Tag: Debt Ceiling

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

We are doomed and so are our future generations.

President Obama at today’s (7/11) press conference:

As for Social Security, which he acknowledged is not the source of any deficit problems, he basically said that, as long as we’re doing a big deal, we might as well throw that in. “The reason to include that in this package is, if you’re going to take a bunch of tough votes, you might as well do it now,” Obama said.

Obama Offered To Raise Medicare Eligibility Age As Part Of Grand Debt Deal

by Sam Stein

According to five separate sources with knowledge of negotiations — including both Republicans and Democrats — the president offered an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare, from 65 to 67, in exchange for Republican movement on increasing tax revenues.

The proposal, as discussed, would not go into effect immediately, but rather would be implemented down the road (likely in 2013). The age at which people would be eligible for Medicare benefits would be raised incrementally, not in one fell swoop.

snip

A proposal to raise the eligibility age for Medicare — which was part of a budget plan put forth by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) — would face steep opposition from within the Democratic Party. The amount of money it would save is also relatively small, as the vast majority of Medicare funding is spent on more elderly populations. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that if the Medicare eligibility age was increased from 65 to 67, the federal government would save $124.8 billion between 2014 and 2021.

Paul Krugman, Conscience of a Liberal

That’s a truly cruel idea; as it happens, I know several people who are hanging on, postponing needed medical care, hoping that they can make it to 65 before something terrible happens. And if I know such people in my fairly sheltered social circles, just imagine how widespread such stories must be.

But beyond that, think about what it means to move people out of Medicare into private insurance, if they can get it.

Medicare has its problems – but all the evidence says that it is substantially more cost-effective than private insurance. Partly this is because it has lower administrative costs; partly it’s because Medicare is able to use its market power to negotiate lower prices. And the international evidence is overwhelming: single-payer systems are much cheaper than systems centered on private insurance.

So think of this as a national interest thing rather than a budget thing: Lieberman is proposing that we move a substantial number of older Americans into a worse, more expensive health care system. Why would you want to do such a thing, as opposed to raising enough additional revenue to keep them on Medicare?

Where is the outrage?

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Catfood is made out of peas? Who knew? lambert

This press conference tells us that the austerity crap isn’t some bit of political posturing, it’s a belief. We’re doomed. Atrios

The right wing Republican talking points that were spewed by President Obama at his press conference were so thick that it has left no doubt the president is about to sell out the middle class and poor.

President Obama said Monday that he had “bent over backwards” to forge a compromise with Republicans on a debt limit deal – and that it was time for them to “budge.”

“I am prepared to take on significant heat from my Party to get something done and I expect the other side to be willing to do the same thing,” he said. . . . .

“We have to pull off the Band-aid — to eat our peas,” he said.

I don’t often agree with NYT Columnist Russ Douthat but his analysis of the “madness” cuts to the point:

Barack Obama wants a right-leaning deficit deal.  

The not-so-secret secret is that the White House has given ground on purpose. Just as Republicans want to use the debt ceiling to make the president live with bigger spending cuts than he would otherwise support, Obama’s political team wants to use the leverage provided by those cra-a-a-zy Tea Partiers to make Democrats live with bigger spending cuts than they normally would support. . . .

Why? Because the more conservative-seeming the final deal, the better for the president’s re-election effort. In that environment, Republicans have every incentive to push and keep pushing. Since any deal they cut will be used as an election-year prop in 2012, they need to make sure the president actually earns his budget-cutting bona fides.

The problem is that voters don’t care about the deficit. They care about jobs and the economy. Spending cuts, tax cuts and austerity programs do ot create jobs. Even Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, now admits that Reaganomics and the Bush tax cuts are a major cause of the current “debt crisis” and takes Obama and Rep. Paul Ryan to the “woodshed”

“In attacking the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent of taxpayers, the president is only incidentally addressing the deficit,” he writes. “Mr. Obama is thus playing the class-war card more aggressively than any Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt – surpassing Harry S. Truman or John F. Kennedy when they attacked big business or Lyndon B. Johnson or Jimmy Carter when they posed as champions of the little guy.”

“On the other side,” he continues, “Representative Ryan fails to recognize that we are not in an era of old-time enterprise capitalism in which the gospel of low tax rates and incentives to create wealth might have had relevance.”

Eat your peas, we are doomed.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

While there is a lot of angst on the part of the left and progressives over President Obama putting Social Security on the bargaining table for some meager tax concessions, they are still no closer to an agreement with the Republicans on the looming debt limit. Obama has rejected any temporary deal that would just kick the can down the road, possibly making the debt limit an even bigger issue in 2012 and a door for the Republicans to get the Bush/Obama tax cuts extended, or worse made permanent. The President has also said that he would not renew them again but after the last 3 years, can we realistically believe anything he says. After all, he is now doing what Bush could never have gotten away with, putting the safety nets for our seniors, disabled and poor on the line to protect the wealthiest.

