn't top Clinton's prize winner however:
"It depends what you definition of "is" is."

THAT is a double talk masterpiece, right there! ;)

Because they are the ones who are making demands.

A problem that was solved. And then extremist Republicans did what they love to do - spend money we do not have on wars without purpose. And did so while joyfully massacring 5000 American servicemen. So now we have maybe $2 or $3trillion dollars of debt that was financed by the Chinese - because some wacko president was so dumb - another word for extremist.

Those debts remain with or without the debt ceiling lifted. However if the debt ceiling is not lifted, then wacko Republicans get what they love. Those outstanding debts increase even more.

Bills created in early 2000s created these debts. Debts that now require the ceiling be lifted. If not paid, then all outstanding debts increase. You should have thought about those debts when wackos were using lies to created them back in 2003. I did - vigorously. Where were you when it was time to avert those debts? Too late now.

So you want to increase those debts by not raising a debt ceiling. Apparently wacko extremist rhetoric forgets to mention that part - to increase debts to make America fail.

The GOP has tried several faux drama issues to avoid responsibility for the government shutdown,
such as "just one child", "WWII vets barricaded from memorial", "1-yr ACA business deferral unfair", etc.

Now that the "debt ceiling" is another imminent issue,
Ron Paul Cantor and Eric Cantor are looking for a "grand strategy".
But Ted Cruz and the GOP are rebelling, saying "wait a minute, where is the "Repeal Obamacare" ?

Today, a former head of the Republican National Committee conceded...
The House GOP is "Leader-less, Rudder-less, and Clue-less" :smack:

Oh, there are a LOT of Republican RINO's who think the whole Conservative branch of the Republican party, should take a long walk, off a short pier! :p: The Bush family (both) were not conservatives. All the RINO's tried their best to block Reagan when he was trying to win the nomination of the Party. They just KNEW he couldn't win, and didn't see the need for his policies!

You can hear the RINO's on the news shows every weekend, it seems. They're like a doughnut that looks good, but when you get to the inside of it, instead of a jelly filling, it's a load of horseshit. :(

Obamacare won't be repealed - nobody expected that. My guess is there will be some ACTUAL < SHOCKING! I know >, negotiating as we get near the debt ceiling limit. Obamacare itself will NOT be on the table, even. Probably the exemptions - stuff like that.

The good news today is that both the Treasury and Moody's have stated that the US will be be able to fully pay for it's debt, even if the debt ceiling is not raised.

THAT is very good news!

Programs may be curtailed, of course, as they run outside of their current budget amounts that are within the debt ceiling, but there will be no default on our obligations, to anyone.

Whew! :cool: :cool:

More to Obama's shame, the open air war memorials are closed again. What a commander in chief! Hard to really stomach a man who would deny us the right to honor our war dead. :mad:

I'm surprised that the media hasn't roasted Obama to the bone, over this - but he's their guy. If he were pictured bashing in the heads of baby seals with an axe, I'm sure the media would say he was a hero, saving the entire seal species, from over population.

The deficit can fall quite rapidly. That's not the same as the federal debt, of course, which is far larger, and harder to rein in.

As we get out of Afghanistan, and get more gas and oil developed (quite against Obama's wishes, but he takes credit for it anyway), the deficit will fall very rapidly.

The federal debt? No. That's like trying to herd cats.

The debt? Has the federal debt ever gone down (in modern times?)

The debt only goes down if there's a surplus. So, by one measure, it happened under Clinton. But, apparently, by another measure, it didn't. And if it didn't happen under Clinton, then it probably hasn't.

Hooray Adak.
But someone forgot to tell the WSJ and the Treasury Dept yesterday
that the debt ceiling hasn't even been voted on yet, and the US has
not yet defaulted on anything. It's still "Full Faith and Credit of the USA"

Wall Street Journal
10/8/13
Default Worry Hammers Short-Term U.S. Debt
...T-bill Yields Climb to Highest Since October 2008
That's very GOOD news for investors ... Right, Adak ?
Of course, if you have a loan pegged to the T-Bill rate, not so much. :eyebrow:

Government is down to its last $30billion. Once that goes, then government must decide which creditors to not pay. Once payments are not made, then a vicious circle of liquidity freezing takes hold. Similar to what happened in 2007 and in 1998. In those previous events, Fed funds averted a crisis. No such solution exists if extremists get a "We want American to fail" that they want.

They want to increase current debts by quashing the debt ceiling. That will only make existing debts increase for various reasons including those cited by Lamplighter.

