Debt Ceiling

[vman]

Received the following over lunch time:



TheHill.com had an interesting story Wednesday; it sort of sets the stage for what's to happen. Headline: "Report: Treasury Must Cut Spending 44 Percent in Default -- New analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), which has been shared extensively with members of Congress, estimates that the Treasury Department would not be able to pay all its bills and would need to implement an immediate 44 percent cut in federal spending in the event the debt ceiling is exceeded." I'll tell you what this is. You know, when your local community, state, town, starts telling you about cuts, what do they do? They tell you they have to cut teachers, and then they tell you they're going to have to cut firemen, and then they tell you they're going to have cut cops. And what did you do? "Oh, no! No! No! I don't want my kids not safe. No! Don't cut the teachers! Don't cut the cops!" Okay, you don't want the cuts, then don't cut anything. Same thing is being set up here. Same exact thing. Treasury Department not able to pay all its bills and would need to implement an immediate 44 percent cut in federal spending in the event the debt ceiling is exceeded. Fine. Do it.

"On an annualized basis, the cut in spending alone is a 10 percent cut in GDP. ... The report released Tuesday concludes that Treasury would not be able to pay all its bills between Aug. 2 and 'probably' not later than Aug. 9 if the debt ceiling is not increased. 'Handling all payments for important and popular programs' including entitlements and military pay will 'quickly become impossible,' it says." See how this is being set up? If we don't raise the debt ceiling military people don't get paid. (gasping) Can't have that. Handling all payments for important and popular programs, including entitlements, military pay, quickly become impossible. No Social Security, no Medicaid. I mean, if we don't exceed the debt limit, guess what? It's all the Republicans' fault. The Republicans are sabotaging. They want all this to happen so as to somehow help them at the ballot box in November. The truth is we would only default if we don't service our debt. The cost of servicing the debt is 6% of the budget and we have revenue coming in to do that.

We do not need to raise the debt ceiling. There is no crisis. There is no Armageddon. This is stimulus all over again. This is TARP all over again. This is the same lie repeated over and over again; the same attempt to make you think your country is coming to a screeching halt and is ending unless the debt ceiling is raised. The thing is, our nation is on the brink and we need to save it, but it's not by raising the debt ceiling; it's by getting rid of Obama. It's by getting rid of the Democrat Party everywhere, anywhere it can be done. That's the solution to the problem, not the debt ceiling. We can service the debt. We can make our debt payments. Obama and his government are preparing to unload a list of ‘horribles’. And this is just the first example, this Hill.com story just shared with you. They are preparing to unload a list of ‘horribles’ as often as possible which the media will not only report but then they'll go out and find faces to put to the ‘horribles’, to pressure the increase of the debt ceiling with minimal concessions. Gonna start soon. Shortly after this press conference the media's going to go out there and find some person whose life will effectively be over if the debt ceiling isn't raised in an example used by the president during this press conference. The endless parade of victims that the Democrats are famous for, it's already in the works, I guarantee you, get used to it, it's coming.

Now, there of course will be no reporting about what happens when the whole system goes to hell from the reckless spending. There won't be any context. It will be a campaign by the ruling class to bulldoze through this. And this example in TheHill.com, military doesn't get paid, 44% cut unless the debt ceiling is raised, this is all laying the groundwork. Like I said, like the local city council demanding tax increases or they have to cut the cops and fire department. It's the same thing except now Obama and the Feds are adopting the same strategy. We keep hearing from the ruling class that we can't do this, we can't do that. And what they may mean is that they won't do this and they will not cut spending. That's what they mean when they say, "Well, we can't do that." It simply means they will not reduce the size of government. They will not relinquish control of the federal bureaucracy. The idea that they cannot is nonsense. If they can't, why are they there? If they can't, they need to go, because it needs to happen. The point is, they will not change their policies, no matter what. Obama's not gonna change. The Democrats are not going to change. There's no point in negotiating with them. They aren't going to change.

