Obama says has reached his limit in debt talks

happy jack wrote:

Artie60438 wrote:

... Obama got suckered again by the Repubs.

Yeah, but he seems really happy about it.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheet-victory-bipartisan-compromise-economy-american-people

Fact Sheet: Bipartisan Debt Deal: A Win for the Economy and Budget Discipline

He should be. If Obama hadn't intervened, there wouldn't be any deal at all.

Heck of job,TeaParty See this is what happens when you turn simple a legislative procedure into a 3 ring circus to try and score some cheap political points ...
S&P Downgrades U.S. AAA Bond Rating To AA+, Outlook Negative

Quote :

As threatened, the ratings agency Standard & Poors has downgraded the country's AAA bond rating, despite acknowledging, according to multiple reports, that their initial calculations included a $2 trillion error projecting U.S.'s debt-to-GDP ratio over time.

You can read the entire explanation below the fold. But the key is that the use of the debt limit as a legislative bargaining chip, combined with gridlock in Congress, led S&P to publicly conclude that the country will have a hard time restoring gravity to its debt trajectory.

Now more than ever the Bush tax cuts need to go away permanently.

Do all American households get to raise their "Debt Ceiling"? Bills are piling up!!!!! :hehehe:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/China-flays-US-over-credit-rb-3974888722.html?x=0

UH-OOH...Sugar Daddy Cuts Off Our Future!!!!!

China tells U.S. "good old days" of borrowing are over


Here's the part that pee'd in my peanut butter cup wrappers this a.m.:


In the Xinhua commentary, China scorned the United States for its "debt addiction" and "short sighted" political wrangling.

"China, the largest creditor of the world's sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets," it said.

It urged the United States to cut military and social welfare expenditure. Further credit downgrades would very likely undermine the world economic recovery and trigger new rounds of financial turmoil, it said.


Quote again: It urged the United States to cut military and social welfare expenditure.

Coming from a bloody state that is full of crap, not helping their own citizens, putting out cheap, defective products, and paying their own citizens less than cat food would cost for a day of work. Telling us to cut out social welfare? If "social" welfare is financing parties, trips, and fundraising, yes, cut out that welfare. Just change the rules on the real welfare where no kings or queens can emerge and abuse the system for those truly in need. We are human, are we not? We've helped other countries while our own are dying on the street.

Just because there are a few bad apples in the welfare system, doesn't mean we should not help our own. We instead, should NOT any longer contribute to other poor countries until we are all able to obtain jobs and pitch in. Meanwhile, because the bloody politicians in Washington are millionaires and really don't give a ratz azz, they should cut their pay, pay their own medical and NO FREAKING LOBBYING OR FAVORS. They spend money on useless layers of handing out jobs that are not needed to the connected. Obama made several heads of "Bundlers" ambassadors to other countries for raising campaign "bundling". All from Chicago. The problem in the U.S. is that the public employees outweigh the private sector. Gov't employees do not pay into soc. security. They pay into their pensions. Those pensions are politicially protected and guaranteed. Federal, that is.

We should no longer have multiple type agencies serving the same purpose. We should hire real people with real degrees for positions to be filled and get rid of the patronage.

No studies on how a mouse might react when exposed to Limbaugher cheese and a can of sardines. You can smell that at your local municipal buildings. LOL

War...Well, where has China been when it comes to "wars"? I agree, though. Fluck the wars that will never end. Fight from here. Take care of our vets.

Truth is, the economy is destroyed. It is not going to bounce back anytime soon. No person can magically turn back the key, because the key was lost a long time ago, and they don't use skeleton keys anymore.

China yes, has lent money as fast as the cons needed new pacifiers, but we protected, we gave our resources, money away to keep our nation and other nations safe. Well, the tide has turned. The money borrowed is interest money paying off mounds of interest only. The only way to get rid of this cycle is take back our country, like all the nation together, start protesting like they did in the '60s. Sounds silly, but wasn't the Viet Nam war for nothing?

Demand less gov't intrusion in our lives. You don't need a-holes telling ya whether to get an abortion or not for over how many years have they kept bringing the subject up? Stupid crap. Just like the back-seat belt issue. It is now a law. Common sense to common sense people would buckle up and not need some big shots announcing it like they accomplished something.