According to Gallup, favorability ratings for both parties are down. The GOP is down to 28% and the Dems are down to 43%. It kind of reminds me of the "purity" drive under the last Pope. Those 28% will always vote and give $ so the real question is will the 43% vote because Dem support is always softer in the polls. Neither party is winning friends right now so which will keep enough base and can either get an independent voter?

The best headline about the shutdown, so far...

CNBC
10/10/13
Baah! Gov't goats laid off in shutdown, no kidding

Our parties need to do what's RIGHT for our country, and find agreement. Find ways to come to a compromise with each other. Both parties get something, and both give up something. This "my way or the highway", "glad to negotiate AFTER I get everything I want" stuff, is old, tired, and just plain dumb, before it even starts.

Likewise, the over the top rhetoric where one party bashes the other. I suppose some of that is necessary to appease the base of their constituents, but over the top name calling and closing the open air war memorials and cemeteries, does not reflect well on any political party, or any political leader.

Wrong. Both the Treasury dept and Moody's have stated that there will be NO default of any US debt.

Some programs will be cut back, but NOBODY will be defaulted on.

No. Congress needs to do its job, which is passing bills to fund the allocations it's already made. Doing your basic job is not negotiable.

Negotiating about legislation you don't like has to be done in the proper setting, not through holding the country hostage.

'Everything I want' is for these people, who work for WE, THE PEOPLE, to DO THEIR JOBS and fund the government. No other issues should be addressed until they stop holding a gun to everyone's head.

Only the Republicans are doing that.

The Democrats are making no demands. Republicans are adding all sorts of crap they want, and claiming that they will "negotiate" only getting some of their demands, as long as they can repeat the process and get everything else next time round.

Both parties... long ago... negotiated, compromised, and signed off on legislative agreements.
Both parties got something and both gave up something.

In this time of the government's calendar of proceedings,
your proposal to "negotiate" and/or "compromise" is just another way of echoing the GOP antecedent: "my way or the highway".

It's probably moot now because the GOP is desperately looking
for a face-saving way out of the mess they created at the end of September.

I suspect that Obama will be gracious enough to give it to them. :rolleyes:

Yes, you have to excuse the Republicans. They are getting desperate. I don't have the links to it yet, but it's being reported that if Obama and the Democrats get their projected debt ceiling increase and funding, Obama's 8 years in office, will have increased our national debt:

drum roll please.....

More than all the other Presidents in our nations history, put together. :mad:

Don't worry about a compromise however. Harry Reid is in charge of the Obama negotiating team, and he told the Republicans meeting with Obama, before they came in, that there would be no negotiating until they had their debt ceiling lifted and all their funding.

I'm not sure WHY they even bothered to meet with the Republicans, if that was their rigid position. Trying to get good media coverage, I guess.

Try to make Reid and Obama look like sane men. :p: A full time job, right there, I'm sure.

I'm not saying the Republicans have had a coherent strategy. It's been odd, to put it mildly. But at least they are trying to keep those green bills in your wallet, worth something.

Having another 50,000 people working for the feds, and another 100,000 Americans on food stamps and welfare - doesn't sound good to me.

One good plan, supported by many Conservatives, is the One Cent Solution. Where every program or department's budget is cut by 1% until the budget is balanced. (Projected to be 5 or 6 years).

All new programs would need to be fully funded upon their start, for this to work, of course.

All the details here:
http://www.onecentsolution.org/the-one-cent-solution/

To me, this is far more important than railing against Obamacare.

Adjusted for inflation?

Wow, that would really be dishonest if this number was not adjusted for inflation.

Uh oh guess what. Oh you'll never guess.

I remember when Reagan was in office and Time magazine ran a whole issue on the debt, and in his first term, he had increased the debt more than all the previous presidents combined. I don't remember if those dollars were adjusted for inflation. I think they were. Reagan really increased military spending and also cut taxes, which resulted in a huge increase in the deficit and ultimately the debt. It only got worse in his second term. (Or better, if you credit his deficit spending with winning the cold war.)

I'd expect FDR to be the all-time winner on this one

This is in percent of GDP, not in real dollars, but it's something.

Attachment 45654

Deficit and debt are not the same thing

Cheney said (and wacko extremists therefore believed) that Reagan proved deficits don't matter. We now suffer pain from that Cheney lie.

It did not matter to him because he prospered by spending money then. We are now stuck with the resulting bills.

Notice what happened when Reagan/Bush ran the debt up big time. In the Cellar, so many in 1990/2 were complaining about how bad things had become. Then Clinton addressed the problem. As a result, the economy prospered and deficit dropped to zero. What did Clinton do? He raised taxes. That (in part) caused the economy to prosper.

