Debt Ceiling Showdown: GOP Pledges To Extract Cuts From Obama

Debt Ceiling Showdown: GOP Pledges To Extract Cuts From Obama

By Sam Stein | HuffPost | 01/04/2013 3:50 pm EST
Excerpts:

WASHINGTON – “The just-completed deal to resolve the so-called fiscal cliff has created an even greater cliff down the road. By the end of February, lawmakers will have to grapple with $1 trillion in sequestration cuts that are scheduled to take effect and the need for a debt limit increase. Shortly thereafter, they will have to deal with the end of a continuing resolution to keep the government funded.

Any one of these issues on its own would be difficult to resolve. Taken together, they could produce complete gridlock, which itself would have deep economic consequences.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" this week, "we Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown" in order to achieve spending cuts and entitlement reforms.

Elsewhere on Friday morning, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the second-ranking Senate Republican, penned an op-ed making a similar argument:

‘Republicans are more determined than ever to implement the spending cuts and structural entitlement reforms that are needed to secure the long-term fiscal integrity of our country. 'It may be necessary to partially shut down the government in order to secure the long-term fiscal well being of our country, rather than plod along the path of Greece, Italy and Spain.' President Obama needs to take note of this reality and put forward a plan to avoid it immediately.”

read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/debt-ceiling-showdown_n_2409656.html?ref=topbar
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IMO: Really, this is another crass hostage-taking maneuver that seems to be the only way republicans can collect their paychecks while being extremely hostile to doing their jobs. But they still get paid for it.

But are Americans really going to stand for this all over again?

When republicans willfully obstruct the orderly business of Congress to the continued detriment of the American people, then it is time for them to remove themselves from those surroundings or be thrown out.

The American people will not stand for the constant, devious republicans working against a president that is trying to keep us away from going over the cliff.

And now the republicans should be shunned like lepers for trying to bring down the government while Dems request their resignation for treasonously conspiring against their own government.

It sounds infantile that the republicans have decided that since the Americans voted for Obama instead of Romney, we will be held hostage for 4 more years but it only proves that these bitter republicans have the IQs of 3rd graders to think it would work...after all, it didn't work the first time!

 

Republicans have lost power at the federal level permanently. There is no longer any room for them on the political playing field. New nonpolitical methods will have to be found in which to have an impact on the US.

 

Yes, God forbid anyone actually stop and think of long term fiscal problems. Close your eyes and full steam ahead! Your definition of obstruction is anybody that doesn't bow to this adm every wish. The redefining of words going on is amazing. Now "compromise" means going into a negotiation asking for $800B in tax increases coupled with 1.2T in future spending cuts and leaving with 1.4T in tax increases and 4 T in new future debt.

Obstruction now means not immediately jumping on the band wagon. Sooner or later someone has to be the adult in the room and point out that in reality, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

"Republicans are more determined than ever to implement the spending cuts and structural entitlement reforms that are needed to secure the long-term fiscal integrity of our country. ....."

My lord, the horrors. So please tell me why are you so against the long term fiscal integrity of our country?

 

Sorry **********s SS medicare are OFF LIMITS!

 

The hit to the stock market will make a tax hike look like a handjob

 

Do you realize that old white people who hate you are the primary beneficiaries of SS and Medicare? Neither program will be around for you youngsters because the old white people are going to use them all up. After that it doesn't matter what the youngsters do.

 

Then the entire US economy is doomed to ultimate collappse because those promises made by past governments will be impossible to meet in the long term unless the American People decide to raise taxes on everyone significantly including the poor.

I don't want those particular government services and I think they are impossible to maintain while still remaining a low tax nation.

Only delusional liberals like taxation. The rest of us resent it.

 

The stock market is already phony. It's valuations will drop if, as and when quantitative easing ends. And end it will because all things are finite.

 

Give up on the US. Detach your emotions from it. It belongs to our enemies. There is no need to fix SS or Medicare. Use those programs to break the US.

 

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Your whole premise falls because of the gigantic national debt plus another huge deficit plus 2 Bush Wars we couldn't afford, plus a country bankrupt and in a financial freefall
...all left by a previous republican president for a new president to handle. The fact that the republicans primary agenda after losing the 2008 election was "to keep Obama as a one-term-president. They mistakenly thought that would work. uh huh

As for your "long term fiscal integrity" blather...the republicans have done nothing but kick-the-can-down-the-road for over 4 years and the House will continue to only fund government expenses in 2-month and short term increments, so why don't you quit blowing smoke and come up with the truth? The Senate makes the bills, the HOUSE FUNDS them, and the President signs them into law. Either something is out of sync with the way our Constitution has set up the order of things -or- something is out of sync in the way the HOUSE is handling its duties.

