Debt Ceiling & Obama’s Politics Of Fear

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As the debt ceiling debate heats up, with offers of spend, spend, and spend some more from Obama (as he increases taxes) and demands for spending cuts from the Republicans these statements from a few of the freshmen Republicans makes me so glad that we were able to get them into Congress:

If President Obama thought he could rattle House Republicans with his warning on Tuesday that Social Security checks might get held up in the event the debt limit was not raised soon, he was mistaken.

“That’s not leadership; that is sad and pathetic,” said Representative Allen West, a freshman Republican representing thousands of Social Security recipients in South Florida. He said the president and Treasury secretary could pay pressing federal obligations out of money still coming in, and if they say they cannot, “Then they are liars.”

…The clout of the freshmen and other House conservatives was clearly seen in the decision by Speaker John A. Boehner to pull back from trying to reach a sweeping deficit deal that would have taken new revenue while tinkering with Bush-era tax cuts that many House Republicans hold sacrosanct. Freshman lawmakers say it was their insistence that has also led House Republican leaders to set a vote for next week on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

“A month and a half ago, the leadership was laughing about the notion of a balanced budget amendment,” said Representative Joe Walsh, a freshman from Illinois. “They are not laughing now.”

Sad and pathetic describes President Obama’s administration to a T.

So what’s been happening today, other than Obama’s scaremongering? The Republicans were holding firm on their insistence that spending being reduced and NO tax being raised but then Senator McConnell came in with this monkey wrench:

In a nutshell, the President would get to raise the debt ceiling three times in the next year at several billion bucks a pop without making any spending cuts unless two-thirds of both houses of Congress disagree. In his press conference, McConnell says he would not give the President “unilateral authority to make spending cuts on his own,” but this plan would allow the President to raise the debt ceiling pretty much automatically. As the Politico notes,

Senate Republicans are actively pursuing a new plan under which the debt ceiling would grow in three increments over the remainder of this Congress unless lawmakers approve a veto-proof resolution of disapproval.

In effect lawmakers would be surrendering the very power of approval that the GOP has used to force the debt crisis now. But by taking the disapproval route, Republicans can shift the onus more onto the White House and Democrats since a two-thirds majority will be needed to stop any increase that President Barack Obama requests.

Yes, instead of putting the burden on the White House, McConnell would make it damn near impossible to block a debt ceiling increase. We’ve seen this before. The House once had the Gephardt rule that required the debt ceiling vote be attached to a more popular measure so members of Congress could escape a tough vote.

On first blush I’m not liking it.

There was a reason for the Republicans pretty much running the board in the 2010 elections and this is not it.

You know who is liking it? The Democrats:

A back-up plan proposed by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell that would keep the U.S. government from defaulting on its debts next month is viable and under consideration by Senate Democrats, according to Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber.

“We’re talking about it as one of the options, yes,” Durbin said in response to a question about whether the McConnell plan is viable.

So are the lib’s.

This tells me quite enough about this “compromise”

His scaremongering is just that. Anyone who has taken a High School Civics class can tell you that Congress can only appropriate funds, it is up to the Executive branch to spend it….which means the President CAN prioritize spending. Where do you think he should send the money first? Foreign aid or the obligations made to the American people who have ALREADY put money in (and which was supposed to stay there). How about the porkbarrel projects that are federally funded? Think they should get paid before Social Security?

Dafydd: (read the entire thing especially his summation of the Obama presidency)

Money comes into the American treasury all the time: quarterly tax payments, corporate taxes, employee withholding, sales of government property, fees, licenses, and so forth. I understand that such continuous income greatly exceeds the bare-bones payment obligations of the United States government — entitlement payments and debt service. In other words, we have enough revenue to meet those obligations; just not enough to meet them in addition to all the other expensive projects that the Obamunists want to fund at the same time. (What’s most galling, of course, is that Barack Obama himself and his cronies in Congress are the very culprits who brought on this terrible financial catastrophe in the first place. “Look what I made you make me do!”)

The obvious solution presents itself.

Every large corporation must have a budget; and every such budget must, among other requirements, prioritize the corporation’s financial obligations: What gets paid first? What gets paid second, third, nth? I suspect that if a publicly traded corporation was so mismanaged that it didn’t even have a contingency plan for what bills to pay if it experienced a sudden revenue shortfall, not only would it be liable for massive lawsuits, but the SEC and the Justice Department might open a criminal investigation of the corporate officers.

Thinking of the federal government as the nation’s largest (if not the world’s largest) corporation, then mustn’t it, too, have a heirarchy of payments to guide the president during a temporary shortfall? Isn’t the obvious lack of such an emergency plan, resulting in threats to withhold pledged funds to those who could literally die from such embezzlement — which is what the president’s threat amounts to — the very definition of financial malfeasance and nonfeasance?