It is Obama and the Democrats who refuse to take the steps necessary to revive this nation. It's Obama and the Democrats who refuse to take the steps necessary to revive this nation's economy, to create an atmosphere and circumstance for job creation. It is up to them, and they will not take the steps. The same president who spent money so recklessly, who intentionally spent more money than we have, who knew he was busting the debt ceiling. In the Senate he refused to vote to increase the debt ceiling, by the way. When he was in the Senate he refused to do what he's demanding be done now. Demanding that he continue to get his way that we continue to grow the federal government even if it means the collapse of the dollar, more massive debt, and more job losses, because all that matters to him and the Democrat Party is the government getting bigger.

Obama promised us that he was going to change the way Washington works. Well, what's he waiting for? Because he hasn't changed a dang thing. Whatever happened to "yes, we can"? All Obama does is set up preposterous choices. It's a choice between food safety or corporate jets. This list of ‘horribles’: food safety or corporate jets; kids going to college or oil companies getting tax breaks; These preposterous, unreal, don't-exist choices this is what demagogues do.

All of these false choices, he's really harping on this corporate jet tax break this week while he flies around on the biggest corporate jet ever, while his wife flies around on the biggest corporate jet ever. All of this is positioned so we could get a deal and avoid a financial disaster if we don't increase the debt limit, if the Republicans would only agree to more taxes or increased revenues, if only the Republicans? The only people who are trying to stop this collapse, Republicans. If they would set aside reality and participate in this Washington sham, then all would be well. We'd have a deal. Obama, his regime, could continue their destruction. It's all the Republicans' fault, you see, standing in the way of Obama's giant expansion of government.

This is full-fledged demagoguery and we're listening to this from the chief architect of the destruction of this economy. He's once again pitting groups of Americans against each other. His aim is for one group of Americans to hate and despise another group. He's banking on that most Americans will agree with him because this is fair, and to a certain extent there's some Americans who will agree with it. Do we have a country where we're approaching a majority of people who think the purpose of government is to equalize outcomes in life rather than equalize opportunity? He's banking on that. Obama's banking on the fact that that's what people want him to do is to equalize outcomes -- and that means take and then redistribute.


All these people with the jets and all these people at the oil company, they can afford it. They can afford it. Let me tell you who's going to end up paying all these taxes. It's not those people; it's the people that work for them! The middle class is always going to get soaked with these tax increases. All of this is positioned in such a way that we could get a deal, we could avoid a financial disaster if don't increase the debt limits.

Barry earlier this week: “So, as I mentioned at the top: I think it's important for us to look at rebuilding our transportation infrastructure in this country. That could put people back to work right now, construction workers back to work right now, and it would get done work that America needs to get done. We used to have the best roads, the best bridges, the best airports. We don't anymore, and that's not good for our long term competitiveness”.

That's what the Porkulus was for: shovel-ready jobs! Which of course he laughs about now: Shovel-ready jobs. We were supposed to have already done all this construction work. We should have already rebuilt our transportation infrastructure -- the best bridges, the best airports, fixed all these roads and schools -- that's what the Porkulus was for! But we know now that it wasn't. That was just a slush fund, pure and simple. Stimulus money was simply a money-laundering route to make sure a percentage of that money ended up in campaign war chests of various Democrats. You know, you won't hear any talk about the EPA budget: 125% increase in the last two years.

The Environmental Protection Agency budget increased 125% the last two years. You'll notice there's not one syllable's worth of discussion of cutting anything in government. There won't be any talk about the $1 trillion wasted in that phony stimulus bill. No. In fact, we have to now do -- like we never even talked about it before -- the things that stimulus money was for: Infrastructure, shovel-ready jobs. There won't be any talk about all the new departments, all the new commissions and expenses involved in Obamacare. Oh, no! We're not going to hear anything about reducing and rolling back Obamacare.

Did you hear the story about people spying on doctors? The federal government was going to hire people to go into doctor's offices to spy on them, to gather information on how the doctors were operating and report back to a federal agency? That's been discovered, and now the government says, "Okay, we're not going do that...now." No, we're not going hear about the bloat about the federal government. We're not going hear about the bloat in Obamacare. Nope, we're going hear about little old ladies. We're going to hear about some poor longhaired, maggot-infested, kid who can't get a scholarship. We're going hear about a poor private in the military.