There are very few jobs out there. I know. I took a tour and talked to managers all over in Joliet, New Lenox, Orland, etc., only on-call and as needed for my nephew. That's all that's available. I talked to a guy at a gas station in my bro's neighborhood. He rented out a storage place in New Lenox to live. Really! Lost his house after his high fallutin' $8.000.00 a month job, and he's walking around looking like I should take him for a haircut and cut his beard off he is so ashamed. His wife got the house. He got the pick up truck. She found a younger boyfriend....going off subject. You know me. Gotta go. Check back later. Gov't spends too much money on themselves. That's the problem. We need to pull out of the wars right now. When kids are killing innocent little 12 and 13 years old for playing in a nice park or just sitting outside, we have a real war here. Not over some hundred years' old dictators. You can't save the world anymore, because sugar daddy ain't gonna be there anymore (China).

The politicians in Washington, all of them, have finally found their noses hitting the brick walls, no matter which way they turn. What went around, came around.

A timeline of events By Steve Benen

Quote :

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane, shall we?

1980: Ronald Reagan runs for president, promising a balanced budget

1981 - 1989: With support from congressional Republicans, Reagan runs enormous deficits, adds $2 trillion to the debt.

1993: Bill Clinton passes economic plan that lowers deficit, gets zero votes from congressional Republicans.

1998: U.S. deficit disappears for the first time in three decades. Debt clock is unplugged.

2000: George W. Bush runs for president, promising to maintain a balanced budget.

2001: CBO shows the United States is on track to pay off the entirety of its national debt within a decade.

2001 - 2009: With support from congressional Republicans, Bush runs enormous deficits, adds nearly $5 trillion to the debt.

2002: Dick Cheney declares, “Deficits don’t matter.” Congressional Republicans agree, approving tax cuts, two wars, and Medicare expansion without even trying to pay for them.

2009: Barack Obama inherits $1.3 trillion deficit from Bush; Republicans immediately condemn Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility.

2009: Congressional Democrats unveil several domestic policy initiatives — including health care reform, cap and trade, DREAM Act — which would lower the deficit. GOP opposes all of them, while continuing to push for deficit reduction.

September 2010: In Obama’s first fiscal year, the deficit shrinks by $122 billion. Republicans again condemn Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility.

October 2010: S&P endorses the nation’s AAA rating with a stable outlook, saying the United States looks to be in solid fiscal shape for the foreseeable future.

November 2010: Republicans win a U.S. House majority, citing the need for fiscal responsibility.

December 2010: Congressional Republicans demand extension of Bush tax cuts, relying entirely on deficit financing. GOP continues to accuse Obama of fiscal irresponsibility.

March 2011: Congressional Republicans declare intention to hold full faith and credit of the United States hostage — a move without precedent in American history — until massive debt-reduction plan is approved.

July 2011: Obama offers Republicans a $4 trillion debt-reduction deal. GOP refuses, pushes debt-ceiling standoff until the last possible day, rattling international markets.

August 2011: S&P downgrades U.S. debt, citing GOP refusal to consider new revenues. Republicans rejoice and blame Obama for fiscal irresponsibility.

There have been several instances since the mid 1990s in which I genuinely believed Republican politics couldn’t possibly get more blisteringly ridiculous. I was wrong; they just keep getting worse.

I think we need to stop foreign aid first.

KarenT wrote:

I think we need to stop foreign aid first.

That should be the priority!!!! I don't know what the figure is now, but last I knew, it was at least a billion a week for the wars. This doesn't include a few billion more per week for foreign aid to many countries we help.



Ran across this "Editorial" in the Chicago Tribune, and Artie I think you would find it interesting.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-tax-0807-20110807,0,7859650.story#tugs_story_display

The stimulus we need
Cut deductions, reduce tax rates


This should be the moment — a reprise of 1986 — when Democrats and Republicans join forces to pass ambitious tax reform.

Proposals to broaden the tax base and reduce marginal rates are suddenly ascendant in Washington, in large part because spending money to stimulate the economy has flopped so spectacularly while adding to the federal debt. Friday's monthly jobs report had some good news — a small boost in job creation and a slightly lower unemployment rate. But look closer: The total number of working Americans actually fell in July, the average duration of unemployment lengthened, and the number of people no longer even looking for jobs jumped sharply. Add in these so-called discouraged workers and part-timers who want full-time jobs and you get a "real" unemployment rate of 16.1 percent.

Arguably the best tactic now is tax reform — which, of course, to most Americans means lightening their liabilities while sticking it to the other guy or gal. So how are we using the term, and what would it mean for Tom and Tess Taxpayer?


We can reform taxation

As is, the federal government collects more than $1 trillion a year in income taxes — and simultaneously gives taxpayers roughly the same amount in "tax expenditures." That's econospeak for tax deductions, credits, loopholes, exclusions — all the ways in which the tax code creates incentives and rewards for politically favored subsets of taxpayers. Conservative Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has a word for all this: "Tax subsidies," he says, "are socialism."

