Budget talks: This is getting nasty

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-top-foe-clash-us-debt-talks-flare-020229831.html

I kind of admire Obama for walking.

In part due to this :
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/taming-deficit-means-pain-middle-class-poor-160505483.html;_ylt=AjT2LSxsx18jC3PzjnCXELnxh7l_

Ultimately, you can bet all cuts will be aimed at the middle class.
Less Medicare, higher Social Security retirement age, but also, no home tax deduction.

Meanwhile, any Washington politician will continue to get first-class pensions, first-class health insurance, while your pension is history, your 401K is not a shared contribution and your health insurance increasingly becomes like not having it. Shared sacrifice? It should start with them.

Let's blow this whole shit up and start over.

 

Technically, the U.S. would not be in default after Aug. 2. Based on monthly revenue, the government would still be able to service the debt, send out Social Secuity and Medicare checks, and pay the troops. Those have to be done by law.

But what would happen instead is the mother of all government shutdowns. After those non-discretional expenses, what's left are crumbs for a lot of essential services. The list of those is too long.

 

The debt limit will be raised.

Once Wall Street reacts to this silly piece of political kubuki, the GOP will fall in line and raise the limit. There's no way in hell they're going to take responsibility for plunging the economy into the abyss. They are all about blame-management.

Sane GOP'ers (Boehner, McConnell) know this, which is why they're trying to find a way out. It might be their way to destroy the ideologues (re: Tea Baggers) in their own party if they play their cards right.

 

Is this on the up-and-up from Mitch McConnell, or does he have an ulterior motive that I can't see?

McConnell predicted that if Congress fails to act, Obama will argue "that Republicans are making the economy worse and try to convince the public, maybe with some merit, if people start not getting their Social Security checks and military families start getting letters saying their service people overseas don't get paid."

"You know, it's an argument he has a good chance of winning, and all of a sudden we (Republicans) have co-ownership of a bad economy," McConnell said. "That is a very bad positioning going into an election."

McConnell said his first choice was to reach a good compromise with Obama.

Short of that, "my second obligation is to my party ... to prevent them from being sucked into a horrible position politically that would allow the president probably to get re-elected because we didn't handle this difficult situation correctly."

I don't put much stock in his let's-let-Obama-raise-the-debt-limit maneuver, but this sounds like he is telling his boys to stand down.

 

All the house has to do is pass its package of cuts with no additional taxes, along with a debt limit increase, and then it is up to the Senate and the Dems to either fish or cut bait. That would put the Dems on the spot...either vote for it and not get the new taxes or reject it and be seen as the ones that shut down the government. The Republicans know this and I'm pretty confident will end up doing this. This way they can say "We sent a debt increase to the Senate and the Democrats rejected it." And they would be right.

 

That is the exact scenario Obama said today that he would veto, adding "don't call my bluff." I don't know how it will all play out, but from that declaration by Obama and from the comments I posted from Mitch McConnell, it would appear the GOP faces some pretty big risk of being labeled the bad guy. Also worth considering is the consistent showing, across polls from all sorts of organizations, that Americans by a large margin favor tax increases on the wealthy. There was an ABC News/Washington Post poll that says even a majority of Republicans polled say they favor such increases.

 

The Dems could do the same in the Senate. Put a package out there. If it passes, leave it on the GOP House. If the GOP filibusters, call them out on it. You could easily get sparring packages on this if things come down to it. Then which side would be right, the GOP because the House passed something or the Dems because the Senate did? Or is it just who passes their version first?

 

I don't get the sense that the GOP is coordinating their strategy, they are stepping over each other. I get that Cantor is playing bad cop to Boehner's good cop - that's smart - I just don't understand where McConnell fits in. Sure he wants to ensure that the GOP takes the Senate next year and he becomes majority leader - but this is starting to look like one of those bizarre WWE matches when there is so much side switching, when it is finally over you don't really know what exactly happened, or whether you should be pissed off or happy.

 

This. I don't fear their plan because they don't have one. What is frightening is this whole charade is starting to stumble into chaos. The leaders might flap their gums, but is anyone really listening? It seems everyone is marching to their own beat and this could be very bad if crunch time should arrive and something would absolutely need to be done.

 

. . . not when "listening to the people" means stepping on the toes of their precious corporate contributors/controllers . . .