We're going hear about a Down syndrome child or a cancer patient going without what they need to survive, all because we won't raise the debt limit. Why do we even have a debt limit? It doesn't exist. Every time we approach it, we have to expand it. The unnerving thing here is that the very people who are destroying the jobs and businesses and even the federal programs they claim to support are positioning themselves as the saviors. Here comes Barack Obama, leader of the destroyers. "Barack Hussein Obama" who has destroyed the American private sector, who has destroyed the job creation engine of this country, now comes along today as a savior!

As the government grows and creates all this damage, the answer is always to grow it more! We've just gone through a 29-month experiment with socialism, big government. It is a disaster. We are living it. Yet we are told to ignore all that we know, ignore all that we are experiencing, and we are supposed to support more of the same.

[vman]

In relation to Barry's rant, I came across this from someone I feel is a true leader & hope he comes on the Rep ticket! Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) will take to the Senate floor for his second speech this week — and this time he will have President Obama in his crosshairs.

Rubio tells us that he will respond to Obama’s recent press conference, where the president reveled in class-warfare bluster. “Quite frankly, I am both disappointed for our country and shocked at some of the rhetoric,” he says. “It was rhetoric, I thought, that was more appropriate for some left-wing strong man than for the president of the United States.”

“Talking about corporate jets and oil companies,” Rubio says, missed the point. “Everybody here agrees that our tax code is broken,” he says, and he is open to discussing tax reform. “But don’t go around telling people that the reason you are not doing well is because some rich guy is in a corporate jet or some oil company is making too much money.”

Watching Obama brandish such talking points made Rubio wince. “Three years into his presidency, he is a failed president,” he says. “He just has not done a good job. Life in America today, by every measure, is worse than it was when he took over.”

“When does it start to get better?” Rubio asks. “When does the magic of this president start to happen?”

[vman]

I’m sure you know that Barry has piled TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS onto our already staggering National Debt. And I’m sure you’ve heard he wants to ram through a debt hike of another $2 TRILLION – without a single spending cut or reform!

I hope you agree that you and I CANNOT allow this to happen.

We MUST NOT raise the debt limit – for an appalling 78th time, above an appalling $14.3 trillion – without permanently changing how Washington works and significantly reducing spending.

We must demand serious reforms to CUT, CAP and BALANCE our spending!

That means, before so much as CONSIDERING an increase in the debt limit, Congress must:

*Cut short-term spending to the bone with immediate and substantial reductions.

*Cap federal spending at historic (pre-Obama) levels of 18% of GDP.

*Balance the budget by law with an iron-clad Balanced Budget Amendment, requiring a super-
majority vote to raise ANY taxes.

[vman]

Now the debt ceiling is the Republicans problem?? Barry has already signed the largest tax increase since 1993 thanks to the 2010 Affordable Care Act. For example:

• Starting in 2013, the bill adds an additional 0.9% to the 2.9% Medicare tax for singles who earn more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000.
• For first time, the bill also applies Medicare's 2.9% payroll tax rate to investment income, including dividends, interest income and capital gains. Added to the 0.9% payroll surcharge, that means a 3.8-percentage point tax hike on "the rich." These new taxes aren't indexed for inflation, so many middle-class families will soon be considered rich and pay the surcharge as their incomes rise past $250,000 due to tax-bracket creep. Remember how the Alternative Minimum Tax was supposed to apply only to a handful of millionaires?

Taxpayer cost over 10 years: $210 billion.

• Also starting in 2013 is a 2.3% excise tax on medical device manufacturers and importers. That's estimated to raise $20 billion.
• Already underway this year is the new annual fee on "branded" drug makers and importers, which will raise $27 billion.
• Another $15.2 billion will come from raising the floor on allowable medical deductions to 10% of adjusted gross income from 7.5%.
• A new annual fee on health insurance providers starting in 2014 and estimated to raise $60 billion. This tax will be passed along to consumers in higher health-car¬e costs.”

Now Barry & the Democrats argue that any debt limit deal to reduce federal deficits and debt needs to be balanced between spending reductions and tax increases. That is not how we did it the last time we balanced the budget, in the 1990s.

