Morning read: Gibson on raising the debt limit
Republican Representative Chris Gibson is among House Republicans holding out for more spending cuts as the back and forth over raising the national debt limit continues.
The Albany Times Union’s Jimmy Vielkind blogs that Gibson is still hopeful there’ll be an agreement.
Gibson offers some ideas for budget cuts, and downplays the threat of a government shutdown.
“What you’re talking about here is, without the authorization to borrow, the government can only spend about 60 cents on the dollar until an agreement is reached. So you’re not talking about a full government shutdown. Now, we’re in a situation where we would have to find a way to make do on 60 cents on the dollar. So I think this is the time and this is the moment to really work out the deal to get us back to where we should be.”
Lawmakers are under a four week deadline to increase the government’s borrowing power to avoid a default.
House Republicans want spending cuts to match the increase in the debt ceiling.
This cat and mouse game is dangerous and may I add childish.
The real problem here is those who have succumbed to the Pied Piper Grover Norquist and have signed the “no new taxes” pledge.
Norquist has been quoted as saying, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” This sounds an awful lot like wanting to destroy the United States.
To refuse to raise taxes no matter what may in fact be crossing the line between patriot and traitor.
Reason needs to prevail over blind obedience to dogma and ideology.
Yep. No problem. We can get away with paying 60 cents on the dollar? I sure hope all those social security recipients and federal retirees agree with that. Don’t worry about the markets, they should be just fine. We need to negotiate (but which party walked out of the debt limit negotiations?). Gibson has his talking points down.
You have to wonder if Gibson has read the piece “Federal Medicaid Cuts Threaten NY Economy”. The Slash-Spending-At-All-Costs crowd would have you believe that cutting spending is a Good Thing in all cases.
Well just like business spending, government spending is good for the economy: it creates jobs, and those jobs create more jobs. Cutting government spending in the midst of high unemployment is only good for the very rich, whose taxes have been getting lower and lower ever since Reagan started the cutting frenzy thirty years ago.
The irony is that the Tea Party folks think that everyone else is out of touch. They should look in the mirror.
It’s unfortunate that politicians’ positions on things like militarism, the rule of law and fiscal restraint is almost entirely dependent on whether the person in the White House is of their party or not. Issue after issue after issue…
Vote Green… at least they haven’t screwed it up yet.
So, keep raising the debt? Keep borrowing and printing steadily devalued currency? Tell me, just how much is too much to you folks? $14 trillion+++ in debt isn’t enough?
To paraphrase Walkers post, increasing government spending in the midst of high unemployment is only bad for the middle class workers, whose taxes have been getting higher and higher ever since the Democrats and Republicans decided you could spend your way out of debt.
Vote conservative/libertarian…at least they haven’t screwed it up yet.
If you are a member of Congress, you want to make sure you’re on the right side of this one if you want to further your career. The voting bloc that will benefit from the continued “spending as usual” mode is a lot larger than the voting bloc hurt by a substantial increase in taxes on those earning more than $100,000 a year. Hasn’t Mr. Gibson been told that his top priority is to get re-elected.
I don’t buy the GOP as the party of fiscal restraint, given the blank checks that they signed on to during W Bush’s reign.
That being said, the purpose of a debt limit is to give Congress a chance to say no. I think it’s hypocritical to have one if, when Congress actually threatens to say no, they’re treated as pariahs. It’s a bit of hypocrisy. Just get rid of the limit altogether if that’s how it’s actually going to be treated when Congressmen actually try to do their jobs and check the executive.
This is a dangerous game of chicken and for what? Is it good to slash medicare, slash defense spending, slash science research, slash infrastructure spending, slash education spending? All for defending the principle of never ever raising any tax ever on anyone (but lowering any of them anytime possible)?
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the bills that are causing us to hit the debt ceiling have already been passed by both houses of Congress. Refusing to raise the ceiling now is the equivalent of saying “Oh, yeah, I ordered that car from you Mr. Dealer, but uh, now I’m not going to pay for it.”
What Congress needs to do is to decide _at the time they pass a bill_ that it’s a worthwhile expenditure.
As for no taxes cry from the Repubs: it’s a ruse. All of a sudden when it may hurt the wealthier Americans, “we” are all in it together?
They are clearly using this rallying cry to benefit the wealthiest of Americans, not all Americans. It’s so transparrent it’s embarrassing to even pretend to believe it.
Why tax the rich? to paraphrase Sir Edmund Hillary– because ” it’s ” (the MONEY) there.
Raising the debt limit is painfull but necessary considering the alternatives.
