i thought cutting was the goal?

[joeydb]

Originally Posted by Danzig

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43708556/ns/politics/


lol gotta laugh at the new euphemism of 'revenue increases'. let's not call it what it is.

Yeah, next thing you know, they'll stop counting the unemployed people after a couple of years, thus reducing the reported figure. Oh, wait a minute....

[Danzig]

a wsj view on the debt crisis, etc

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...p_mostpop_read


and i found this link, as i had read the piece in the paper here...

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/artic...imate-speeches


i went to factcheck, and did find this from obama's april budget speech:

http://factcheck.org/2011/04/factche...budget-speech/







and all that is all well and good...but i can't help but wonder why the govt let the debt ceiling get so close before doing anything. why didn't they let the tax cuts expire rather then extend them? how much would that have helped? why is the military budget larger than a year ago? why didn't obama and his party take more steps when they had the majorities in congress and held the executive? it's been left til now so that they would have to rush, just jack it up, and worry about all the reform later.
the ceiling will be raised. the question is what else will occur? i'm figuring not a lot.

[joeydb]

One congressman says "Let's LOWER the debt ceiling":

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...bt-ceiling.php

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by joeydb

One congressman says "Let's LOWER the debt ceiling":

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...bt-ceiling.php

then he's an idiot. they've let this go too long not to raise.

[joeydb]

In the LONG term, the debt ceiling should be lowered, then, once debt is paid off, eliminated.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by joeydb

In the LONG term, the debt ceiling should be lowered, then, once debt is paid off, eliminated.

It's physically impossible to eliminate us having any rolling debt. A country doesn't function like a household, no matter how many pols try to use the analogies.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by joeydb

One congressman says "Let's LOWER the debt ceiling":

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...bt-ceiling.php

That's ignorant. We could stop spending 100% tomorrow, and the debt ceiling will still have to be regularly raised.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

why didn't obama and his party take more steps when they had the majorities in congress and held the executive?

Because they didn't hold a supermajority in the Senate, so they had extreme difficulty getting routine things passed. Remember? The most obstructionist Senate ever?

And the current House is the least working (two weeks on, one week off), and least bills passed, in modern times. And 1/3 of the bills they passed were simply naming things.

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Riot

Because they didn't hold a supermajority in the Senate, so they had extreme difficulty getting routine things passed. Remember? The most obstructionist Senate ever?

And the current House is the least working (two weeks on, one week off), and least bills passed, in modern times. And 1/3 of the bills they passed were simply naming things.

i feel that if they were able to get obamacare passed, they left plenty undone. i wonder if that was the deal? the reps allowed that to pass, at the expense of other things the dems wanted. wouldn't surprise me a bit to know that backdoor deals like that happen.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

i feel that if they were able to get obamacare passed, they left plenty undone. i wonder if that was the deal? the reps allowed that to pass, at the expense of other things the dems wanted. wouldn't surprise me a bit to know that backdoor deals like that happen.

Remember that in the House, all Republicans and 34 Dems voted against it (but it still passed); but in the Senate, a 60 vote supermajority was needed, and all 40 Republicans voting against it, and the Independents joining the Dems to pass it with the 60 supermajority (a supermajority isn't needed for regular bills in normal times, but the Republicans were obstructing every senate vote)

Joe Leibermann at the last minute voted for it, passing it.

[Antitrust32]

Originally Posted by Riot

Remember that in the House, all Republicans and 34 Dems voted against it (but it still passed); but in the Senate, a 60 vote supermajority was needed, and all 40 Republicans voting against it, and the Independents joining the Dems to pass it with the 60 supermajority (a supermajority isn't needed for regular bills in normal times, but the Republicans were obstructing every senate vote)

Joe Leibermann at the last minute voted for it, passing it.

its was actually the unprecedented use of the Slaughter rule that got obamacare passed. very very shady

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Antitrust32

its was actually the unprecedented use of the Slaughter rule that got obamacare passed. very very shady

No. It was not "deemed passed". It was voted upon in a regular up and down vote in the House, and passed 219-212.

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Riot

Remember that in the House, all Republicans and 34 Dems voted against it (but it still passed); but in the Senate, a 60 vote supermajority was needed, and all 40 Republicans voting against it, and the Independents joining the Dems to pass it with the 60 supermajority (a supermajority isn't needed for regular bills in normal times, but the Republicans were obstructing every senate vote)

Joe Leibermann at the last minute voted for it, passing it.

and like i said above, if that bill that so many were against could pass, so could other democrat measures. that's one of the reasons many in his own party are unhappy with obama; he had an opportunity to do more, and he squandered it. because he didn't want to do too much, and possibly lose seats he tried to play it safe and it cost him.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

and like i said above, if that bill that so many were against could pass, so could other democrat measures. that's one of the reasons many in his own party are unhappy with obama; he had an opportunity to do more, and he squandered it. because he didn't want to do too much, and possibly lose seats he tried to play it safe and it cost him.

Except for the 154 times the Senate Republican minority prevented passage of Democratic bills due to invoking a supermajority. I don't know what you expected the Dems "could have done" when they needed 60 votes for routine matters due to the GOP forcing a supermajority need, and they only had 58 Senators?

Yes, the progressive wing of the Democratic party is unhappy with Obama, because he's not a "left liberal socialist". He's quite centrist.

"Do more" for them would have been to pass single payer healthcare: like that would have happened, when all they could barely pass were the basic insurance reforms of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act! ("Obamacare")