The Republican congressional majorities elected in 1994 were greeted in February, 1995 with then President Clinton’s new budget projecting continued federal deficits of $200 billion or more indefinitely into the future. The ensuing government shutdown battles ended with budget policies that cut both taxes and spending.
Republican congressional majorities, led by then House Speaker Newt Gingrich enacted the largest capital gains tax cut in U.S. history, slashing the rate by 40% from 28% to 20%. Along with some other tax cuts on capital, that helped to promote an economic boom that produced surging revenues.

The Republican Congress then cut federal discretionary spending from 1995 to 1996 by 5.4% in real dollars, after adjusting for inflation. As a percent of GDP, federal discretionary spending, including defense and non-defense, was slashed by 17.5% in just 4 years, from 1995 to 1999.

The Congress also adopted some entitlement reform. The AFDC welfare program was terminated as an entitlement, and sent back to the states with work requirements and federal financing in fixed, finite block grants. Agricultural subsidies were phased out under the Freedom to Farm reforms (later reversed under House Speaker Dennis Hastert). President Clinton deserves credit for going along with these Congressional Republican reforms.

As a result, $200 billion annual federal deficits, which had prevailed for over 15 years, were transformed into surpluses by 1998, peaking at $236 billion by 2000. The national debt was reduced by $560 billion in surpluses from 1998 to 2001.

This contrasted sharply with the budget deal reached by the first President Bush and a Democrat Congress in 1990, which followed Barry’s “balanced” approach by raising taxes in return for supposed spending cuts. But the tax increases promoted an economic downturn that reduced revenues, while the spending cuts didn’t fully materialize. As a result, the deficit increased from $221 billion in 1990, to $269 billion in 1991, to $290 billion in 1992, when voters booted then President Bush out for violating the no new taxes pledge that got him elected.

With our current weak economy, any tax increase is more likely to lose revenue than gain it. Moreover, under current law tax rates for virtually every major federal tax are already scheduled to go up in 2013 on the nation’s small businesses, job creators and investors. That is because the tax increases of Obama Care become effective that year, and the Bush tax cuts expire, with Barry firmly opposed to renewing them for those disfavored taxpayers. That is only going to hurt the jobs and wages of average working people.
America’s corporate rate is also already virtually the highest in the industrialized world at nearly 40%, counting state corporate taxes on average. Even Communist China imposes only a 25% rate, with the socialist EU below even that on average.

In addition, even before Barry was elected, official IRS data for 2007 showed that the top 1% of income earners paid more in federal income taxes than the bottom 95% combined. So still further tax increases are not going to promote fairness either.

Finally, both CBO and Barry’s own 2012 budget show that with current policies federal taxes will already grow above their long run average since WW II which allowed America to prosper as the leading economy in the world during that time. It is federal spending that is projected to grow well beyond its postwar average, resulting in unmanageable long term deficits and debt.

Consequently, history, logic, experience, and theory show that the only viable approach to reducing deficits and debt is to cut tax rates to promote a growing economy again, which will produce growing revenues, and to cut spending down towards those revenues.

[vman]

More from my man:

New Taxpayers, Not New Taxes
July 8, 2011 3:03 P.M.
By Sen. Marco Rubio

There is broad consensus in Washington that a “balanced approach” between spending cuts, controls, and increased revenue is the only possible way to reduce our $14.3 trillion national debt and avert a Greek-style debt crisis. I share this perspective.

As the ongoing debt negotiations advance, members of Congress should evaluate the components of a debt package through one question: Will this make it harder or easier for the American people to create jobs? For my part, I have never met a job creator in Florida that has told me they are waiting for Congress to pass another tax hike before they start growing their business.

Unfortunately, there are indications some are willing to accept that higher revenues in a debt package should come from a $1 trillion tax hike, even at a time when the unemployment rate is 9.2 percent and 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. I vehemently disagree with this approach and will oppose a net tax increase on the economy that makes its way into a debt reduction deal.