This type of behavior from both parties is why people are digusted with political parties. G. Washington spoke of just this over 200 years ago when Hamilton and Jefferson were at odds.
The debt ceiling is unconstitutional and is just a way for congress people to feel all warm and fuzzy. Obama will use the 14th amendment to his favor. The rest is all posturing.
From the 14th amendment: “Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned….”
Im not sure why this hasnt been interpreted as MrSandwich suggests it will be.
So let’s see… the Tea Party wants to ignore the plain meaning of the Constitution of the United States. I thought that was holy writ to them.
And the Great Comedy plays on.
Yes to the 14th Amendment:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/06/30/What-Debt-Limit-Plan-B-is-the-14th-Amendment.aspx
Congress approved a Federal Budget that required the debt ceiling be raised. It is hypocrisy to argue against extending the debt ceiling and contrary to the 14th Amendment. Republicans are holding the fiscal credit of all Americans hostage to try to extract more sacrifices from the middle class and poor that they couldn’t get in budget negotiations. Obama needs to tell them to stop playing games with the international trust and faith in US credit obligations and invoke the 14th amendment to fund the already approved Federal Budget.
I really have to laugh. The very same legislators who just passed sweeping “regulatory reforms” imposing new restrictions on credit card issuers protecting us from draconian lending practices now want us to raise the debt limit on their credit card. Except that we have to guarantee payment. So we need protection from the credit card companies. Who will protect us from our own legislators?
I have a hard time seeing how any meaningful compromise on budget issues can be reached with the current crop of GOPers. Besides the fact that they were elected on an anti-compromise platform, these folks have some peculiar ideology. For example, they equate things like subsidies with taxes.
In other words, they consider an effort to stop giving our tax dollars to companies experiencing billion dollar profits the same as if you suggested raising taxes on that company. They also think that closing loopholes and asking those corporations to pay taxes period (because some of them pay no taxes), is the same as raising taxes.
Would any reasonable person think that not giving someone money is the same as taking money from them? That is the GOP’s stance when it comes to corporate taxation right now.
Let’s see. Congressman (Col.) Gibson spent a full career in the military complete with government provided health-care for himself and his family, most likely with government housing, he has an advanced degree which was most likely funded through the government, a government pension, and then he gets elected to Congress where the government provides a paycheck and health-care.
And Congressman Gibson is going to ask somebody else to accept a cut?
There are consequences to this level of debt it is not a joke. What are we going to do when the rest of the world figures out that we really can’t pay it back? Greece is not a far out proposition for us, unlike Greece we can print money to simply devalue our currency so that is always an option but that would also destroy our economy.
We have to pay our creditors or we will have an even worse situation than we have now so the debt ceiling debate makes no sense, but business as usual is not going to work.
The problem is that most people see the massive government spending done over the past three years as a failure if that would have brought down the unemployment rate as promised I don’t think this would be an issue now.
Isn’t it interesting that the numbers for manufacturing are up and those businesses are buying equipment to deal with increased sales but they are not hiring more workers? Meanwhile corporations are sitting on record amounts of cash, CEO’s and upper management are getting record pay, and the stock market is doing well.
Let’s face it the people who really count in this society, the extremely wealthy, aren’t really worried about our national debt or about the opinions of the kind of insignificant people who comment on this blog.
When Bush became President there was a surplus and it was projected to grow even larger. Bush and Greenspan didn’t think that was a good idea so we had two tax cuts. Then two wars were started. As spending on the wars accelerated, tax revenues didn’t keep up. Unlike the Reagan years, no corrections were made to over aggressive tax cuts. Then the financial meltdown occurred and Bush/Obama bailed out the financial industry. Tax cuts, wars and financial crisis are the three main contributors to the current deficit. This all happened through irresponsible policies championed by the same Republicans who want to inflict more of the same on us.
Yes we have a spending problem. But it can be cured by ending two wars, closing foreign military bases and eliminating subsidies to large multinational corporations. Plus controlling increases in medical costs.
But we also have a revenue problem. And that can be fixed by ending the Bush tax cuts. Eliminating the deficit is not that hard, but the politicians do not work for us. With unlimited campaign funding from big business and the financial industry the middle class has no clout and the policies will continue extract sacrifices from those least able to afford it while the wealthy and powerful take an ever increasing portion of the economic pie.
Also, here’s an alternative budget that doesn’t get the press coverage that Paul Ryan’s joke of a budget gets:
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70§iontree=5,70
Ideally, the budget deficit should be cut in half over the next two years and eliminated in 5 years. I think a 2:1 ratio of spending cuts and tax hikes is the way to go, but i dont think anyone in washington will agree. Obama could avoid this situation if he would bring our troops home fron Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.
