Bipartisan Lawmakers Preparing Plan to Avert Debt-Ceiling Crisis

If the wealth stays at the top of the economy, eventually there will be next to nothing down at the bottom. Here’s the thing: “money” isn’t real. Eventually the poor masses will give up on trying to use money to live. Guess what happens after that?

 

Clinton definitely deserve some credit.

George Bush inherited a $200 billion surplus, and in today’s dollars, a $400 billion budget surplus, and after he emptied/distributed Uncle Sam’s candy jar/surplus, he borrowed money to finance his wars, thus, increased deficit to $413 billion, and in today’s dollars, $640 billion.

And then, he reduced the deficit to $161 billion, 1.1% to GDP, and that’s a very low percentage. However, he then handed the beginning of a long and costly Great Recession to Congress/Obama.

Note; His stupid expansion of home ownership partially inflated a bubble, and is the main reason why I stopped calling myself a Republican.

Also, The Great Recession significantly reduced Bush’s FY 2009 projected receipts, from a projected $2.7 Trillion to actual $2.1 Trillion, (minus $600 billion), hence Congress
stimulus spending wasn’t the only reason why FY 2009 deficit amounted to $1.4 trillion.

 

“Because of their policies”????????

Partisan dishonesty, and here’s why;

Indisputable fact; Several of Clinton’s 1993 tax increases remained on the books throughout his presidency, such as; his 36%/39.6% tax rates, eliminating Medicare income cap, + 4.3 cents per gallon of fuel, thus, how much additional taxes Gingrich & Co. collected between Jan 1995 to Jan 2001, and used said extra receipts to balance their budgets?

 

https://www.forbes.com › sites › annhinch › 2022 › 02 › 18 › how-ag-and-snap-supporters-stick-together-on-the-farm-bill
How Ag And SNAP Supporters Stick Together On The Farm Bill - Forbes

'When the farm bill comes up for renewal, as it has for 2023, there are people who propose uncoupling the farm support from nutrition assistance and turning it into two pieces of legislation.'

You could have saved yourself so much embarrassment in seconds with your search bar.

https://www.snaptohealth.org › farm-bill-usda › snap-in-the-farm-bill
SNAP in the Farm Bill | Snap To Health
'Because for the past several decades, the legislation authorizing SNAP has been included in the Farm Bill. In fact, the nutrition title is the largest of the 12 titles covered in the Farm Bill. Of the programs covered by nutrition, SNAP accounts for 95% of all spending. Overall, nutrition spending makes up 80% of the total budget for the Farm Bill.'

Standing by for your apology, retraction, and correction.

 

GOP is the party that never takes the blame for their own decisions, look at Ted Cruz and how he said it wasn't his fault for the government shutdown that lasted three weeks or so. And then you have Trump, whom they are emulating that he never takes responsibility for anything.

 

No you are not.

A little trim, the one proposed by the House budget committee, is not going to balance the budget in 10 years, much less 20. And the only category is the unused Covid Spending that republican states are still holding onto .

Isn't that what I said?

No they are not. they are relatively stagnant.

Who said anything about a dictatorship? We have a divided Legislature, and my point is for the two sides of the legislature to negotiate for the budget and use budget reconciliation, which is that Constitutional Republic.

The compromise isn't going to work, at least not in the way you think it will.

The debt limit if following the Trump style budgets would have exceeded the debt limit in the same time frame. And it did, three times in his administration. Yet, the GOP only did a debt ceiling raise each and every time. So why start now?

Not according to Sen. Johnson, Sen. Rick Scott, and a couple of others in the Senate. And yes, it is still on the table, maybe not this year, but it will eventually be before this term ends in 2024.

You missed the point. Each party has only so much political capitol to expend. Obama spent most of the political capitol on two bills when the Dems controlled both houses. The GOP is expending its political capitol on one issue right now, the debt ceiling crisis. Understand now?

 

They have mnre leverage than that. They control the House which means they control the purse strings and where the budget originates. But that approach does not get them on Fox or appease their base, does it?

 

SNAP has gone through a lot of changes in the past twenty years. They literally receive debit cards. So exchanging snap money for e-cigarettes no longer happens unless the business establishment is involved. And that is very rare. business establishments that sell e-cigs will not have the necessary codes in the POS system to fool the debit card transactions or it takes a tremendous effort and money to do so, which defeats the whole purpose.