To be clear, new revenues are an essential component of any viable debt reduction deal. We can’t simply cut our way out of this debt; we also need to grow our way out of it. The best way to do this is by increasing the number of taxpayers gainfully employed in our economy and by easing burdensome regulations, not by raising taxes.

We can generate lasting economic growth and trillions in new revenues for the federal government through pro-growth tax reform. Sen. Pat Toomey has a budget proposal that lowers top marginal tax rates to 25 percent in a revenue-neutral way and eliminates loopholes and deductions, resulting in $1.5 trillion of additional real growth over the next decade and millions of new private-sector jobs, according to the Heritage Foundation. His budget recognizes that tax cuts and an overhaul of our 70,000 page tax code will create jobs and generate trillions in new revenue.

Net tax increases are poor economic policy. Will raising taxes on manufacturers make it easier for them to hire new workers? Will raising taxes on American energy companies make it easier to create jobs? Will raising taxes on the businesses that Democrats refer to as “millionaires and billionaires” allow those businesses to expand? Across the board, the answer is “no.” Instead, these tax increases will kill jobs in every district, state, and industry in the country. Regardless of the rhetoric coming from Washington politicians, these taxes will also have a mathematically insignificant effect on deficit reduction.

I proudly support a “balanced approach” in the context of debt reduction that grows the economy and boosts tax revenues in the process. But when presented with the option of choking our weak economy with yet another net tax increase, I will oppose it. Our country needs new taxpayers, not new taxes.

[aeosman]

I wonder if Obummer think I'm one of the 80% that wants higher taxes?

[Manfred]

If I go out and charge up my mastercard to the limit, I have a couple options. Stop charging if I haven't hit my limit yet but soon will, only buy what is absolutely needed while I pay my debt, and only buy with cash if I need something, or call mastercard and tell them I'd like my debt ceiling raised. Which do you think will be a logical approach.

[vman]

Many on Barry’s economic team have abandoned ship and heading for the exits. Austan Goolsbee’s, who recently resigned from his post as the White House economic advisor after less than a year, is just the most visible defection. Obama’s economic team is headed for the doors and following the lead of the more senior economic advisors. Christine Roemer, Larry Summers and Peter Orszag were the first to abandon Obama’s economic team as it became painfully obvious that their policies on job creation had failed. These are the same advisors that assured Americans that a huge expansion of entitlements, an historic increase in the size of government, almost doubling of the national debt by $5 trillion, while hobbling small businesses with a new thicket of regulations, would actually result in economic expansion and job growth across the nation.
Not only were these presidential advisers wrong, but disastrously so. Rarely has a group failed so spectacularly. Thus, Americans should not be surprised that many of the lower levels of Obama’s National Economic Council team (Sarah Cannon, Eric Lesser, Bryan Jung, Kyle Watkins, Pascal Noel) are also abandoning the sinking Obama ship. This mass exodus of Team Obama’s economic advisors is a stunning vote of no confidence in Barry’s economic policies.

Barry needs to consider this: When all of your staff give up, they are telling you that there is something flawed in the current approach that doesn’t work. I just can’t believe there is any level of support for any of Barry’s polices left??....... Political rhetoric being what it is, however, none of this is going to penetrate. Instead, with Barry harping on corporate jets and "tax breaks for the wealthy," the stereotypes of the last century will remain -- Republicans are the "party of the rich" while Democrats are the "party of the common man." Who is closer to Wall Street, Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty or Timothy Geithner? But no matter. Barry knows his strengths and will only ratchet up the rhetoric as the deadline approaches, with the press trotting along behind.

Adding up the numbers would convince any intelligent person that raising taxes on the rich can make only the slightest dent in a $1.4 trillion annual deficit and a $14 trillion national debt. If you collected all the corporate jet taxes and oil depreciation allowances for 100 years, you wouldn't cover the amount that Barry added to the national debt last February. But that's not really what Democrats have in mind. In their hearts, they have become convinced that Reaganomics never worked and that only a small minority at the top ever benefited from that 25-year run of prosperity. Therefore the only way to restore justice to this country is to tax the rich into submission….The Democrats are hell-bent on restoring income equality by taxing "millionaires and billionaires" to death. What they are going to hit, instead, is small businesses, which just happen to be responsible for half the new job creation in the country year after year. Going after these "rich" taxpayers is only going to make unemployment worse and prolong the recession.