Today. The Speaker of the House, John A. Boehner, clearly stated, “There is no agreement, in private or in public.”  The House recess for July 18th has been canceled signally that no agreement is in sight.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi met pivately with the President today. Prior to her meeting Ms. Pelosi clearly indicated that she would resist efforts to tie the deal to Social Security.

“Do not consider Social Security a piggy bank for giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country,” Ms. Pelosi said to reporters on Capitol Hill after the meeting. “We are not going to balance the budget on the backs of America’s seniors, women and people with disabilities.”

Last night Keith Olbermann looked at this current state of these discussions.

Boehner: “We are not going to raise taxes on the very people that we expect to invest in our economy and help grow jobs.”

Olbermann: “Shut up. If they were reinvesting in the economy, we wouldn’t be in this position, moron. They’re keeping the money.”

Rep Raul Grivala: “Without overwhelming support from our caucus, this would be a difficult bill to pass”

Pres. Bill Clinton. They quadrupled the debt before me and double it after. Suddenly it’s the biggest problem in the world”

Ryan Grimm: “Obana has been dangling safety net cuts for the last several weeks.  He created the cat food commission . . .

The idea that Obama is the defender of Sociual Security isn’t going to get you very far.

“One dime a month is enough to put many elderly in the poor house.”

Considering today’s news about jobs and unemployment at 9.2%, this, to put it bluntly, sucks.

Up Date: As of last night Speaker of the House Boehner rejected the “deal of the century” because of a few billion in tax “cuts”.  

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Nobel Prize winning Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has nailed Barack Obama’s economic polices and his penchant for feeding the right wing economic fallacies, as “the false government-family equivalence, the myth of expansionary austerity, and the confidence fairy” and, as Dr. Krugman points out, Obama did it in two sentences:

Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.

Dr. Krugman has already debunked both the myths of government-family equivalence and expansionary austerity. Yet the President still thinks that by caving to the right wing Hoover economic policies the economy will get better. This appears to be a signal that he is about to cave to Republicans once again on spending cuts and no new revenue sources that has led will further slow the economy and may spiral the US into a second recession or worse.  

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Finally, Democrats leaders are telling the White House to take Medicare off the table negotiating the debt ceiling. Hello? The majority of Americans support Medicare.

Actually there should be nothing on the table, raising the debt ceiling isn’t something that should or need to be negotiated, just DO IT. This is not a game. This is the economy of the United States and the world which relies on the US dollar as the basis for trade. Are the Democrats, at last, seeing the Republican folly of using Medicare as a pawn in their game for their corporate masters?

In Debt Ceiling Negotiations, Democrats Insist Paul Ryan’s Medicare Reform Plan to be ‘Off the Table’

In a letter to Vice President Biden today, five Democratic senators are calling for the Paul Ryan Medicare reform plan to “remain off the table,” as the budget and deficit negotiations over raising the debt ceiling go forward.

“We encourage you to remain unwavering in opposition to this scheme. For the good of the nation’s seniors, it must remain off the table,” the Democratic Senators write, ” we will never allow any effort to dismantle the program and force benefit cuts upon seniors under the guise of deficit reduction.”

The letter has been signed by Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Jon Tester (D-MT).

Even the Wall St. puppet, Sen Charles Schumer (D-NY) has said that Medicare cuts are a not a negotiating point:

The GOP has mostly stood behind the Medicare proposal, crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). But it’s been Democrats who have highlighted the proposal at every opportunity, and they’ve repeatedly called on debt negotiators to say publicly that Medicare cuts are off the table entirely.

If Congress is going to look to the program for savings, Schumer said, the money should come from cuts to the pharmaceutical industry rather than benefit cuts. He cited two policies Democrats have consistently supported: price controls on prescription drugs and extended rebates for people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.

A deal will be “impossible” if Ryan’s Medicare proposal is included, Schumer said.

The negotiations are aimed at finding a workable solution that both parties can support – which clearly would not describe the Ryan plan.

Cross postedfrom The Stars Hollow Gazette

Since 1962 the debt ceiling has been raised 74 times. Under George W. Bush, it was raised ten times without amendment. The current fiscal problems were caused by the Bush tax cuts, the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and the economic downturn that both Republicans and Democrats refuse to realistically address by investing in this country, raising revenue, yes taxes, and closing the tax loop holes for corporations. The deficit will not be reduced by ending Medicare and decimating Medicaid and forcing seniors to pay 68% of the costs. That Medicare is even on the table without the tax increases for the top 1% should be a non-starter for negotiations on limiting the debt or raising the debt ceiling. The only reason that I can see this is even a discussion is that the President and the Democrats are beholding to the health care industry and pharmaceutical companies that would benefit in the trillions of dollars if Medicare and Medicaid are ended.

Every Democrat in the House who voted “nay” on the clean bill to raise the debt ceiling should be primaried with a real Democrat who will vote for the best interests of the middle class and the poor and not negotiate away their safety nets to make the rich wealthier.