Extremist do not want to admit something. Obama is successfully curing the destruction of the American economy created (in part) by tax cuts, welfare to the rich, and other fiscal mismanagement - including Mission Accomplished.

Yeah, well, the debt graph is boring. It just keeps going up exponentially. The deficit graph is where the real data is, because you can see how government policy and economic factors work together to increase the debt slightly or rapidly.

One interesting thing is that the debt was much worse in the 80s because interest rates were higher then, so a bigger slice of the federal budget pie had to be spent paying interest back then than it does now. So we have a much bigger debt now, but it doesn't matter as much as it did during the Reagan years.

Look at the green in this chart. That's what the federal government has to pay in interest.
Attachment 45655

edit: Actually, I misspoke. That's the interest the federal government has to pay, expressed as a percentage of GDP.

this is a complete lie, you should retract it. I don't mean just ignore it and run away, like you do for your other empty headed repetitions of misstatements endlessly drilled into you by indoctrination radio. You spray these around desperately, fired off like harmless but startling chaff, distracting the attention of those in the conversation from the substance of what we should be talking about.

Harry Reid, doing his job as the Senate Majority Leader, offered compromise. He accepted the bill from the House, using the regular rules of our government stripped from it the portion that delayed the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and returned the rest of the bill *INTACT* to the House for their consideration. The rest of the bill had "all their funding", but the "their" in this case was the funding suggested by the Republicans in the House. How is that Harry Reid's fault? How is it Harry Reid's numbers?

Well, as a compromise, it could very easily be seen as his "fault", his "funding". He's said "yes, ok, that funding is acceptable to me. let's do this." It was an attempt to compromise. One that was rejected, no, ignored by the House. So, no, it wasn't Reid's funding, and ultimately it wasn't Boehner's either, since it's been cast aside.

But no crying about not getting "your way". Well, I expect you'll cry anyway, but I've no sympathy for your crocodile tears.

I like that graph. It really cuts to the bones of the spending vs revenue problem. It shows that we maybe were dead wrong in the eighties and should check out some pie charts from that time vs now for comparison. Big defense is big government...

Amen Griff.

To hear today's GOP, Reagan was the master of an astute economic theory.

Wiki:
But... after a long association with GE, Reagan was the darling of the defense industry.
We are still living with his "star wars" (Strategic Defense Initiative), and to some extent
his 600-ship Navy, with their resulting and ever-increasing (supply-side) deficits -> debt.

My only gripe about it is that I don't have a good understanding of what percent of GDP really means. I would more easily understand percent of annual budget, or dollars adjusted for inflation. I'm not sure percent of GDP is a good measure.

Glatt, "deficit" is for a particular period of time, whereas "debt" is the cumulated deficits

So I look on GDP as the total output of energy and resources ($) of the country.
So, looking at a given year's deficit as a %GDP is a measure of what
the country would have to expend to reduce that deficit (to zero).

OTOH, higher inflation has the effect in future years of
reducing the subsequent debt-to-%GDP ratios
... i.e., older debts can be paid off with "cheaper" dollars

BUT, I'm open to being educated out of the error of my ways.

.

My issue with % of GDP is that the government doesn't have access to the entire GDP to spend it. I think a more useful statistic might be to see a % of the total revenue.

But I'm no economist.

Such as this ... From here

Truckers are trying to organize a strike and occupy DC this weekend.

The first come-on is to protest the government shutdown.
But then if you drill down one step, it is to protest "government corruption"
And then if you drill down further, it becomes a far right-wing jumble.

Some trucker groups are backing away, some large outfits are too.
So if you plan to be in DC this weekend, don't be surprised by some big-rig traffic jams.

They're supposed to be 'occupying' the Beltway. Fortunately I was on said highway very very early this morning and didn't encounter them. However - if they're opposing the government shutdown and government corruption, why inconvenience people who are already severely inconvenienced by the stupid Republican shutdown?

I'd think they would want to occupy the National Mall from end to end and blow their air horns continuously, to send a message to the House to get their asses back to work and do their f***ing jobs.

It isn't that the number is literally relevant. The point is that neither the deficit as an absolute number, nor the GDP as an absolute number, is terribly meaningful -- they both need to be contextualized. To do this, you can compare them to one another, and look at relative changes.

A crude example: spending $100 a month on a cell phone with a good data plan is a big deal if you're 16 and work part-time at McDonalds; if you're an investment banker pulling in 6 figures a year, it's a fairly minor expense. You can represent this in general by looking at an expenditure as a percentage of annual income.

