Posted on 08/01/2011 9:59:35 AM PDT by americanophile
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) announced Monday he will oppose a deal to raise the debt limit by between $2.1 trillion and $2.4 trillion, putting pressure on House Republicans.
Graham’s opposition is significant because it will make it difficult for any of the five Republicans in South Carolina’s House delegation to support the deal.
“I cannot in good conscience support this deal. Simply stated, it locks us into more debt, bigger government and most devastating of all, a weakened defense infrastructure at a time when we face growing threats,” Graham said in a statement released Monday morning.
“This agreement adds over $7 trillion in new debt over the next decade and only makes small reductions in future spending. We hardly address the future growth of entitlements, a major contributor of future budgetary problems. Instead of our nation running toward bankruptcy we will be walking toward bankruptcy,” he added.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R), South Carolina’s other senator, also opposes the deal.
“I’m not going to tell Americans that we’re doing everything when we’re not,” he said. “We’re planning on adding another $10 trillion in debt.
“From the way it’s been explained to me there’s not much to like,” he added.
DeMint said he will not allow a Senate vote until he and his staff have had a chance to thoroughly review the legislation.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
GRAHAM?!?
With Romney opposed too, I think this is a head fake.
Graham hates it, the NYT hates it, DU hates it. Pattern here?
Lindsey?!
What happened?
Did he swing open the lid, and climb out of his coffin?
Graham is following the McCain playbook here. Sound real conservative the year before you are up for election and then go back to normal after the election. Give another speech on the necessity of Cap and Trade, Lindsey.
Mitch McConnell should be tried for treason.
Leaving aside that they will not support it anyway, why would the SC Republican House delegation care what McCain's fluffer does on this or any other issue? You mean to tell us that Joe Wilson yells out, "You lie!" during Obama's healthcare speech, but then worries about not voting in sync with Grahamnesty? Not bloody likely.
Oh that’s sweet! He’ll do the right thing this time and fall all over his soft loafers to make up for it and screw us somewhere down the road.
If only that were true, the fact is they were complicit in this whole process, there was not one committee hearing, which in it self should have caused an outrage among the members but it didn't.
We will now be told to eat our peas and like it, which is what we will do.
However Rush just said Cantor said Dingy Harry lied, so maybe.............
Marco Rubio is turning out to be a shining star.
“Bring on the default! Lets have it.”
Groan, not again. It’s not a default, it’s simply an inability to borrow. It forces the government to spend only what it brings in in tax receipts each month. Not paying interest on the national debt is “default” and that’s something which even Obama said won’t happen, the interest will be paid.
It’s the liberals and MSM which are saying “default on our [spending] obligations”. That’s what they call the entitlement programs nowadays, obligations. Hence not passing all that cash around is referred to as “default on our obligations”.
Not until 2014.
>>Groan, not again. It’s not a default, it’s simply an inability to borrow. It forces the government to spend only what it brings in in tax receipts each month. Not paying interest on the national debt is “default” and that’s something which even Obama said won’t happen, the interest will be paid.<<
Exactly.
However, one way to spend an additional $100 billion or so per month would be to access the non-public debt holdings of the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds to pay those expenses. This would free up all taxes being collected on those programs to be used to pay other federal expenses.
I like that option because it would cut the August deficit to something like $40 billion (instead of $140 bn) and it might actually be possible to carve $40 billion from August spending without doing much harm.
The House should look at this option, project it forward to November 2012, and decide whether it’s feasible to cut $600 billion (15 months of $40 bn cuts) out of the federal budget from now until election day.
Then pass a bill requiring the use of the Trust Funds to pay SS/Medicare expenses, so that the Administration is forced to use that approach. If, part way through the process, say 4-5 months in, it clearly becomes too much for the economy to bear, just pass a much lower increase in the debt ceiling, say $200 bn, so that spending isn’t cut the entire $600 bn over that time, but only $400 instead.
This approach would generate significant, immediate, cuts in federal spending, cuts far in excess of what’s being considered now over this time frame.
Nice recommendations however I prefer the partial or complete shutdown of many agencies and just running on available revenue ...for a while. Viola, balanced budget. I would include the judicial branch as a partial shutdown candidate otherwise they’ll be processing the lawsuits of the other agency employees and unions to retain funding.
That’s a big issue. We see plenty of cases of states not being able to shutdown funding for programs because of legal judgments against cutting them. The fiscal perfidy is on auto-pilot.
Out of over a hundred Atlanta Public School teachers who were enmeshed in the CRCT Test cheating scandal and given a deadline to resign, only 7 chose to do so.
The others have chosen to fight their firing, which means that they get paid while their cases are decided by a panel of, well, some people, probably fellow education union members.
But never fear, there are already replacement teachers (ostensibly ones that weren't good enough to get the job in the first place) ready to fill in.
In effect, they/we will be paying two public school teachers to do the work of one.
Public employees, particularly in education, seem much like herpes.
Graham is facing a possible primary challenger. He is pretending to be conservative until after he is re-elected. Ditto for Hatch of Utah. It’s a con.
Uh, Linda isn't up for election 'till 2014, unfortunately.
You don’t think $40 billion a month would get at least partial shutdowns of some agencies? Frankly, I don’t think you have any idea just how big $40 billion a month really is. And expecting to cut $140 bn a month and have any chance of Republicans remaining in power after the short-term carnage that would cause is a pipe dream.
I guarantee you that you won’t see anything come out of all this that cuts as much as I’ve proposed here. And you darned sure aren’t going to see $140 billion a month cut. I’m not saying we shouldn’t attempt to go back to those levels over time, but doing it in one budget year is, frankly, crazy budgeting.
I doubt it, more likely then not, people like Graham will vote against the filibuster, before voting against the bill itself, which makes it all B.S.
This is what Ben Nelson does, he votes for closure, then votes against certain bills when he knows they have the votes to pass, and calls himself a conservative democrat (and amazingly, alot of freepers here actually like him).
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