What To Do??…..my research leads me here:

There must be cuts in all levels of government which amount to an immediate reduction in the deficit. Anything less is unacceptable.

The second step is to use tough statuary caps that will tie the hands of future politicians from spending beyond the historical, pre-Bush average of 18% of the Gross Domestic Product. Politicians in both parties have proven themselves untrustworthy to reduce spending, so breaking that limitation would mandate simultaneous spending reductions.

And finally, we must have Congress approve the Hatch-Lee Balanced Budget Amendment, and send it to the states for ratification. Not only would it mirror most states which have their own requirements for expenditures equaling revenue, but it additionally requires a two-thirds supermajority to approve tax increases. And once the amendment is official, it would be quite impossible in the modern era to ever repeal it.

These steps are necessary to put America on a path to new jobs and prosperity.

[vman]

Well now, it turned out that predictions that the U.S. would “default” on making debt payments were -– to give the distinguished economists the benefit of the doubt and to put the best face on their motives –- a contemptible lie.

Without borrowing a cent, the U.S., with $172 billion of income in August, had nearly seven times the money it needed to service its debt ($29 billion). It also had enough to pay Social Security ($49 billion), Medicare and Medicaid ($50 billion), soldiers ($2.9 billion), veterans (also $2.9 billion), and much, much more. So we were not talking about a “default” in any traditional sense of the word, but, rather, a partial government shutdown (which had been done before).

Without admitting they were wrong, the sleazoids involved began oh-so-slightly changing the lexiconology to talk about “default on government’s obligations to the American people.”

So there is a new narrative: Unless Pell Grants continue to flow, international financial markets will collapse (WP, 7/16). The sources for this proposition are always anonymous and are always supposedly people who, in other contexts, liberals would regard as unworthy of trust.

Predictably, the fact that Congressmen Steve King and Michele Bachmann had forced Obama’s economists and in-house professional liars (MSNBC) to concede that they had engaged in criminal fraud did not stop them from calling King and Bachmann “balloon heads.”

But, with House Republicans rebelling against their leadership and finally showing a little backbone, now comes Mitch McConnell in an effort to troll for favorable MSNBC press. You would hope that the not-without-reason “minority” leader would be troubled by the fact that the Washington Post (and every liberal in town) suddenly thinks he’s a genius, not unlike a puppy learning to jump for a tasty treat.

The modified “good boy!” McConnell-Reid proposal would codify the $1.5 trillion in phony defense and out-year “cuts” okd' by Biden, allow Obama to unconstitutionally borrow $2.5 trillion by submitting a comparable amount in hypothetical phony cuts, and -– scariest of all –- create a commission of McConnell/Boehner clones to create an unamendable fast-tracked bill to destroy any aspect of the economy left standing after Phase 1.

What could go wrong with that?

We know, for instance, that one of the “cuts” would be achieved by hiring a lot more government employees to ferret out “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

But, says McConnell, at least the GOP won’t have to “own” the economic conflagration his proposal would create. The visage of a smiling McConnell standing beside Obama as he signs himself into history as “the great budget cutter” will simply go into McConnell’s scrapbook, and that will be that.

Really? Is that your “final answer”?

Because Standard & Poors, in addition to its “default”-related threats, is also saying it will downgrade U.S. obligations based on McConnell’s failure to reduce the debt by $4 trillion (WP, July 16, 2011). And -– this is just a hunch –- but I’m betting the CBS Nightly News is not going to suddenly take the stance that “it’s Obama’s fault.”

In fact, from ObamaCare to Lame Ducksmanship to the CR to the debt limit, you would think the GOP would have learned a simple lesson: Fleeing in horror does not stop Barry from chasing them.

But what about McConnell’s argument that Barry would finally be required to submit “cuts.” Huh? You think Barry, with virtually no parameters on his discretion, can’t come up with $2.5 trillion in phony, political risk-free cuts?

To the contrary, Barry will be able to take his phony cuts and spend the next year taunting the GOP for not enacting them.