“Greece is not a far out proposition for us,”
Yes it is, Mervel. And you show that it is with the next part of the sentence. There’s scaremongering going on here. We lend as much money as we have to bankers, but now that they’re okay, they’re bound and determined not to extend any credit in the form of govt borrowing to the rest of the people. They’re greedy pigs who don’t care a bit about regular people’s Social Security, their pensions (like Bret’s), their schools, their jobs or their health care. All that has to take a hit, but the banksters benefits must be given, and their taxes must not be raised.
Your mixing up banking and our ability to pay our government debts and to cover our promises. Business will usually do what is in the best interest of the stockholders or owners, they are not social service entities who exist for the good of society at large. If you want them to do something not in their best interest then government will have to force them to do it.
The one thing I don’t understand is the weakness of those on the Left right now who I actually think have some good ideas for fiscal constraint; several have been mentioned here. Where is the President on all of this what is HIS plan?
Where is the President’s plan? Listen to the news. President Obama just agreed to 2 trillion dollars in cuts and 400 billion in revenue increases. Just exactly what the republicans asked for a couple months ago. What was the answer from the republicans? As is usually the case over the past serveral years…….NO.
No Waker, the TP doens’t want to ignore the Constitution. The TP wants fiscal responsibility in the first place. If we started there this wouldn’t be an issue at all because we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Myown, you oversimplify what lead to this debacle. It wasn’t just Bush, or Obama or Clinton or anyone else. It’s a systemic failure in our Congress to limit themselves and their spending. We SPENT our way into this mess. It’s going to take a good 20 years to get out of it, if we ever can.
OA, I can agree to a point with your 7:07 post, but you have to know it’s far bigger than that. People keep talking about the rich getting tax breaks. Well, yeah, at the Federal level they do. At the same time you ignore the bottom 50% that essentially pay no Federal Income tax and may even get a return for far more than they contributed to the system. How is that sustainable? It’s going to take more than taxing the rich to fix this. Dropping the Buch/Obama tax cuts is going to hurt the middle class as much as the wealthy.
Again, our Congress throws money around like it’s just paper. I don’t care if your pet peeve is war, taxes, subsidies, infrastructure, global warming, public land purchases, health care…whatever. There are LIMITS to how much we can spend and how far into debt we can go.
You guys do know that section 4 of the 14th Amend had to do with not taking on the debt of the Confederacy or the US Federal gov’t being able to weasel out of it’s Civil War debt, right?
We shouldnt and wont weasel out of this debt either. We can pay it down easily. There is no reason we have to end medicare as we know it.
Bret writes: “the TP doens’t want to ignore the Constitution. The TP wants fiscal responsibility in the first place. If we started there this wouldn’t be an issue at all because we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Bret, how would having started with the Constitution have kept us from getting into this situation? And isn’t the foundation of fiscal responsibility paying those debts that you have incurred, even if you have to increase revenues (taxes) to do so?
It wouldn’t take twenty years to get out from under this debt if we raised taxes progressively, restoring something like the tax code before Reagan started whacking away at it. Even the tax rates immediately post-Reagan would make a good start at paying down the debt. That, plus bringing home the troops coupled with sharp cuts in military spending could do the job pretty quickly.
And as I understand it, Section 4’s upholding validity of the public debt was made a constitutional provision out of fear that the South might gain a majority in Congress and attempt to repudiate the Federal war debt.
But in any case, it’s the Constitution: you don’t get to pick and chose the parts you like at any given time.
PNE,
Right he needs to tell them this is it and take control, he has the political power to do so. But even here he seems to be the one agreeing to things, instead of the one pushing his agenda for them to agree with.
Walker, because the Federal Gov’t has been acting beyond the scope of it’s enumerated Constitutional powers for some time. Why do you think we had to get an Amendment to make the Income Tax legal? No changing it now, but just as Social Security was supposed to be voluntary, the whole mess started with gov’t over reaching it’s purpose and limits. Why do you think there’s so much activity in the Interstate Commerce Clause area now? To build support to uphold Obamacare. It’s illegal, but if you can show the gov’t has already surpassed it in other areas, then the ducks will get in a row and uphold it because it’s too big a ball of worms to unravel.
Doesn’t matter if it’s Bush and the Patriot Act or Obama and Health Care reform, the Federal Gov’t is way beyond it’s limits already. Maybe that doesn’t bother some folks, but it sticks in the craw of others.