From Jack Lew's testimony, if the funds cannot cover it, someone doesn't get paid. There is no 'cut back' on existing debt. This would be akin to telling the electric company that you will be paying them 90 cents on the dollar because you refuse to take out a loan. In reality, even that is not an option since there is no precedent. The Treasury would just pay all of the bills in no particular order until the money ran out.

It's really that simple. The Treasury has no authority to cut back funding on any programs. Their entire job is to pay all authorized bills, manage money, and secure funding where authorized. What part of 'full faith and credit' do you not understand?


From Jack Lew's (Treasury Secretary) testimony on default.(Washington Post).

Full Faith and Credit

The short answer is that anywhere you go in the US, bills incurred by any state, or the US government, will be paid.

The only things there that the uber Right (as opposed to sensible conservatives) give a toss about are the veteran benefits. I daresay they'd count it a minor victory if social security and medicare goes unpaid.

It's the only thing they posture about. I doubt they genuinely care though. As long as they can wrap themselves in the flag. The uber right, for a long, long time, were actually blocking a bill a couple of years ago, to provide healthcare to the first responders of 9/11.

There has been no greater horse that has been flogged by the right, than that. Yet they weren't interested in helping the people that put their lives on the line.

That was the report from the media. I wasn't there to witness it. It IS however, what Harry Reid has stated himself, to the mainstream media, on more than one occasion.

You know he used the arcane rules of the Senate, to strip off the defunding amendment from the House bill. That is how the liberal media CBS news, reported it: "arcane".

Think about it. ONE person, can remove an amendment from a bill passed by the ENTIRE HOUSE? Are you kidding me? Does that even LOOK like a democratic government at work?

No, it does not, and I can't remember a time in the past, when it was used for this purpose, either.

Jack Lew is a political puppet appointee. There is no danger of us not being able to pay our federal debts, in full, and on time.

The firefighters have excellent health care plans, and they must have known it was dangerous to be working around the site of the fallen towers, shortly after 9/11/01. Burning plastics, fabric, heavy and fine dust (concrete, drywall, etc.), etc. These are not new dangers to a fireman. They deal with them frequently.

I'm not familiar with the saga of the 9/11 responders. Why is this still an issue, after all these years?

I have to say the "lets pay every victim's family a lot of money" idea, was a bad decision by Washington. Did we pay the families of those men who died from the terrorist attack on the U.S.S. Cole? What about those who died from the first bomb attack on the Towers?

Of course not - likewise, any family member of a soldier who has died in Iraq or Afghanistan, or anywhere else. Also, these 9/11 families had a LOT more money and income, than our soldiers. Their average payout (which 97% of them took), was $1.8 Million dollars, for heaven's sake!

I'm sure the responders felt like ignored red-headed step kids, looking at what the families received.

Neither is it when the leader of the entire House of Representatives holds up passage of legislation until a minority of one party in the House is satisfied when he knows that a majority of the entire house will pass it.

Neither was it when individual Republicans blocked multiple calls for a budget conference earlier this year that might have avoided the brinksmanship.

If you don't like Congresses rules, tell your friends to stop abusing them.

So, $100K to be paid to the families of those killed by enemies of this country. I would argue the 9/11 responders were in that category. Was the response too great and the results unbalanced? Maybe. I did not realize, Adak, that you would let your inner Communist out and insist on complete parity amongst payments to the proletariat.:redcard: How does one spell RINO?

The $100K is the default amount for a subsidized term life insurance policy (SGLI) that military personnel have the option of buying. First responders would get what they bargained for in their civilian contracts. Victims would get what they purchased privately. Life insurance policies without war exclusions have been available for as long as I can remember and I've known military personnel who went the commercial route because they didn't trust the government to come through on the policy it offered.

The problem arises when the government subsidizes higher death benefits to some segments of the population than others such as the families of civilian victims receiving substantially more than the families of military service members. Politics then makes for second class citizens.

OTOH, I don't have any problem with the government subsidizing the death benefits and health care costs of first responders and civilian casualties, in such paramilitary situations, and bringing their incident connected death and injury benefits up to what military personnel get.

That is done frequently in both the House and Senate, by both parties. Nothing arcane about it.

We were headed for the brink anyway. The Democrats under Reid and Pelosi are very uncompromising. That causes the Republicans to adopt a similarly uncompromising point of view. The clash of the two was bound to happen.

Right after you tell Obama to quit breaking the law, by making appointments directly, without the required Congressional approval, when the Congress is still technically in session.

Any Republican President would have done that, they'd have faced a Special Investigator, at least.