But, argues McConnell, Democrats up for reelection, like Ben Nelson, McCaskill, Manchin, and Tester will have to spend the next year and a half voting for three veto overrides of debt limit increases.

Wrong again, McMahon (lil' WWf reference there). The Democrats only need one-third plus one in one House. That means that all of the endangered Democrats can vote “right” on the veto override and can go into the next election touting their fiscal responsibility.

Finally, as to the commission, modeled after the one that bamboozled Reagan, well -– enough said.

It hurts me to say this, but Newt Gingrich is right. Republicans need to be spending every hour of every day promising that they will save seniors from Barry’s gratuitous threat to cut their social security in order to make them political pawns to his liberal agenda.

It’s probably not a bad idea, in the same breath, to remind Americans of the reasons that Barry needs to borrow $2.5 trillion (ObamaCare, the government takeover of financial services, wasted stimulus bills totaling almost one trillion a crack, bailouts, regulatory gun control, etc.).

What is a bad idea is to grovel around in an effort to curry favor with media which is already owned by the White House. Because, whatever tomorrow’s headlines read, history will ultimately not look kindly on the guy who was outwitted by Barry again and again and again.

[vman]

This episode won’t go down in history as Congress’s finest hour.

But while the economic and policy objectives of the fight may be clear enough to partisans outside of Congress (and might even be somewhat meaningful to ordinary people), this ultimately was a fight about politics.

And in the political analysis, there is only one player who came out of this with everything he wanted: Barry!
He wasn’t trying to advance a policy objective. Not even once did he let the articulation of such a thing pass his lips. Rather he had two specific objectives that he had to get at all costs:

1) To get Republicans to propose specific spending cuts that Democrats can use against them in the coming elections, while not making any such proposals himself; &

2) To silence the fiscal debate until after his election in 2012.
The president won on both counts. Everything else that was at stake in the negotiation was a nice-to-have for him, not a need-to-have.

No one else got their must-have objectives. The Republicans have to face the prospect of tax increases combined with spending cuts that will be phony at best. And the Democrats will have to keep justifying entitlement programs that we can no longer afford.

The downside for conservatives is clear: We’ve lost our last chance for a meaningful discussion on fiscal reform, until there’s another financial or economic crisis.

But liberals have lost even more. It turns out that Barry was only willing to fight hard for his own political objectives. If liberals choose to be honest with themselves they’ll see that both they and the media made the mistake of conflating their policy interests with Barry’s personal interests.

Barry himself never made that mistake for a second.

Here’s something no one wants to talk about, whether Republican or Democrat. Well, I should not say no one, but pretty much every Republican and Democrat who participated in the terms of the debate over the debt ceiling has ignored this.

Government spending is going above 25% of GDP.

Tax revenue up until the last two years has averaged 18.5% GDP.

In fact, 1945 and 1999 are the only two years where tax revenue into the federal government surpassed 20%.
In other words, with the economy firing on all cylinders, only twice has revenue into the federal treasury been over 20% of GDP and spending has now gone well above 20% of GDP.

The Senate approved the compromise debt ceiling plan. If the plan is implemented to the letter as intended, we will add $12 trillion in debt over the next decade.

Democrats are convinced that they can keep squeezing blood from turnips and get more tax revenue. They can’t. History shows us that. Wealth flight will happen or people will find it cost effective to shelter income.
So if tax revenue, in the very case, is going to max out around 20%, it seems even Republicans were to concede tax increases, the Democrats are going to have to concede massive spending cuts — much more massive in terms of GDP than tax increases.

They’ll obfuscate. They’ll distract. But history will not be denied.

This is why conservatives must keep pushing for more and more. Both the GOP and the Democrats are in denial about the very real issue — government spending is exceeding its ability to take in revenue to fund the leviathan and at some point the leviathan will come crashing down on us, if we are not first consumed by it.

CONSIDER THIS FACT: While the Senate ‘tabled’ a balanced budget vote and we hardly hear a thing from the media??? The U.S. debt was roughly $10 Trillion when Barry took office. Thanks to the new debt deal it stands at roughly $17 Trillion.