Bret, the process by which the Constitution was amended to create the income tax is written into the Constitution itself (see Article V, Amendments) — there’s nothing illegal about it. The founding fathers didn’t presume to be creating holy writ, unchangeable to the end of time. They knew that they couldn’t foresee all contingencies forever. It’s only the Tea Party that’s trying to make it into some sort of latter day bible.
And if you think the Supreme Court is in on some sort of liberal cabal to illegitimately uphold Obamacare, you’ve sure got a different reading of the court than most folk do!
Mervel said, “Your mixing up banking and our ability to pay our government debts and to cover our promises.”
Respectfully, I’m not. All these financial crises, especially Greece and Spain and Ireland and Iceland, started out as banking crises, not govt-spending crises. The banks took the govt money instead of being allowed to fail, and the govts–and now the people under these govts–are being forced to take the hit.
We are still the wealthiest country in the world. We can pay our debt. Our problem is we kept lowering taxes and raising spending. That isnt sustainable.
Walker, the point is the Income Tax WASN’T legal. The Federal Gov’t was never intended to have the power it exercises now. It’s just that simple. Read the Federalist Papers, read the thoughts of the Founders. They had good ideas based on experience with bloated and corrupt gov’t.
And if we follow your line of thinking, then lets do away with that stupid Bill of Rights. It’s just an old, outdated idea anyway.
Come on guy, you’re smarter than that.
Oa,
In the end all of those countries cannot service their debt, yes they had a banking crisis full of bad loans made to each other essentially; but the debt that is a problem is the debt issued by the government to pay for its operations.
We are not Greece and we have many more options than Greece I am not trying to be a scare monger on that point, BUT the debt levels we are beginning to see in the US and will see if something is not done will rival Greece.
I notice today that the President has put some major spending cuts on the table. Will the GOP respond and actually do what it claims it wants to do?
Rand Paul had some comments last night that I thought were encouraging although he is not a major player. He said that the wealthy should pay for their own health care and social security.
Separating portions of the population off to be treated differently is a bad idea. Social Security is very popular because it is universal. Splitting people out is possibly just a ploy to divide and destroy the program.
As for health care everyone should be in the same pool — universal coverage. If the wealthy wish to get additional health care services they can afford to pay out of pocket for face-lifts and boob jobs.
Knuck, Social Security was SUPPOSED to be voluntary. If someone doens’t want to contribute or collect, why make them? If “the rich” can afford to support themselves, then lets do it. Means testing has been proposed before. The system is not sustainable.
Tell me, how long do you think it will be before someone is in court demanding Obamacare cover their face lift or boob job? How long till till more and more lawyers and their clients demand more and more services and then what happens when the gov’t starts telling them no and limiting services? How long before someone decides that your 87 year old grandmother doesn’t need a new hip, despite the fact she’s otherwise in incredible health? How long before a bureaucrat is tasked with determining just how much care your infant with a serious issue will get? “Bret, you fear mongering, right wing whacko! That’ll never happen!!!” Yeah, and Casey Anthony will never get away with murder.
Bret, Casey who?
Bret, I’m not calling you a fear monger, but I do think fear of the new, of the unknown, is holding our nation back.
I am absolutely positive that there will be problems with the universal health care program we develop when it actually comes to fruition. Very likely any scenario you can imagine will come true.
On the other hand, thousands or millions of people who aren’t getting proper care under our current system will get decent care that will make their lives better and make them more productive and happier citizens.
In the end I am confident that a universal health care system will be better for the society as a whole even though there may be a proportionally small number of individual cases of people who will be hurt by that system. It is like getting a vaccine that save a million lives but the vaccine ends up actually killing a hundred people. What is the greater good?
Personally, I would give up all claim to any health care whatsoever if I knew there was a system that would cover everyone else–including you.
That’s very nice of you Knuck. Personally, I wish everyone would take care of their own problems and act responsibly. That’s not going to happen either.
Casey Anthony- “hot bod” Mom wannabe slut that killed her kid and stuffed her in a box in a swamp??? Got away with it too.
So what about that SS argument? Care to comment?
Wow, Bret, the change of subject to Casey Anthony is one of the all-time greats!
Yours in threadjacking,
OA
PS–By the way, she’s innocent! (Just trying to get this aging thread over 700 comments)
It is a sad reflection on our society that an isolated murder (one of thousands of such events in our country, most of which are essentially ignored) holds the same sway as a discussion of how to take care of every single American in their old age.
I believe that everyone should feel vested in the Social Security system because there is no way to predict the future. Just because someone is wealthy today doesn’t mean they will be in 20 years and if they chose not to participate when they were young and prosperous I am not willing to tell them to go live under a bridge because their financial situation changed. Also, I believe that I am my brother’s keeper; that we all should be our brothers’ keepers.
