Posted on 07/16/2011 3:47:55 PM PDT by ejdrapes
Is the GOP about to cave on taxes? [snip] House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio underscored the point to dispel the notion that failure to allow more borrowing is an option. "He said if we pass Aug. 2, it would be like 'Star Wars,'" said Rep. Scott DesJarlais, a freshman from Tennessee. "I don't think the people who are railing against raising the debt ceiling fully understand that." The warnings appeared to have softened the views of at least some House members who, until now, were inclined to dismiss statements by administration officials, business leaders and outside economists that the economic impact would be dire if the federal government were suddenly unable to pay its bills. Freshman Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) said the presentation about skyrocketing interest rates that could result from downgraded bond ratings was "sobering."
Rick Moran
July 16, 2011 At a closed-door meeting Friday morning, GOP leaders turned to their most trusted budget expert, Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, to explain to rank-and-file members what many others have come to understand: A fiscal meltdown could occur if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling.
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
the author, Rick Moran, the name is familiar, isn’t he a frigging comedian?
With active unemployment at 9% and more underemployment, consider what would happen if suddenly there were no unemployment benefits and no food stamps. Since you are probably a supporter of the 2nd amendment, consider what these suddenly hungry people would do about their situation. Unless you live way out in the country, you would probably be very unhappy with the results.
In addition to the programs you mention for cutting, remember that salaries have to be paid to all those employees who are sending out the checks for social security, medicare, veterans benefits, military pay, etc.
. The exact rate last Friday on the five year Treasury Note was 1.446% [This is money that the government borrows from banks, institutions, individual buyers, other governments.] This rate is LESS THAN INFLATION.
Great, an enemy plant here at FR.
Three things gave you away. The demonstrated insanity of massive increases of spending while bankrupt. The fallacy that money would go to "repair our failing bridges, roads and other infrastructure" (and the immoral supposition that people in TX should be taxed and future generations cast into life-long poverty so that goonion thugs in NJ can claim to repair a bridge). And finally, the bald faced lie about the rate of inflation. Your number is off by at least an order of magnitude.
i think youre thinking of rick moranis of “honey, i shrunk the kids” ands “spaceballs” fmae
Nope, we already tried that. The ONLY thing that is focusing Obama and the crazed Democrats on cutting spending is not approving an increase in the debt limit.
When responsible people keep talking about default, knowing that debt servicing is only 6% of revenues, you know they are lying.
There is not a chance in Hades that Obama will purposefully cause default by failing to service the debt, & forever be known worldwide as the One Great Welsher. This is the default McConnell & Co. are so worried about?
Why do the Pubs need a closed door meeting to explain why the debt ceiling must be raised? Is it that their primary reasoning is purely political & has NOTHING to do with what is good for the country? If their reasoning is so sound, why can't they step up to a public mic & tell Americans why the ceiling must be raised, w/o using hyperbole such as “Star Wars”?
The truth is this. Incumbents have a far tougher time getting reelected & maintaining their leadership positions w/o Federal money to buy votes & contributions. The DC starves the pols of this federal bribery money. Obama desperately needs the DC raised to get reelected. McConnell needs it to keep his leadership position. Without it, he has no chance of being majority leader in a room full of newly elected conservatives. Same for Boehner.
Hitting the DC forces Congress & Obama to deal with the entitlements mess. Raising it gives them another of innumerable passes. Reaching the DC forces an immediate balanced budget & leaves Congress no choice but to write & pass a balanced budget quickly. The DC puts a stop to Pork. Finally, the DC exposes those Rats/Pubs who care more about themselves than they do America.
There is nothing catastrophic about a gov’t that must spend w/i its revenues. Would world markets frown if Greece were to balance its budget tomorrow? Hardly! Everybody knows we are headed for world catastrophe if the USA does not severely cut spending. The DC does exactly that, now, not 5-10 years from now. I believe markets will rejoice at a suddenly balance budget. I believe the economy will rebound based on the sure knowledge that Congressional insanity has been capped.
If you want Obama reelected, no budget passed, & spending continue uncontrolled, then you need to support raising the DC. You are saying, “I like the way things are going, & I want more of the same.”
Every word is dead on correct.
That didn't work for the last dozen debt limit increases, so let's get serious on expense cuts now.
To your example, suppose you had just blown $15,000 in Vegas as your personal stimulus. Before your bank raised your line of credit, I think they'd like to know that you weren't planning to go back to Vegas next year.
TARP and the stimulus were supposed to be one-time events. Now Obama is trying to bake that $1.5 trillion a year into the base line budget. The Republicans should stand firm on pulling out that out of the budget. Obama claimed that Obamacare was revenue neutral, let's hold him to that promis.
Of course, we’ve heard this same drumbeat for how long now? It’s another shovel of offal on the rotting pile.
This post proves what a total dunce Moran is, not mention he’s also got a long history of being histrionic Chicken Little. The piece he quotes talks about Republican Leaders presenting an argument on why they believe raising the Debt Ceiling will have consequences. OK, fine. But where does it say, even in his quoted citation, anything about taxes?? That he conflates the two shows clearly the Rick Moran history of being a mental midget. Raising Taxes and raising the Ceiling are mutually exclusive. Voting to raise the ceiling doesn’t mean tax increases are automatic. He’s always trying to be too smart by half, and in that he usually succeeds.