Among the top federal tax expenditures and, ballpark, how much they save taxpayers every year:

•Employer payments for health insurance premiums and other health benefits: $131 billion.

•The home mortgage interest deduction: $96 billion.

•Capital gains and dividends: $80 billion.

•Pension contributions and earnings: $60 billion.

•Earned-income tax credit for low-income taxpayers: $53 billion.

•Charitable contributions excluding education and health: $36 billion.

These tax breaks deplete the federal treasury, penny for penny, just as much as does spending on defense, Medicaid or ethanol subsidies. If Congress and President Barack Obama scaled them back, tax rates could plummet.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois is as liberal as Tom Coburn is conservative, yet when Durbin visited the Tribune editorial board on Thursday, he argued as ardently as Coburn does for tax reform.

Durbin and Coburn served last year on the president's deficit reduction commission, better known as Simpson-Bowles, and also on the Senate's rump Gang of Six, another bipartisan effort to address debt and deficits. Both groups discussed trimming tax expenditures and dropping the top income tax rate to perhaps 25 percent.

How does that translate into economic growth? Broaden the tax base, lower the rate, and you're closer to having market forces — rather than politicians — determine how individuals and companies spend their money. Suddenly they're investing their resources to gain efficiencies, profits and expansions, rather than tailoring decisions to what the tax code rewards or punishes.

From that new efficiency in the economy will come growth … and jobs. If you're in the club that thinks the U.S. needs not more taxes but more taxpayers, this brand of tax reform is for you. And if you're in the club that wants more tax revenues to insulate today's spending on government programs you like, then this brand of tax reform is for you, too. We'd be fine with a vastly stripped-down tax code aligned to produce more federal revenue — provided Washington uses the extra cash to slash future deficits and existing debt, not to enable still more spending.

The most sacrosanct of these subsidies, the deduction for home mortgage interest, arguably creates the greatest distortions. Not that there's anything wrong with the government aggressively encouraging people to buy too much house and incur too much debt — is there? We tried to explain other failings of this deduction in a March 23 editorial:

If you rent, you get nothing. If you have reasons not to itemize deductions, you get nothing. If you pay off your mortgage to live debt-free, you get nothing. Borrow a fortune for a McMansion, however, and the Internal Revenue Service provides a big discount, at the expense of every other taxpayer. About three-fourths of the benefit from the mortgage-interest deduction goes to the 14 percent of tax filers reporting six-figure incomes. Almost one-third of the subsidy goes to the population reporting incomes of $200,000 or more.

The leaders of Simpson-Bowles proposed replacing the deduction with a tax credit for 12 percent of interest paid each year on mortgages up to $500,000. That would make a home affordable for Americans who need a modest subsidy. And it would nix the current incentive for wealthier households to take on huge mortgages. A phase-in over, say, 10 years would give Americans time to adjust their finances, and would give the housing market time to adjust, too.

Expect all manner of special interests to fight this, and every other proposed cut in tax expenditures, at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Fair enough. But if all of us have learned anything from the debt-ceiling-and-deficits debate, it's that we cannot continue a regimen of taxing and spending that requires us to borrow — above and beyond federal tax revenues — $4 billion every day.

Congress has few options for addressing growing economic anxiety. Another stimulus package would smack straight into the new normal: The federal purse is so threadbare that the only way to spend more is to borrow more. That is, borrow even more than we're already scheduled to borrow over the next decade as we roughly double the national debt owed to the public. And that's after the debt ceiling deal signed into law last week.

The United States needs a different approach that will streamline the tax code, focus Americans on growth and diminish our indebtedness. Twenty-five years ago, members of Congress from both parties joined with President Ronald Reagan to reform the nation's tax scheme.

We hope today's Congress has enough debt realists to do the same with President Barack Obama.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Now the White House Advisor, David Axelrod, told CBS' "Face the Nation" this a.m., that he blames the credit downgrading for the U.S. fell because of the weeks of arguing or holding off over the debt.

He called it a "tea party downgrade" and blamed the lawmakers willing to see our country go "down" and get "their way".

I don't get it. One party blames the other. It's gotten so bad, I don't have any confidence that the country will ever get better. Not when all of them are bickering back and forth.

They are now on vacation for a month, right?

Isn't that lovely. Look at the Trib editorial...the facts are there.

What do you guys think?

KarenT wrote:

I think we need to stop foreign aid first.