If everyone feels they are a part of that system they will be more inclined to make sure it works. It is the idea that was behind trying to move more people’s private investments into the Stock Market — except that Wall Street doesn’t care so much if little people lose all of their retirement funds. Let’em eat cake.
Uh, I was making a comparison. Sorry if that was too confusing for you. No hijack intended.
Knuck, you ignore the basic question I presented- SS was passed as a voluntary program that would never take more than a low percentage of your paycheck, I think it was around 2%, but I could be wrong. Today we have no choice in the matter, the money is extorted from us under threat of arrest and jail…kinda like Obamacare will be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the word “jail” isn’t in the bill, sure. That means it’ll never happen, right.
Anyway, what are your thoughts on the morphing of SS? Why do you see it as right to force someone to participate? Actually, it’s only most people, the Amish simply opt out. I’m not sure what the mechanism is for that.
FWIW- everyone IS part of the system and I’m sure we’d all like to see it work. But since the late 50’s/early 60’s the SS fund has been robbed by our beloved politicians of both parties, who incidentally have a killer retirement/healthcare package none of us can hope to touch.
Actually, I don’t believe everyone is part of the system, but enough are that it seems like pretty much everyone. What the arguments were when it started I don’t know. Nor do I care. I don’t find Social Security to be terribly onerous or a great threat to our Cherished Freedom. Having just received my renewal invoices for my business liability and comprehensive insurance and paid my monthly health insurance bill I find your statements about extortion a little silly.
You are absolutely correct though that all sides have robbed the SS trust fund in order to escape from making difficult financial choices.
Yes as someone who has to do that for our agency I agree knuckle. I have a hard time getting overly worried about Social Security, there are numerous solutions to balancing the fund.
The bigger issue is the cost of health care in the US regardless of who is paying, medicaid, medicare or private insurance. Then throw in unemployment, liability, and workers compensation this is where the problems reside. They are also job killers. If I didn’t have to pay health insurance and had much lower benefit costs across the board I could easily hire two or three more people right now.
Let me give an example. I have one position it is pretty low paid part time position at $10.00 per hour and the person works 25 hours per week. Now our agency is generous we give full health benefits for anyone who works more than 20 hours per week. This person currently in this position takes full health insurance for her family. Her annual salary is only around $13,000 per year, her actual cost to the agency is 26,000 per year. Even with this she still has to contribute a pretty big monthly chunk for her health around $380 per month. If I didn’t have the benefit load I could instantly hire two people or increase her hours to 40.
Mervel, I agree completely. Seriously. Nice analysis, and a great example.
Bret, Not sure you have all the facts on the Social Security “voluntarism” issue. (This may not be your fault, or anyone’s–One thing I read recently is that Google now accounts for a person’s political leanings, based on a person’s previous searches and articles an individual calls up, and delivers a menu of links that tend to agree with that particular individual’s perceived ideology. Which is sort of disturbing. So maybe you and I get different results when looking for the same info.)
In any case, this is from the official government web site, which of course is infiltrated with commies, but here’s the pinko story:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/InternetMyths.html
“Myth 1: President Roosevelt promised that participation in the program would be completely voluntary
Persons working in employment covered by Social Security are subject to the FICA payroll tax. Like all taxes, this has never been voluntary. From the first days of the program to the present, anyone working on a job covered by Social Security has been obligated to pay their payroll taxes.
In the early years of the program, however, only about half the jobs in the economy were covered by Social Security. Thus one could work in non-covered employment and not have to pay FICA taxes (and of course, one would not be eligible to collect a future Social Security benefit). In that indirect sense, participation in Social Security was voluntary. However, if a job was covered, or became covered by subsequent law, then if a person worked at that job, participation in Social Security was mandatory.
There have only been a handful of exceptions to this rule, generally involving persons working for state/local governments. Under certain conditions, employees of state/local governments have been able to voluntarily choose to have their employment covered or not covered.”
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/03/fdrs-voluntary-social-security/
http://mediamatters.org/research/200502040010
I stand corrected. However, if you’ll look at the language used in the fact check story it appears there is some dodging going on. “never meant to be entirely voluntary” has some pretty dodgy words in it. And if we look at a FDR’s own words (http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/8/116953/Document-Franklin-D-Roosevelt-A-Program-for-Social-Security), “…Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the federal government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.” … then you can see where some misinterpretation in either direction can happen.
According to some of the research I did the gov’t claims about 25% of the working population is currently able to exempt themselves from the system. Maybe it’s time they lost that option?