Budget talks: This is getting nasty

Why should it boggle the mind?
Those guys have jobs: they legislate for about six months, raise funds for nine months, and campaign for nine months. Great pension and insurance. Expense accounts, courtesy of people they could care less about. They got theirs, get yours.

That's the congressional way.

 

Sensible Democrat Voter: I'm not partisan, and I don't give a shit who gets the credit for avoiding economic doom. I just want a deal to be done.

YankeeFan: OK, so let's just cut spending a bit, leave taxes where they are, and we're good.

Sensible Democrat Voter: Hell no! I'm not for that. That's reckless. We need to raise taxes. And, don't forget, I'm not partisan, and I don't give a shit who gets the credit for avoiding economic doom. I just want a deal to be done.

 

Sensible Democratic voter: But there are already trillions of dollars in spending cuts included in the deal.

YankeeFan: Let's cut spending a little bit.

Sensible Democratic voter: But there are already trillions of dollars in spending cuts included in the deal.

YankeeFan: Let's cut spending a little bit.

 

Show me the deal.

When do the spending cuts kick in? What is in place to ensure the spending cuts are enforced? What programs are being cut? Or do you just expect to cut defense?

You didn't mention the tax increases you're insisting on including in the deal. If spending is the problem, why are we insisting on raising taxes again?

 

YF, I didn't say "spending is the problem." You're writing it as if it's a universally agreed-upon belief and asking me to defend a point I never made. Skipping a step of logic there. I agree that spending can be cut back, which it is. As one example, Washington Post on the situation with the military -- yes it's defense, but if you're going to cut the budget, the biggest part of it is a good place to start:

But as lawmakers and the White House move closer to a grand bargain that could reshape the country’s fiscal priorities, Pentagon budget planners are scrambling to keep up. Military officials said they are girding for the possibility that they will have to reduce projected spending by as much as $800 billion over the next 12 years.

That’s twice the worst-case forecast they confronted as recently as April, when President Obama warned his administration that it might have to cut $400 billion from its national-security budgets over the same time frame.

He has also discussed Medicare and Social Security. Personally, I think raising the age for Social Security from 62 to at least 65 is well warranted based on our current budget situation and our longer lifespans. You can say Nancy Pelosi and the rest won't agree to it, but I think there will be enough Democrat votes as long as the tax increase -- which is the overwhelming will of the American people -- is included.

--You ask, "Why are we insisting on raising taxes again?" What is the "again" part of that? When were taxes last raised? And why are the richest people in the world complaining about how un-American these high taxes are when they are the lowest taxes in the history of America? Milton Friedman had some interesting theories. They are not facts.

 

We deserve every bit of this financial crisis for playing with our toys while Wall Street screwed us, the Fed screwed us, and Congress failed to demand accountability while we failed to demand it of Congress.

The rest is just noise that grows louder as you guys yell at each other and the richest of the rich laugh all the way to their offshore accounts.

 

YF, you're making this sound like the "Tea Party" (and it kills me to give these people the respect they don't deserve) is more dominant than they are -- or should be. They are a minority faction that is holding this country hostage. I could care less if 60-70-80 of them got elected last year. They are not a majority party, nor should they be treated as such.

They are against anything that helps or enables government. Anything. And they are against giving Obama anything seen as beneficial to him. Anything.

I -- and many others of the same belief -- thought this extension of the Bush tax cuts (and they ARE and will always remain the Bush. Tax. Cuts; he and his handlers devised and implemented them) -- were garbage. Not one of Obama's finer moments.

That aside, his plan offers 83% spending cuts -- far, far more draconian than anything his party's caucus would advocate -- and only 17% tax increases. But because it's Obama's Idea, it's anathema His plan to rein in the deficit has more to offer than anything coming out of the juvenile mouth of Eric Cantor et al.

 

These are the same American people that were loudly and overwhelmingly against the passage of Obamacare. About 70 percent were against that bill and Obama and the Dems rammed it through. So now you want to listen to the American people? Just another example of liberal hypocracy.

 

Where is this plan? What are the specific cuts? When do they take place?

 

You know, it really undermines your argument when you make up statistics. But then when the facts are so solidly stacked against you, it doesn't make for much of a surprise that you have to resort to making things up.

And seriously, stop acting like the Tea Party represents mainstream American thinking. Just stop it. It doesn't, it never has and it never will.

 

Of those 60 percent (I don't think any respected poll put it at 70), 25-30 percent opposed it because it wasn't liberal enough, so we can safely say half or more of the country was in favor of the kind of health care reform Obama was pushing before the lobbyists got in the way. The taxes question doesn't have that kind of three-way vote split; pretty straightforward yes-or-no about whether they favor the Obama plan or the GOP plan, and 58 percent are on Obama's side, 36 with the GOP and 6 percent on the fence.