How are they gaming the system? By filing tax returns with a NAICS code of 99999 and is a at home hair salon? Maybe, but most of them are not receiving SNAP. Most poor people do not even receive SNAP benefits for their children. And all SNAP benefits are administered by the state. Or is it that proposed child support that the father has not paid in several years? But in the first link, the statistics include a household for a child, an elderly person, or someone with disabilities for those who are in greatest in need. The amount of fraud is rare and is mostly a myth in GOP circles for the last 10 years or so. I am not arguing that fraud does not occur, but it is not as common as you thnk or arguing here.


https://frac.org/blog/new-usda-report-provides-picture-of-who-participates-in-snap

https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-quick-guide-to-snap-eligibility-and-benefits

 

It is in the farm bill quite simply because the payments are sent through the USDA apparatus. They have had the expertise since administering farm subsidies since the 1930s. that is why.

 

Eventually, those on what she can do will come up short in the near distant future. It is a matter of when not if. And then on September 30th, either a continuing resolution or the budget is passed. Otherwise, it is a government shutdown no matter what. And that will hurt the GOP the most since they are in charge of the purse strings and doing these antics from the get-go.

 

You're simply explaining why I'm right and your claim that these are passed in seperate bills is fake news.

 

You are not right. They are separately listed in the budget bill for the Department of Agriculture. The National Finance Center is also managed by USDA and they pay 70% to 80% of all civilian service employees.

 

If you want deeper cuts, then win the House and demand them. This is sufficient for now. All we're trying to do clean up the Dem's screw up of planning more spending for this fiscal year than the national debt limit allows.

There are number of Trump topics, this isn't one of them. If you wish to discuss Trump, find an appropriate topic and do so.

Rick Scott's plan is very similar to the Old Biden plan, and it's not on the table, as both McCarthy and McConnell have made clear.

This topic is about resolving the debt crisis brought about by Dems passing a budget that called for spending in excess of the debt limit, and then not raising the debt limit.

I've nailed point. You are more confused than Biden when he is trying to remember where he is and what he is doing.

{Yawn - Concern Trolling is boring.} And it's capital not capitol. You've done this several times now.

 

Money is not a zero sum game. If I know how to build great decks, and you hire me to build one for you, I may spend $3,000 in lumber, nails, and other supplies, then using my expertise and experience, make you a deck that I will charge you $7,000 dollars for, and will add $9,000 to the price of your home. So, what started out as $3000 (less than that, if you consider that the person I bought the lumber and parts from made a profit, as did the company who felled the trees and made it into usable pieces), became a $4,000 profit for me, and a $2,000 profit for you!

In participating in that transaction, we are creating money out of thin air that is spread between you the homeowner, me the deckbuilder, and the various vendors of the necessary supplies. It is really no different than outright printing money, except it's legal, ethical, and desirable. And rich people do not (generally) stuff raw cash into their mattresses, thus removing it from circulation. Rather, they will invest in their own businesses, perhaps some others via stock purchases or by providing capital to a startup, and even if they leave it in the bank, then the bank will loan it to other people to build their businesses, or purchase items like cars and houses, which keeps the money circulating, like blood spreading oxygen throughout our bodies.

You are correct about one thing, however, and that is that money is only a way to store value, so that if you want a deck from me, but say you own a flooring company, and I don't need any flooring, meaning we cannot barter. By storing value in the thing called 'money', it enables an underlying barter economy ecosystem to exist without having to find the perfect match of people who need each other's products or services to share. But it's only as valuable as long as people are willing to accept and use it for that purpose. But very little of the total net worth of all persons in the USA is in the form of cash.

As for the 'poor masses', they don't exist here for the most part. Poor people in 2023 are still walking around with recent, high quality mobile phones, most have a car or other form of personal transportation available, and people don't starve to death due to a lack of food. Not to mention modern niceties like electricity and running water, which even the most wealthy humans, even Kings and Presidents did not have even 100 years ago, give or take a decade or two.

 

That being the case, shouldn't we make those people work on actual farms in exchange for 'free' food, which is not free at all, it is just paid for by someone else.

 

I am well aware of that. The story I told of the woman with food stamps was just to demonstrate that the more things change, the more they stay the same. People gamed the system back then, and they're gaming the system today.

LMAO, you really know nothing about these types of businesses, and the clientele they cater to. For one thing, virtually all of my customers paid me in cash, with nothing more than a handwritten 'Invoice' that they attached the cash out ticket to and put under the cash drawer. That worked out well for me, or would have, had I not become disabled, and while I was spending the better part of half a decade in and out of various hospitals the government put the disposable e-cig market out of business. I never received any sort of tax forms from them, and I saw them ring up SNAP customers buying my products by just ringing it up under some misc code. But just because my experience was with e-cigs that can no longer legally be sold on corner gas stations doesn't change the base principal.