For Obama -- crickets, of course.

More recent articles are pretty much just copying the following...


Fox News
10/11/13
Dozens, not thousands, show up for DC trucker protest

It is never done in Congress when the results are to intentionally make America fail.

European markets open in 8 hours. What's going to happen to US ratings then? There was a lot of pressure to resolve this clusterfuck before markets opened this week because this was the last weekend before the default. It's not looking like they are going to resolve this in the next 8 hours. I shouldn't be surprised, but I am disappointed. I thought they might do their jobs this weekend.

Wackos are why money can be made. Markets will fall big time. If you saw wacko extremists as I have, then you were collecting cash. That may be an ideal buying opportunity.

Video of Pete Sessions taking a bite out of democracy.

Some local chick wrote in a local paper last week about how she was reporting on something and Boehner was so nice to her (this i believe, he can be personable in real life) and she took the opportunity to tell him (he is our district's congressman) how hard it is to raise her beh-bey on a reporter's salary therefore she didn't want obamacare and he LISTENED to her and she felt democracy in action. Stupid twit.

You don't need to concerned if you will not be affected by
default of the U.S. Treasury on this coming Thursday.

If you might be affected, you should hope/pray that Eric Cantor
retains his health, and is not delayed in traffic or otherwise fails
to attend all coming sessions of the House of Representative.

He is the only member allowed by a current House Rule to bring
a Bill" related to the debt ceiling" to the Floor for a vote.

The Hill
Mike Lillis
10/14/13

Keep it shut down (shut down MORE of it, and let it stay down).

And: YAY FOR DEFAULT!

TNMPM

The Taliban says women are not allowed to learn go to school
The Pope says women are not allowed to be priests
The John Boehner says women are not allowed to negotiate the government shutdown.

The Telegraph
Alex Spillius
15 Oct 2013

Women US senators lead compromise efforts on shutdown

When Gingrich, et al were playing this game, they were not driven by a political agenda that said, "We want America to fail." This is the first one that concerns me. Because it is driven by people with near zero intelligence levels and a philosophy that says, "We will ignore facts to just know a default will not be harmful."

Gingriich and his "Contract with America" supporters understood how things really work. Therefore backed down in humiliation in order to not make America fail. View henry quirk's post to see how dangerous today's wacko extremists have become.

A government default is to me an ideal buying opportunity. It should be profitable. However, it will mean all American debts (current and future) will automatically increase. Nobody with intelligence would advocate that. And that is the problem. These wackos have no idea that they want American to become a second class nation. Intelligence in American politics has dropped to Joseph McCarthy and Nixon plumbers levels.

A default will happen if moderates in the Republican party do not stand up and attack the wackos. Even Boehmer no longer displays any backbone.

This is the NY Times News today...Oct 15, 2013

Attachment 45691


Probably not many of you remember the Friday night when the US went to bed
expecting a nuclear war the next day - the Cuban Missile Crisis.

But it's not since then that I have gone to bed with such feelings.
Who knows what will happen today ... maybe not nuclear war,
but one way or the other, it will certainly be a high-magnitude event.

What bothers me in my own mind is that I have actually come to believe
the GOP is no longer controlled or made up of men-of-good-will.
It's no longer "politics" or a "game".

When the entire House of Representatives is jerked about by the $
of two men, the Koch brothers...
When elected officials are manipulated into fear of not being re-elected...
When the good of the country is no longer the issue...

I have lost all sense of humor with the Republicans.

After a round of golf, Boehner said to Obama that he thought they could work out a grand deal. So the two men sat down multiple times in secret to work out the government budget. Then Cantor discovered the talks through VP Biden. And put threats to Boehner's back. Either back out of the deal or be overthrown in a coup. The threats worked.

Now new threats from these tea party extremists have further saddled Boehner with another dilemma. From the Economist, "how to satisfy their members Quixotic longing to kill Obamacare without shutting down the government or causing a default."

Well this forces a question that can no longer be avoided. Is Boehner that incompetent as Speaker of the House as to not properly exercise the power he has. Or has the party so radically changed that no Speaker could rally, muster, and corral his members? The Washington Post is asking that question today in "Boehner sees his control of House Republicans slip away" on 15 October 2013. Even the numbers (polls) say something completely different. Why would they stick to what is obviously a lie?

It goes right back to a question of whether Boehner is an incompetent speaker. Or did the Supreme Court make corruption of Congress now easy by creating unrestricted financing of campaign funding by even calling corporations people? Maybe. Or maybe Boehner has surrendered power to Eric Cantor and the extremist in exchange for no coup.