Yeah, well reasonable people can disagree about whether foreign aid is a worthwhile endeavor or not, but the fact is that it is only around 1% of our budget. Eliminating it isn't going to solve anything.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-foreign-aid/2011/04/25/AF00z05E_story.html

Quote :

Since the 1970s, aid spending has hovered around 1 percent of the federal budget. International assistance programs were close to 5 percent of the budget under Lyndon B. Johnson during the war in Vietnam, but have dropped since.

Scorpion wrote:

KarenT wrote:

I think we need to stop foreign aid first.

Yeah, well reasonable people can disagree about whether foreign aid is a worthwhile endeavor or not, but the fact is that it is only around 1% of our budget. Eliminating it isn't going to solve anything.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-foreign-aid/2011/04/25/AF00z05E_story.html

Quote :

Since the 1970s, aid spending has hovered around 1 percent of the federal budget. International assistance programs were close to 5 percent of the budget under Lyndon B. Johnson during the war in Vietnam, but have dropped since.

1% would be 90 billion dollars (based on a budget of 9 trillion dollars) I think we could do a lot with 90 billion dollars.

Is that the billions outside of what I assumed?

Read the business section of the Chicago Tribune today, and see why the U.S. will never be the same.

It starts with Technology, and I can attest to that. While Mac Computers just emerged, it cost me quite an $8,000.00 grand. I didn't walk away with anything but an IBM HUGE machine that took big guys to transport. I amassed a fortune back then, knowing codes, the operations of printing business which is now defunct, which will happen to everyone who doesn't keep up with technology.

I am the first to admit I was "above" anyone back in the '80s and could produce a flyer with icons, whatever, expressions within 12 minutes and design, produce for production for everyone who couldn't afford the newly, established, desktop publishing. I was ahead of everyone.

I knew ahead of time, the computer era would creep up, and everyone would soon have one, making my livelihood extinct. I didn't plan for the future past what the printing companies could do: EXTINCT!

That is a fine example of why our children are not prepared for the future. You want to know what they need to know to exceed? Learn Chinese.

Yep..I have known many successful people that are only sucessful because they can speak other languages. Much as you hate it, the manufacturing won't come back. There is no future not just in Hammond, count in the once "affluent" neighborhoods/cities/towns. We are now "owned".

Unless you seek a career that you are affluent in nationally, globally, you are out of luck when my generation is gone. Business is now outside of the U.S.

Sparks, no offense, but you are the very last of the generation that can "assume" and I say that carefully, that you will have the benefits our father and mother had.

Why? I saw first-hand what happened to my parents..you work, you get a pension...only it isn't all there as you expect.

Trust me. I know..those dads and moms that socked away, paid life insurance, paid ahead and socked away...live in fear today. Even buying several life insurance policies. They paid on all their lives...State Farm..you name it..when my dad passed, after a lifetime of payments, you are in for a surprise. No kidding. Paying into a union pension today is like gambling on a boat.

I believed what you believed, but I saw what happened to 85 year olds that thought the other partner was "secure" if one passed away..paying all their lives and in STATE FARM, various credible life-insurance companies. The only wealth they saw was the wealth they saved and invested in a lake side home. You can't possibly pay enough for the memories, good times, the everything they gave us. No price tag comes with it.

With union pensions, my nephew makes over $40.00 an hour. What's it worth when you are laid off all winter, trying to pay bills, not knowing when they will call you back and then, again lay you off?

My nephew stretched that $40.00 an hour plus overtime over a year: "' Shit!"

Unemployment is actually what...did the Tribune say? Hovering at 19% if you add it up?

We all live in a gutter.

Thank you very much.

The manual labor is over; the technology of typing into a computer is over and if I have to sum it up how behind Indiana is...they don't even know what a damn updated computer is, or they'd be rich!

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

Scorpion wrote:

KarenT wrote:

I think we need to stop foreign aid first.

Yeah, well reasonable people can disagree about whether foreign aid is a worthwhile endeavor or not, but the fact is that it is only around 1% of our budget. Eliminating it isn't going to solve anything.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-foreign-aid/2011/04/25/AF00z05E_story.html

Quote :

Since the 1970s, aid spending has hovered around 1 percent of the federal budget. International assistance programs were close to 5 percent of the budget under Lyndon B. Johnson during the war in Vietnam, but have dropped since.

1% would be 90 billion dollars (based on a budget of 9 trillion dollars) I think we could do a lot with 90 billion dollars.

"Based on a budget of 9 Trillion?" That's not even close. In 2010, Federal Spending was 3.45 trillion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png

Hook, line, & sinker.