McConnell wants to walk hand in hand with the Democrats who have gotten us into this mess to “reassure the markets,”…I’m not buying it:

Politicians seeking to “reassure markets” and protect defaulters gave us TARP and AIG and Fannie Mae bailouts.

When is enough enough?

Exit video:

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Here’s another view of the McConnell plan.

It’s now gotten to the point that the GOP resembles a kind of “political Lehman Brothers” — stuck in that extreme cognitive dissonance where they think their theology is infallible even as the chasm opens up beneath them. Unlike Lehman, the GOP is “too big to fail”. It would be just and good for the GOP and conservatives to see the fruits of their blind fundamentalism.

But too many other people get hurt in the process. We can’t let natural consequences work the way out, because, like Citigroup or AIG, letting the market work would punish too many people too hard for conservative flat-earthism.

Where is that “universe-forking-machine” when you really need it? Such a moment for pedagogy, here. The Republicans want to — how did Buffett put it? — “put a gun to our head and blow the economy’s brains out”. The cost of a vivid and powerful teaching moment on the dangers of such fundamentalism would be too high. The grown-ups left in the process will have to accommodate the “badass” kids, somehow.

-TS

There is lots of money on a monthly basis to pay interest, Social Security, the military, etc.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/official-treasury-reports-coffers-full-e

@dscott:

This is just amazing to me. Do conservatives now see Geithner, an unelected bureaucrat, making the spending decisions over more than $150,000MM a month? It’s just surreal to think this is what the right is thinking is a workable outcome of this… If Geithner decides to pay for social benefits, and that, in his view, we need to cut military funding, full stop, as a way to keep our creditors paid up, are conservatives thinking this is just how things work out per their plan???

-TS

There are some in the GOP who haven’t learned their lesson with liberals. They aren’t rational and shouldn’t be expected to act in a rational manner. McConnell just doesn’t believe Obama would dare not to fund the military. He just doesn’t understand Obama at all and is making the mistake of thinking if he McConnell were put in the situation, logically he would do x, never considering Obama has a totally different worldview and would do y. If Obama were given this power as McConnell suggests Obama would promptly run up the debt to it’s maximum limits, spend every penny then turn around and blame the GOP for being stingy, mean and otherwise against the poor and elderly for imposing a debt limit.

We are dealing with someone who has a hidden end game or is completely irresponsibly incompetent in believing their ideology without a reality check. For 2 1/2 years Obama has had his reality check of Keynesian stimulus failure but continues to insist just another $100 billion here and another $100 billion there will do the trick, just keep trying, don’t give up because prosperity is just around the corner. Obama can’t accept his worldview is wrong and so like a cult member just keeps banging his head on the wall until the world starts to look proper. Obama can’t be negotiated with that should now become clear to everyone in the GOP leadership. Obama left to his own devices would literally spend $100 trillion, still get the same results and then turn around to blame the GOP for sabotaging his efforts because you know he, like all liberals, has good intentions and anyone who opposes him is just plain evil.

How are the democrats going to vote on a balanced budget amendment when they haven’t voted on a budget for two years?  They haven’t been able to CREATE a budget, balanced or unbalanced.

This reminds me of a guy that worked at a gas station that him and I joked around with each other.  One time I saw him balancing a tire.  I asked him, “How can you balance a tire when you’re unbalanced yourself?”  Congress is trying to balance the Federal budget, but they are unbalanced themselves.  We need to get rid of the unbalanceable tires in congress and put on new tires.

I am drawing Social Security, but I paid into it all of my working life.  Now, our King-in-Chief tells me that if the republicans don’t play along with him I won’t get the money I have coming to me.  This is more of “The Chicago way” stuff Obama is used to.

@TS:

If Geithner decides to pay for social benefits, and that, in his view, we need to cut military funding, full stop, as a way to keep our creditors paid up, are conservatives thinking this is just how things work out per their plan???

So there’s not enough money to pay for the spending?

I think that’s the message, don’t you?

@DrJohn:
That’s not even a child-like depth of understanding of the problem. Of course there’s a shortfall, that isn’t a factor that’s been missed – that is what’s driving the problem. Where I work, for example, when we get “upside down” in some part of the business, losing money in an ongoing way, something’s got to give. But the conservative view is “let it burn, baby”. That is a method that does address the problem, but it ways that are gratuitously destructive; instead of organizing an orderly retreat, transforming that part of a business to a more efficient model or even withdrawing to a much smaller footprint in the space, which very often requires extra financing (that means borrowing) to facilitate an efficient transition, we could just “let it crash”.

