Budget talks: This is getting nasty

Yes, Tarp aside. If you look at the evidence already presented to you by the non-partisan CBO (obviously, you ignore evidence and stay with emotional rhetoric) you see it created a spike in 08 and 09 and began coming back down in 2010. So the budget effect of TARP is already dwindling.

 

Um, not so much. Air America had a horrible business plan and didn't know what it was doing. How it lasted as long as it did is a wonder.

And if this was a center-right country, then Bush I, Dole, and McCain would be continuing a 30-year lock on the White House.

 

So you agree that Obamacare is going to bust the budget, right? You cited the "non-partisan" CBO, so I take it you agree with their findings.

http://centristnetblog.com/daily/cbo-obamacare-at-least-109-billion-in-deficit-spending-over-10-years/

 

True that. And I think Obama, in good faith, has offered plenty of plans that make the kind of substantial spending cuts that the Tea Partiers would like to see -- in exchange for some much smaller tax hikes on people who can well afford to pay them. Whatever the political implications, it appears the best strategy to calm nervous markets is to come up with a plans that takes us through 2013, because even if we avoid default this time, a debt-ceiling negotiation in the midst of campaign season is going to be even worse.

 

Thought George F. Will got off a good line today regarding the Tea Party House freshmen: "Their inflexibility astonishes and scandalizes Washington because it reflects the rarity of serene fidelity to campaign promises."

 

The insane are often frightening.

 

This.

That.

 

Fixed.

We get downgraded to AA, it's the Liptons' fault. Way to go. Call in, when the country club bar shuts down for the day.

 

Well, that's a nice way of putting it, I guess.

 

I'm no expert on all of this, but it seems to me that whether the debt's rated AAA or AA (or whatever the heck's just below AAA) shouldn't make a whole heckuva lot of difference on the interest rates the U.S. government pays. Those ratings agencies' imprimaturs matter a lot when you're dealing with bonds being issued by some corporation or utility or whatever. But I can't envision a scenario in which a treasury auction today (under a AAA rating) and next week (under a AA rating) would result in a substantial yield difference.

 

But it didn't have to be this way.