I'm not talking about some low level employee of a fly-by-night bodega, either, I'm talking about major brands that you drive by every single day, though I am not going to name names. And I generally was not dealing with some minimum wage clerk that had been on the job for a week, and would be gone in another, but store owners, and even entire chain owners, who directed me to their other locations and called ahead to instruct them to buy my product and pay me in cash.

How are they doing it? You'd have to ask them, I'm not privy to that side of their operations, but with as many different products that go through their stores, many (like mine) with relatively low volume (compared to say their gasoline or name brand bottled beverages), combined with a lot of cash money and small enough EBT transactions to not attract attention. Or maybe they eventually do get caught, and get some big fine from the IRS, and simply continue with business as usual, considering the fine simply another cost of doing business.

Pardon my ignorance, but I'm unaware of the link you refer to, but allow me to introduce you to a person who is so disabled that they can't even dispose of their own bodily waste without assistance, but who Uncle has repeatedly turned down for disability benefits paid for over the course of decades.

In the event you haven't figured out who I'm talking about, you're talking to him. It would be nice if I got the benefits I paid for, even if it was even half of what I paid in, but because my wife makes 'too much' (which is below the median income in the US), they seem to think they don't have to pay up.

I do not 'think', I know, from personal experience and observations. It is not only not a myth, it is in fact rather commonplace. In the entire time I ran my business, no customers asked me for any tax paperwork, nor did I receive any 1099s or any other form of paperwork . Had I chosen to not file my own taxes voluntarily (which was easy, as I never reached the point of profitability, when accounting for my startup costs), I could have just disappeared into the underground economy and not a soul would have been the wiser. Who knows, factoring in chaos theory, perhaps if I had taken that road, I may not be in the situation I find myself in now. Seems a bit like a longshot, but since they don't have a clue why I am how I am, the good old butterfly effect might have 'changed the timeline', so to speak.

Regardless, I'm rambling as is my norm, the point is that these 'safety net' programs are only serving to enrich a lot of people, at the cost of our great-grandkids productivity to come, if we make it that far.

The madness has to stop, and we begin by ending all 'free $hit' programs for lazy but otherwise able-bodied people, continue by downsizing government by amounts that will make your head spin, and finish by ceasing to allow our enemies to walk all over us.

 

If they're able bodied, yes, they should work in exchange for food.

 

Only if she chooses not to pay them revenue inflow does not stop. And the GOP is not mostly in control of spending they only control the House not the Senate nor the Executive.

 

Indisputable fact tax revenue SLOWED after Clinton's tax increases. It was the Republican Congress, along with his political advisor Dick Morris telling him that if he did not he would not be reelected as the economy was looking to tank again, that forced him to sign their tax cuts, their welfare reform and their budgets that balanced the budgets and produced the surpluses. Clinton requested more spending in his each of his budgets, the one exception the year the budget held over, than the budgets Congress ultimately authorized, the first modern day President to do so.

And this same policies drove the peak 2001 recession/recovery deficit of just $400B, my what we would give to have that worst deficit back, rapidly back down to a measly $161B by 2007. Two years later Obama/Biden/Dems had it at $1,400B.

 

Because he gave in to the Gingrich/Kasich budgets and policies? OK. It was called trianglation. Biden should try it don't ya think?

Yes thanks to a Republican Congress as noted above. Yet falling as we were going into a recession within weeks of his taking office, the dot.com bust and then 9/11. What's your point?

The Dems took back the Congress Jan 2007 with full employment, rising incomes, a rising LFPR, record tax revenue increases and a budget rapidly heading to surplus. A YEAR before the recession lame ducking Bush in the process. It was their failure to take the proper policies to help mitigate the depth and length of the slowdown which then turned into a recession and then with their policies produced the worst recovery in modern history. And Biden and the Dems want a repeat of that.

HIS policy which was not implimented was to assist with downpayments which would not have caused the upside down high risk mortgages. It was the Dem protection of FANNIE and FREDDIE and forcing lender's to accept those risky loans that cause the banking problem. But then Bush instituted TARP which fixed it and all the TARP bridge loan money was paid back early and with interest, we MADE money on TARP. That is not the excuse for the failed Dem policies.