Shareholder value takes it on the chin that way though, and that’s the mark that you have fools at the command of the ship. In business, often you need to access more capital to make an efficient move to a more profitable, sustainable, and growth-oriented new stance. “Let it burn” just… results in valuable and needed resources being gratuitously wiped out.

That’s bad enough when (for me) it’s a matter of loss of shareholder value. This is all the more disturbing from conservatives, who often make a lot of noise about being “business savvy”, when you consider that “let it burn” is not just destroying shareholder value, but causing real and present hardships and economic suffering for average Joes and Janes on Main Street thanks to this flat-earth mentality of modern “right-wingery” (“conservative” seems a pathetic euphemism now for the right wing).

-TS

Curt, I thank you for including the information from Dafydd at Big Lizards. His (and your) comments are quite correct. Now it is up to us voters to charge this president and administration with financial malfeasance and nonfeasance and vote it out of office.

All of the discussions of ”cutting the size of government” are lies.
Even Paul Ryan’s Plan.
None of them shrink the spending by the federal government.
Even the Ryan Plan (the most conservative plan on the table) merely slows the rate of GROWTH of the federal government.
What would happen if we really tried to CUT government spending instead of simply cutting the rate of government growth?
People would go apoplectic!
(Look at the states for examples of crazed loons going nuts over mere budgetary responsibility.)
There has been both abdication of Congress to its Constitutional duties as well as usurpation by the Executive of Constitutionally Congressional duties.
I wonder if we can even get back on track.
I hope so.
MConnell’s idea is simply more abdication.
I hope it goes down to defeat.

How is it that we, Republicans, never get a leader who will fight for our issues? Obama is a tool, an idiot, but at least he does fight for his side.

GWB only did 12 vetoes in his 8 years. Clinton did 37.

Why do “our” leaders always roll-over and bitch-up to the liberals?

Because their words are about collecting votes while their actions are about collecting money.

The take that you get on this from Fox News and the take that you get on it from MSNBC might lead you to believe that they’re talking about two different, but loosely related issues.

Speaking of MSNBC, have you noticed (if you’re a Comcast customer) that Comcast service has been getting worse and worse since they purchased NBC, and now that they have gone to Digital, there is no significant difference in picture quality, but we receive less features on our TV than we had before the government got them to change to Digital? It benefited only them, not their customers. What a sleazy company, imo. Ever notice, also, that whatever Democrats touch, it turns to sh*t? What do Democrats contribute that we couldn’t do without? They are such liars, thieves, con artists and chronic screw-ups – all of them.

re: #13

Yup. The lying S.O.B.s are going to ban all incandescent light bulbs and force everybody to buy compact fluorescent lights filled with poison gas. All homes will be inspected for compliance by members of Obama’s Civilian Security Forces, consisting of New Black Panthers and former Acorn employees. It’s all part of the Democrats’ official Politics of Fear campaign.

As usual greg, unable to address the damaging proof presented in the thread, launches an attack.
A pathetic tu quoque attempt on your part comrade greg.

@Ivan: #11

There are no republicans or democrats any more. Over the years the government has become a contest to see who can get the most for themselves. There are many people, organizations, and countries trying to infiltrate our government to turn it into what THEY want. They are succeeding more so now than ever, thanks in part to the propaganda media. We need to put republicans in office at the next election, then the next one we need to vote ALL POLITICIANS out and start over.

Obama just says what he thinks will scare the biggest swath of the electorate. He has no moral compass that tells him not to frighten seniors and disabled folks when it comes to the checks they depend on. He is a self serving narcissist to the core and an ideologue to boot. What a horrid combination.

“Obama just says what he thinks will scare the biggest swath of the electorate. He has no moral compass that tells him not to frighten seniors and disabled folks when it comes to the checks they depend on.”

Do you think what republicans have been saying for months hasn’t scared them already?

@Wilson:

You mean like stating the FACT we will pass on this debt to our grandchildren if we don’t address it now?
Little hint for you since you seem to need it- obama lied and the GOP did not.

It’s nice to see and hear that we actually have a few Republicans with some backbone. That was sickening to watch and listen as the Nancy, Reid, Suchmucher, and the lot were all praising McConnels betrayal again. What would be really encouraging would be if someone, anyone really knew just how much money would be available to pay the debts if the deal fails. Its as if the men and women that were elected are in a fog on both sides. And these are the keepers of our national budget. Damn scary. And now Obi acting like a petulent child who has refused to eat his peas, and stomps away from the table. While a whole nation is held hostage. Fine let him be the first president to not pay the bills in our nations history. He can add that embarassing fact to his ever growing list of failures.

@Wilson: You said:

Do you think what republicans have been saying for months hasn’t scared them already?

Please offer an example of the GOP lying about the national debt, or about Obama’s deficits.

I will wait for your reply…