It seems like Mitch is really going to force the Dems into a partisan vote on Debt Ceiling. Good strategy or bad? Neither side can claim the high ground on this particular issue but I do like Mitch's approach of forcing the Dem's to own it all this time, given how they have been willing to ram everything else through and their discussions of packing the Supreme Court and ending the filibuster. I'm worried this is an actual existential threat to our country and if things go south, they go south in a big way and fast. Certainly a national debt is not the same as corporate debt or personal debt but it just does not seem possible that you can borrow into perpetuity without those chickens coming home to roost. Especially at the exponential rate that have seen it go up over the last few years. At the very least, it is a massive issue Dems have to work on now, which gives them less time to pull the other stuff together.
f**k Mitch and the horse he rode in on. He can't be trusted. McConnell is 100% politics all the time. He doesn't care about the debt, the American people or outlr stranding in the world economy. The only thing he cares about is political power. That's it. Every decision he makes has nothing to do with anything other than politics. There are many more like him in Congress but calling him out since you brought him up. If he actually cared about the debt he wouldn't have raised it in 2019 when he controlled the Senate. I hate these politicians that flip their positions based on which party is in power. f**k the lot of them and their valueless positions.
I don't disagree about him caring about the debt ceiling and I don't even think Mitch is posturing at caring about the debt this time. He is telling Dem leadership to take a hike since they've indicated several times that they are willing to blow up the filibuster and SCOTUS to suit their purposes. Not to mention the hyperpartisan spending plan they are trying to ram through right now. You use "the American People" the way politicians love to use it. as though there is a uniform need/desire/preference of "the American People". We have been divided roughly 35R/35D/30other for a long time now. Anytime any politician says they are doing it for "the American People" it is almost always a lie. They are doing it for their base.
Um Biden is against removing the Filibuster as well as a handful of Dems. McConnell wants to force the D's to remove the filibuster. That way he wont get blamed for something he secretly wants knowing that when the R's retake the Senate nothing will stop any power move. If he really wanted to save the Filibuster he'd return to the old rules. Force a Senator to speak for hours. Make it a painful yet powerful tool. Now you simple need to yell Filibuster en route to vacationing in Cancun to stop a bill. McConnell is a political pragmatist. He knows rules will be changed and is opportunistic in making sure he doesn't get branded with breaking decades of Senate decorum.
Mostly agree with SH. McConnell is doing this for political reasons and not much else. He's just too inconsistent on the issue to assume any differently. I also don't think this is something either party should be a screwing with. Instead I'd focus on stopping the $3.5T spending binge, even if it means providing Republican votes to deliver the infrastructure bill as part of a deal with Manchin and Sinema. I'd also give both of them pretty much any committee chairmanship they wanted if they'd switch parties. I used to think Manchin was the only possible switcher, but activist idiots are starting to hassle Sinema while she's on the toilet. It doesn't take long to test someone's patience when he or she can't even take a dump in peace.
If the debt limit is not increased, wouldn't it just force us to cut discretionary spending? I would think SS, Medicare, salaries are off the table but I'm sure there is plenty of wasteful spending that could be cut. At a minimum, it will discourage the regular wasteful stimulus, human infrastructure, blah blah blah spending. In the last normal fiscal year of 2019, roughly 30% of the budget was discretionary.
This entire thread is evidence that the government sucks. Dems want bigger government, but not if it is composed of Republicans. Then of course, big government is bad. Dems love the courts implementing policies they know cannot pass in elections, but SCOTUS is bad and needs more Libs on it. Libs say military spending is bad even though it helps defend the country and supports families in the military and in hundreds of businesses supplying military equipment. Their alternative? Tree equity! You have moronic Libs harassing politicians in restaurants and toilet stalls as if that will change their minds. You also have guys wearing Bison hats marching into the Senate chambers as if that will change someone's mind on election certification. Libs throw money at local District Attorney elections to help elect Libs that will not enforce the laws. Lib politicians encourage rioting and looting, then set up funds to bail out the rioters instead of enforcing laws. Libs ignore immigration laws, encourage importing millions of illegals with no talents or means of self support, and then ***** about income disparity and the cost of healthcare. Libs devise multiple ways to cheat in elections, then actually cheat in elections, and double down on the cheating by fighting any efforts to bring integrity to future elections. Libs in government illegally advanced false narratives about Russian collusion, and the DOJ and FBI join in the lawlessness despite the fact that they are supposed to enforce the laws, not break them. Libs would rather pass trillions in spending to benefit other Libs at the risk of massive inflation than enact common sense budgets that help the country. Government helps create a virus that kills millions, and then assumes they have the authority to tell everyone what they should be doing to control the virus. Libs interfere in the housing market in the early 2000s, which eventually causes the economy to crash, then the very same stupid SOBs that supported the government intervention write laws telling the private sector what they need to do to prevent similar problems in the future. Government sucks and does not need to be bigger. Libs just suck.
A look at world leaders named in the Pandora Papers There are so many hints. Pandora Papers show lots of Politicians with offshore accounts. Obama, Biden, Clinton, the Bush's et al have there's too just not in the Pandora Papers. I have heard and believe the central banks even print money not reported or tracked to fund they're own special operations. IDK what those operations are but none of these leaders are reporting their true net worth. It's off the books. This is going to come out. Just be patient. No wonder our country is in debt.