Ahhh Bush was completely cut out of the FY2009 budget. It was purposely delayed so President Obama could add his additional spending request and HE signed it into law. And of course they then passed his huge stimulus bill which was a total failure by his own measure of it.

It was a HUGE part of it and failed by it's own stated goal.

 

LOL, you are tying to say what happened 30 years ago is in the same occurrence as today. No report I have seen that is independent or has been verified by the Inspector General shows the amount of fraud in SNAP benefits is anywhere to what you claim. This website shows that fraud occurs at around 0.9% of all beneficiaries. That is quite low

Actually, I do. I have done more audits on private businesses than you realize. In today's business environment, even with e-cigarettes, CBO, and certain other businesses, the amount of cash-only business is less than 1%. Most of the cash businesses in the US deal with marijuana-related products in which federal law prohibits bank accounts. I have seen small stores sell e-cigs and use the Square App for all of their transactions. However, the point-of-sale system is almost complete in the business environment. And that creates another problem, like here in Dallas County, where thieves are using skimmer techniques to get the snap benefits when they swipe the card. This is not fraud on the recipient, but third party. And given the laws in this country and the use of those chip cards, it is very difficult to get that money back.

Your argument about fraud was two fold, those that are on SNAP benefits don't deserve them because they don't meet the requirements and second, those who receive SNAP benefits misuse them constantly. The link provided in your response here shows who participates and who qualifies. But it depends on money, size of the household, and income your receive, taxable and nontaxable income, plus where you live, like the state for instance. Even though you claim to be disabled, it means that you may qualify if you meet the income and asset threshold requirements. But I will let the state agency that oversees the program deal with that particular issue if you should pursue that route.

Your personal experience is more than three decades old. Those EBT cards are very hard to use for fraud purposes. And most get those EBT cards. It is why I like the idea. But again, the fraud is not necessarily on the person using the system. Nowadays, thieves are targeting EBT recipients the most through those skimmer devices as well as unsuspected persons who have regular credit and debit cards. For FY 2023, welfare expenditures, which is a very broad category, are about $486 billion. But this includes things like SSI, EITC, SNAP, Unemployment, Housing ie Section 8, and other programs. And most welfare expenditures, such as SSI is considered non-discretionary spending.

https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2023USbf_24bs2n_40#usgs302

https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_fed_spending_pie_chart

https://federalsafetynet.com/welfare-budget/

 

Choosing not to pay will definitely reduce the credit ratings of the United States, which would mean more interest paid, stock market going south, etc. That is something Yellen is trying not to do at all.

 

Quote; “Tax revenue slowed after Clinton’s tax increases”

OMG, that’s horrible!

let’s see…..

FY1991 Receipts, from October 1st, 1991 to September 30th, 1992; $1.06 Trillion

Bill Clinton inaugurated on Jan 20, 1993

OBRA, August 1993……Clinton’s 36% and 39.6%, tax rates, and Estate/Gift 55% tax rate RETROACTIVE to January 1st, 1993.

FY1992 Receipts, From October 1st, 1992 to September 30th, 1993; $1.09 Trillion

GROWTH RATE, 1.06 Trillion to $1.09 Trillion; 3%

THREE PERCENT

———————-

FY2016 Receipts, from October 1st, 2016 to September 30th, 2017; $3.27 Trillion

FY2017 Receipts, from October 1st 2017 to September 30th, 2018; $3.32 Trillion

GROWTH RATE, $3.27 Trillion to $3.32 Trillion; 1.5%

TCJA Effective January 1st, 2018

FY2018 Receipts, from October 1st, 2018 to September 30th, 2019; $3.33 Trillion

GROWTH RATE, $3.32 Trillion to $3.33 Trillion; Nearly a ZERO PERCENT growth rate!

Summary;

Clinton’s Revenue Growth Rate AFTER his tax increases; 3%…..OMG, that’s horrible!

Trump’s Revenue Growth Tate AFTER his tax cuts; Nearly ZERO Percent…..”Yeah but, Yeah but, Yeah but, and more Yeah buts”

 

Biden's claim that he will destroy the credit rating of the United States by not paying debt service is a bluff. Debt service is only about 8% of the budget and incoming treasury receipts are more than enough to cover debt service.

And the idea that the Federal Government can't cut a penny or two out of every discretionary spending dollar is equally ridiculous. When there is a will, budgets absolutely can be managed.

For example, compare NY and FL. Florida has a larger population than NY and yet, only half the budget.

 

The ball is in the House of Representatives’ court.
Biden cannot do anything but sign a bill increasing the debt ceiling.