The Ceiling is going to be raised, whether we like it or not. Ryan’s explanation of what will happen is true, but not necessarily complete. If ever we need to get anything under control - thanks to decades of Collectivist Statism - there’s not gonna be a pain-free way to do it. The pain they’re trying to avoid now - do they think there doing it under the belief there isn’t gonna be pain later? The raised ceiling, even with huge cuts, leaves room for ObamaCare to continue. So what if they gut several programs now - if they can still borrow more than 2 trillion above what they can now, doesn’t that just mean they have more room on their credit card which now has a bigger limit? Or am I missing something?
Who else is a safer bet?
What other countries are the investors better friend?
If the government of this country will stop this madness and cut its spending, America will be an even SAFER BET.
It is simply not true the United States cannot pay its interest on indebtedness without raising the debt ceiling. That is a proven lie.
You are participating in furthering the lie Democrats are using to scare people.
This sky-is-falling crap is only true of federal out-of-control spending.
Refusing to raise the debt ceiling is the beginning of the proper path to return to solvency.
It forces the major cuts in spending our federal government must make.
Nobody in the world is fooled. The United States is already insolvent and everyone knows it.
“What happens if nothing is done?”
No one has explained that and I’m for letting default happenand then see what happens. Whatever happens it can’t be sudden because the U.S. is like 1000 Titanics. Our leaders would have time to take corrective measures.
We citizens aren’t yet able to discern the truth, aren’t yet able to tell the truthtellers from the liers, aren’t yet able to tell the knowledgable from the ignorant.
Given these circumstances we need to go one step at a time. The first step is to let this so-called default happen.
That didn't work for the last dozen debt limit increases, so let's get serious on expense cuts now.
To your example, suppose you had just blown $15,000 in Vegas as your personal stimulus. Before your bank raised your line of credit, I think they'd like to know that you weren't planning to go back to Vegas next year.
TARP and the stimulus were supposed to be one-time events. Now Obama is trying to bake that $1.5 trillion a year into the base line budget. The Republicans should stand firm on pulling out that out of the budget. Obama claimed that Obamacare was revenue neutral, let's hold him to that promise.
True, it's inflationary, but that's the trade-off we've been doing for quite a while now.
The political reality is that the US population is used to 3% interest & 6% inflation. It'd be a real shock to have 3% inflation and 8% inflation rates, even though it could be argued that it'd be a return to sanity.
Easy. Eliminate these:
Department of Labor
Department of Education
Department of Energy
Department of Agriculture
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Department of Commerce
Department of Health & Human Services
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Interior
Department of Transportation
Environmental Protection Agency
Federal Reserve
.
We have a debt problem ~ it's too high. We have a tax problem ~ there's not enough. We have an expenditures problem ~ that's too high. And so on and so forth, BUT, we have resources.
In the good old days a nation might have a gold and silver reserve to tide it through the bad times, and back its currency. Today we have a vast storehouse of wealth OWNED directly by the government. There's more land owned by the government than the Louisiana Purchase. It's full of coal, oil and other riches which can be tapped.
At the rock bottom price of $500 per acre, the public lands are valued at $440 billion. At a more realistic $3,000 per acre, they are worth $2.60 trillion. With another $10,000 per acre for 1/10 for the raw mineral wealth prior to extraction, that's nearly another $ trillion ~ and I haven't even thought much about it.
We literally have enough OBVIOUS wealth in the hands of the federal government that it can GUARANTEE 100% of the outstanding debt to Social Security!
We don't need to rely entirely on taxes to pay our bills on time.
The committed obligations of which you speak are the innumerable wasteful, politically motivated “obligations” that have gotten us where we are today. Congress can repeal what it creates. There are sufficient revenues coming into the treasury to cover debt servicing, Soc. Security, Medicare/Medicaid, & defense. The rest is discretionary spending, not legally required to be spent.
In your homey example, you leave out the obvious, most common choice of cutting back. Cable gone. A/C turned up 5-10 degrees or off, if necessary. Nights out - gone. Shopping - no way. Steaks become chicken. Second car sold & insurance canceled. Whatever you can cut.
The very last, most irresponsible thing you could do is borrow money you can't pay back in the expectation of cutting expenses later. And especially so if you have known this was coming for a long time - years. First you cut your expenses to the bone, sell what assets you can, & only after do you consider the extremely dangerous option of getting deeper in debt. No financial adviser would tell you to run down to the credit union for some money to tide you over what could be a permanent cutback in income. Cut expenses now & deeply, not in a couple of months, is what he would say.
Obama, the Rats, & RINOs want to raise the debt ceiling to insure their reelection & maintain power, by directing that money to supporters thru Federal spending. It also saves them from having to produce a budget prior to Obama’s reelection. It has nothing to do with the fear of default.
The debt ceiling is not the edge of the cliff, it is the guardrail in front of the cliff. Raising the ceiling moves the guardrail closer to the cliff, putting everyone but the pols* in greater danger.
*They have a golden parachute.
Are you saying that inflation is even higher than I thought? If so, then it makes even MORE sense to borrow at 1.446%, not less. Furthermore, given its size I am sure that Texas has a great deal more infrastructure that needs upgrading and repair than NJ does. Furthermore, I do not think that we should increase our spending, I merely believe that not paying bills we have already incurred is stupid and self-destructive.
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