It takes money to hide money. Lot's of it. I'd wager most of this is legal too. This is why the cries of raising taxes on the uber wealthy ring hollow. I'm not even wagering that our politicians have acquired their wealth through corruption. When you can get $1M+ for a single 1hr speech. When board seats and early investment opportunities are given out to former POTUS like candy you get $$$. What I hate is our tax laws allow individuals and corporations to hide lots of income/revenue offshore through these complicated tax shelters.
SH I agree with you, but these people are using corrupt tax laws to get away with it. I try to use tax laws to my advantage also, but I don’t have an offshore account. That’s why I say we need a a tax slope.
Ya'll have fun. The husker is on point here. The right lost the ability to use debt as a cudgel after the Bush years and REALLY upped their game for the impending hypocrisy after the time of the ***** grabber.
I have trouble calling anything "corrupt" that is likely legal. You can make a case that the ability for lobbyists to draft legislation and our bastardized tax code which favors those with LOTS of money is the problem. It's moved the primary tax burden onto those that don't have enough money to pay for tax accountants to create lots of tax shelters. It's how some schlub like me pays >30% effective tax rate and that top .1% end up <10%.
That graph reminds me of TEXAS-ou 1999. Ou gets off to a promising start only to get bent over. That graph is early 1rst quarter ETA- far be it from this administration to lie about anything (#s included) to falsely prove a point
Something can be legal and corrupt I give you South America, but that’s is too strong of a word. I like bastardized better. And I am pretty much one of those schlubs.
Yep. I pointed out to my wife that we sit in the top 2.5% of income earners then I showed her how much we pay in taxes even with 3 sons in public college. The check I write to pay in for taxes each year is obscene. I'm in no-mans land, I make too much to get the benefit of any tax benefit (education deductions) and not enough to afford sexy tax accountant driven tax shelters. I consider myself some average middle-income dude that takes cheap vacations when I take them, life in a modestly updated tri-level house built in 1979 with average cars.
I'm no Trump defender on fiscal responsibility. He was a dumpster fire. I tore him a new one for it repeatedly and tore Trump supporters a new one several times for tolerating it. However, I think it's important to note that over $3T of Trump's debt was incurred in 2020, and let's just be honest. Most of us don't fault him for running a big deficit that year with all the Covid relief that was passed and generally supported on a bipartisan basis. There's no question that a Democrat would have spent at least as much and likely more. (Of course, the other $4-5T that was incurred from 2017-2019 is perfectly fair to rip him along with Congress for. Running deficits like that with the economy and revenue as strong as they were is totally indefensible.) It's also important to note that Biden is running a $676B deficit in about 9 months and is trying to add another $1.5T onto that infrastructure spending and another $3.5T on top of that. That isn't anything to brag about. It's like a 300 pound chick making fun of a 310 pound chick for being fat. Again, it's totally fair to rip Trump for being a fiscal trainwreck and to rip the GOP for being wildly hypocritical on being deficit hawks. He was and they are. However, that shouldn't be an excuse to try to do worse or a basis to defend bad policy.
That's a very fair assessment. I've been a proponent of significant deficit spending only in times of economic calamity. 2017 - 2019 didn't apply. In fact, we should have been using those good years to pay down the debt, not make it explode. I wasn't critical of the Covid relief packages because they were necessary given business shutting down and the lower rungs of our workforce not being able to work in many cases. I've been less supportive of the latter Covid relief packages. I support Manchin and Sinema's efforts to reign in the Infrastructure package. We NEED infrastructure improvements that only the Feds have deep enough pockets to help get started. It can't break the bank though. A bit disappointed that the "pay for" mechanism will be debt though billed as something else, not unlike Trump's tax cuts.
And this is the root of our debt problem. It's not the massive deficits we incur when we're in crises. It's the smaller but still very large deficits we run year-in-year-out. For example, a small deficit right after 9/11? OK. Deficits for a few years from 2009 - 2011? Defensible. The big deficit in 2020? Also perfectly sensible. The budget busting every other year? No justification. I'd prefer that we pay off debt when the economy is doing OK, but even if we just kept things in balance, we'd be fine, and the debt would pay off naturally as we make the normal interest payments.
I don't think anyone has really tried to argue that the GOP is being fiscally conservative or has cared about the debt in a while. There are some GOP pols that still consider it part of their wishlist but it hasn't been a priority for very many in a very long time. Here is the BIG difference between the GOP and Dem's on debt though. Dem's always want to kick off new programs that never ever go away. When a Dem proposes something like Free College...once that is on the books, people get hooked on this freebie and it never goes away. I don't always support the tax policy of the GOP and I think the recent Trump tax cuts were premature, but as you can clearly see in history...tax rates are readily adjustable up and down all the time. Lowering the tax rate may indeed reduce the governments collections and thereby the overall debt profile...BUT... and this is a big BUT... Dems priorities become new obligations into perpetuity which is what the Dems always seem to saddle us with even though we can't even really afford the entitlements we've already promised.
Take SS/Medicare out of the equation and you could make an argument that the Dems social safety net programs are not much different in cost than the R's focus on military entanglements and programs. Those military costs never go away either. The moment some major program is cancelled it's replaced by another program. I don't prefer either spending but if we are going to spend then taxes should be commensurate with the government we want. I'd love it if every new war we jumped into we increased taxes to pay for it.