Cross posted from The Stars hollow Gazette

The GOP staged a debt ceiling “stunt” vote by presenting a clean bill to the floor of the House under suspension of the rules. Suspension of the rules requires a 2/3 vote, allows only 40 minutes of debate and prohibits amendments. Chris Hayes, an editor at the Nation sitting in for Lawrence O’Donnell, discusses the House vote on this not so funny “joke” with Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).

Jon Walker at FDL observes

This move is the ultimate expression of political kabuki, and goes beyond just a show vote. Even if there were a majority of the House that supported voting for a clean debt ceiling increase, due to suspended rules, they now have no incentive to actually vote for the bill. After all, voting to raise the debt ceiling isn’t very popular, so knowing this bill can’t get a two-thirds vote, individual members have no reason to take an unpopular vote that will end up doing nothing.

Boehner isn’t having a vote on a clean bill to prove it can’t pass without major concessions, he has preordained the bill’s failure, taking away members’ reasons to actually vote for the bill, therefore assuring the final roll call will look very bad. Boehner will then point to this big failure he himself guaranteed as somehow justifying his making even more demands.

The hostages takers are demanding even more ransom and they won’t be satisfied until all the hostages are dead.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Because we aren’t going to let you get out from under it….

Thus spoke Anthony Weiner on on May 24th, laying out the Republican plan to replace Medicare with an inadequate voucher program:

Today, House Republicans brought another bill (HR 1216) to the House floor that does not address jobs and wastes time in a futile attempt to repeal part of the Affordable Care Act. House Democrats are staging a “mini-filibuster” by “striking the last word” allowing them five minutes of time to discuss their strong opposition to the Republican-passed budget which ends Medicare as we know it and forces seniors to pay over $6,000 more a year.

   Weiner: I move to strike the last word Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, you may recall I was standing here approximately two hours ago waiting to speak with several other members on the efforts of my Republican friends to eliminate Medicare as we know it and for reasons that are known only to the Chair, I was denied the ability to do that. Well, I’m back. And just to review the bidding, here’s where it was before that order was made. We had the Chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, a good man, a guy I like, stand down in the well and say, ‘Oh, no’ (and this by the way is someone who is elected by the Republican members to represent them in races all around the country) saying that the Ryan plan wasn’t a plan it was and I’m quoting here, “a construct to develop a plan” and he said the proposal is not a voucher program and then he said it was a one size fits all, that Medicare was draining our economy is what he said.

  Well, ladies and gentlemen, that might be the rationale for our Republican friends wanting to eliminate Medicare, but none of those things are true. It is not a ‘construct to develop a plan’ it is the proposal of the Republican party of the United States of America to eliminate Medicare as a guaranteed entitlement. If you don’t believe me, go get the book that they wrote, go get the budget that they wrote, go get the bill that they wrote.

h/t to Crooks & Liars for the transcript.

The Ryan Budget plan has failed in the Senate with 5 Republicans opposing it, the Republicans are still embracing the proposal to eliminate Medicare. They are in denial about the loss of NY-26, long a Republican stronghold. to Democrat Kathy Hochul. The sadder part is the White House has also missed the message

Joe Biden group to tackle Medicare and Medicaid: aide

Vice President Joe Biden and top lawmakers will examine government-run health plans on Tuesday as they try to work out a deal to raise the United States’ borrowing authority, a congressional aide said.

h/t Marcy Wheeler

It would appear that the White House is willing to sell out future seniors to give political cover for raising the debt ceiling.

Cross posted from The stars Hollow Gazette

Did you know that the Federal government hit the debt ceiling? Did you know that the US government owns 70% of the state of Utah? Did you know that the US government also still has lots of gold in Ft. Knox? The right wing Tea Party Republicans, who now hold the country hostage, have suggested we hold a “garage sale” and sell off assets to pay the ransom.

Many conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives, especially those affiliated with the small-government Tea Party movement, say that Geithner and the White House are trying to panic them into raising the debt limit.

They also contend that the Treasury has other options to continue meeting the country’s obligations, such as selling assets including gold reserves and government land.

“There is no certain day,” said congressman James Lankford, a member of the fiscally conservative Republican Study Committee. “It’s a moving target. Even if Aug. 2 is passed, Treasury has the tools in its back pocket to keep us from defaulting.”

Lankford added: “Treasury has done a good job of trying to increase the panic, rather than giving us solutions.”

Dennis Ross, a House Republican and a member of the Tea Party caucus, told Reuters: “I don’t think Treasury has been up front with us. I am not convinced the sky will fall in on August 3.”

Ross added: “I’m not an economist, but I have maintained a household. The federal government owns 70 per cent of Utah, for example. There are federal buildings. If you need cash, let’s start liquidating.”

If they decide to sell off chunks of Nevada, I want first dibs on Area 51.