Super Congress in Session - More of the Cruel Charade
By Michael Collins
Wall Street and the big banks owe $1.5 trillion for the bailout (at least). The Super Congress needs to cut $1.5 trillion over ten years. Get the money from Wall Street and cancel the Super Congress. Problem solved.
Last month’s debt ceiling crisis was resolved when Congress and the Obama administration made a deal to cut trillions in federal spending over the next ten years. Congress identified the easy cuts, the low hanging fruit so to speak, for a total of nearly $1.0 trillion. At the same time, Congress and the White House created the “Super Congress” committee of six senators and six representatives charged with cutting another $1.5 trillion. (Image: Lucy White with permission)
The committee has unparalleled power to draft legislation, without the normal legislative processes of debate, deliberation, modification, and amendments. If seven of the twelve committee members vote in favor of the budget cutting legislation by the November 23 deadline (see chart in appendix III), the bill will be submitted to the entire Congress for an up or down vote. The bill will not be subject to any modification or change. Debate will be very limited. (Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction Text-pdf)
PermalinkChoreographed Budget Cave In - The Money Party Stabs Citizens in the Back
By Michael Collins
So this is how it is going to be:
"After putting controversial cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table in negotiations with congressional Republicans over a plan to raise the nation's debt ceiling, President Obama still doesn't have a deal in the works." Chris Moody, Yahoo News, July 7
Who told President Obama to put "controversial cuts on Social Security and Medicare on the table"? Hasn't the president seen his public opinion polling numbers lately? He is consistently at or below 50% job approval. (Image)
Didn't he pay attention to the special congressional election in the highly conservative, long-time Republican upstate New York district that elected a Democrat for the first time in years?
Isn't the President Obama aware that there's an election coming up; that many of the people he is so willingly and openly betraying rely on Social Security to live and Medicare to stay alive?
What planet does he live on? (Unless this is what he truly desires.)
Choreographed Budget Cave In - The Money Party Stabs Citizens in the Back
By Michael Collins
So this is how it is going to be:
"After putting controversial cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table in negotiations with congressional Republicans over a plan to raise the nation's debt ceiling, President Obama still doesn't have a deal in the works." Chris Moody, Yahoo News, July 7
Who told President Obama to put "controversial cuts on Social Security and Medicare on the table"? Hasn't the president seen his public opinion polling numbers lately? He is consistently at or below 50% job approval. (Image)
Didn't he pay attention to the special congressional election in the highly conservative, long-time Republican upstate New York district that elected a Democrat for the first time in years?
Isn't the President Obama aware that there's an election coming up; that many of the people he is so willingly and openly betraying rely on Social Security to live and Medicare to stay alive?
What planet does he live on? (Unless this is what he truly desires.)
Decline and Fall - Why Would Anybody Believe Standard and Poor's?
We are in the midst of a bum's rush - the quick eviction of a less than desirable in an unpleasantly abrupt fashion. The problem is we're the bums. Our eviction from the political process is all based the word of a firm that helped fuel the housing bubble, trigger the financial collapse, and found itself indicted by the State of Connecticut for "unfair, deceptive, and illegal business practices" in 2008.
Last week, credit rating agency Standard and Poor's threatened to downgrade the AAA credit rating of the United States of America by issuing a "negative" finding on the 'long term credit outlook" for the country. The firm's report said that Congress wasn't working diligently enough to reduce the budget deficit. The nation had better fix things quick or, as S&P threatened, "there is at least a one-in-three likelihood that we could lower our long-term rating on the U.S. within two years [2013]." The mere threat of a reduced credit rating brought calls for quick and decisive action on proposals for deficit reduction.
Obama's Grand Betrayal
Michael Collins
Previously, I reported the startling news - Obama to Change Party. That was satire, at least on November 14. Just three weeks later, satire becomes reality. In the past few days, President Obama has traded away $620 billion in tax revenues in order to get a $56 billion, 13 month extension of unemployment benefits. Of course, the lost $620 billion will make any further unemployment benefits, or for that matter, any other productive social programs pipe dreams as the deficit explodes over the next two years. (Image: Banksy)
The Obama deal is a long way from the original position of ending Bush tax cuts for the highest earners and simply extending unemployment benefits, as called for by economic and social circumstances.
It started when President Obama sent his vice president to negotiate with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. Since the president still has a majority in both chambers of Congress, you might wonder why he's negotiating. The House Democrats are ready to rock to show that they're not to blame for the past two years of inaction. There are enough Democratic Senators with either the inclination or the compromised background to strong arm a majority.
The Era of Pain Avoidance is Over
By Numerian
Erskin Bowles: former Chief of Staff to President Clinton and prior to that a North Carolina businessman. Alan Simpson: at age 79, fourteen years senior to Erskin Bowles, and a former Republican senator from Wyoming. Alice Rivlin: also age 79, and Clinton’s former budget director. Peter Domenici: age 79, and a former Republican senator from New Mexico. These four people are the principal players in a set of competing proposals to do something about the US federal debt. They all have what Washington calls “gravitas”, which is a certain respectability that comes with age and experience. They also display that precious quality of “bipartisanship” which makes them supposedly immune from political bias. That’s why you get these Republican-Democrat partnerships: Simpson-Bowles, and Domenici-Rivlin. You would trust these people, wouldn’t you, to give you the cold, hard truth that politicians cannot deliver?
You shouldn’t. These people are good at delivering cold, hard truths in terms of areas of the budget to cut, and new sources of revenue to tap, which together over the long run will bring deficits down to zero and reduce the interest burden of the national debt to something manageable. But they won’t give you a vision of America under these new fiscal conditions. Reading through their proposals, we are left to imagine what America would be like in such a permanent state of austerity.
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