 

Have to say but ummm...some constituents actually want these republicans to shut down the government for a while.

These politicians are doing what they were voted in to do. Why is that so hard to grasp?

 

"Entitlement cuts" is Repub speak for screwing the poor and the average working stiff. Social Security and Medicare are funded by their own dedicated taxes. There's no reason whatsoever to cut them one penny. Whenever they are mentioned as "entitlements" it's Repub propaganda designed to condition idiots to screw themselves.

 

That's BS. The Social Security system can be fixed in less than a minute by taking two simple steps.

1. Raise the payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 7.2 percent. That will cost a person making $50,000 an extra $500 per year.

2. Remove the cap altogether to tax all income for Social Security.

Those two simple steps will solve the Social Security funding problem.

And they can also be applied to the Medicare problem.

 

In that case long "term fiscal integrity" is OFF LIMITS. If you think you are going to fix these problems solely on the backs of the rich, you're dreaming.

 

Do you have a problem with Harry Reid and the liberal Senate not doing their most fundamental job and reaching a budget for the first time in 4 years?

 

I just hope I'm in the ground when the youngsters start killing each other for a loaf of bread and the last potable bottle of Evian.

 

Yeah, why shouldn't workers of today pay over 7% of their paychecks to "repay" a debt to people who paid less than 5% of their paychecks into the same program.

Instead we should balance the program by simply locking the rate at a level about equal to the average current retirees paid through their lifetimes (which would probably be about 5%) then determine entitlement based on some distribution only of what comes in. I don't mind raising the cap, or better yet tying it to inflation, so an equivalent amount of income is taxed, but workers of today shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than the people who are collecting were taxed at.

 

People used to work for a dollar a day. So why did you earn more than that when you started working?

When people try to screw over their fellow citizens they end up destroying their society. The idea is to live better than cave men did. When they got tired of living in mudholes in the ground they started building houses. When they got tired of being stupid they developed schools and taught their rugrats how to read and write. So why do you think people should still get the $22.54 monthly Social Security check that Ida May Fuller got on January 31, 1940? Just because it was good enough for her what makes you think it's good enough for your older relatives of today?

 

But rising incomes doesn't justify a rising percentage of each worker's income.

When the average income was $100 per month, the SS tax would have been $5 at 5%.
When incomes rose tenfold to $1,000 per month, the SS tax would have been $50 at 5% - ten times as much. Because of the nature of percentages the taxes would automatically rise to match rises in income.

What has happened instead is that they take a larger and larger share of each worker's incomes. When incomes rose tenfold, social security taxes were raised over twelve times - rising much faster than incomes. You are proposing that they should rise even further and take an even larger share of our income. Remember that when Ida May got her check, the Social Security tax rate was only 1%. If they had left it at that rate, the revenue would still have risen just as fast as incomes did. Instead, we have to pay a six times larger share of our paychecks to the program, and you are suggesting that we should pay an even larger percentage of our income?

 

I can bash the repubs with the best of them. The fact that repubs are pinheads doesn't negate the fact that dems are pinheads.

My problem with the current adm has to do with the future. The fact is this adm has suggested nothing that begins to deal with future fiscal problems. I mean look at the adm approach to things...

Rising healthcare costs - new IRS agents, 130-150 new depts, agencies and other additions to the alphabet soup from hell. Meanwhile, I and my employees healthcare costs went up 21% Jan 1. Gee that helped. Affordable Care Act?

Economic growth - higher taxes, more regulation and rising future spending. Gee that helps.

Every one goes on and on about dems and repubs, I'm just looking for an adult. All this talk about obstructionism, if the bus driver is about to drive off of a bridge, by all means please, obstruct him.

 

Caves are in short supply. Can your parents live off of $50 a month?

 

Your proposals are unrealistic because they are predicated on an erroneous assumption. You assume that Congressional action on these points is possible. It is not.

 

About half of white youngsters will join us. Together that is sufficient to create a poison pill Amerika cannot digest.

 

My parents weren't foolish enough to count on Social Security to retire - in fact they are retired now and aren't even eligible for Social Security yet.

Regardless, if the program was actually solvent, there would never be a need to increase the percentage of workers' pay going into the program.

 

I agree that SS & Medicare fixes would be fairly simple, except politically. These are exactly the things being suggested now. They are usually followed by "evil rich people stealing from the poor". Sadly no one wants to pay or stop getting goodies.