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© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.No progress in U.S. debt talks as deadline looms
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Serrano
This is all Reagan, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's fault.
chewitup
For the poor constituents that is fine.
For the rich constitutents, it was a stupid pledge to make and they should renig or be forced to.
Cue Sith apprentices to come defend the 25 percent who hold 85 percent of the wealth who will try to con us into believing that the 75 percent who hold only 15 percent of the wealth can and should pay our debts even if it means they have to live in a teepee in the woods and eat roots and berries.
tkoind2
I cannot help but think that Lehman shock was just round one in what will be a long struggle to avoid a new global depression.
What is clear, is that we need to rethink the global economic system including debt. It may be time to wipe the slate clean and try to start again. Otherwise our current system will drag us all down with it.
BreitbartVictorious
We've gone 800 days without a federal budget. Why should we let an ideologue like Obama raise spending on a budget we can't see?
paulinusa
"House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that Republicans controlling the lower chamber are willing to compromise on legislation increasing the government’s borrowing authority."
The question is whether John Boehner is in control of the nut-jobs in his party. If he were, this would have been settled a while ago. The Repubicans should have taken the previous deals that were scuttled and declared victory. Instead they are overplaying their hand.
BreitbartVictorious
But it was Obama, evidently not a poker player, who recently admitted to Cantor he is the one who is bluffing.
"Eric , don't call my bluff. I'm going to the American people with this."
SamuraiBlue
Sound like the Republicans are a bunch of Lemmings wanting to jump off a cliff. Basically the above promise is an oxymoron since if you can't raise taxes and is bound to lower them whenever possible then at the end there will be no taxes to collect defeating the purpose of a government.
BreitbartVictorious
The American people have no idea what Democrats are pledged to. 800 days with no federal budget is a perfect example.
paulinusa
Breitbart: That was how Cantor related their exchange. And please stop repeating the "800 days without a budget" stuff. Your comments are mostly lifted verbatim from right wing talking points.
Skeptical Hippo
So they made it their own law that the country (those in charge of it) cannot borrow more than $14.3 trillion, then they borrowed right up to that figure and now they want ........ what?
BreitbartVictorious
In 2006, when faced with a similar proposal on raising the debt limit, every single Democrat member of Congress (including Illinois Senator Barack Obama) voted against it.
Obama, in 2006 : "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit."
BreitbartVictorious
I forgot that facts are off the table when dealing with leftists. I will try harder.
Laguna
The existence of these Tea Party freshmen is proof that the Republican war against education is working, at least in the South.
samwatters
"I cannot help but think that Lehman shock was just round one in what will be a long struggle to avoid a new global depression."
@tkoind2, I hope you are wrong but fear you may be right. There is a new wave of foreclosures around the corner according to some analysts. They are called "Option Arms" and "ALT A" mortages. They were issued just after the "sub-prime loans." They were mortages that started with unreasonably low payments but those payments increase 2-to-5 fold over the next year. These mortgages are due to begin defaulting in the fall.
"What is clear, is that we need to rethink the global economic system including debt. It may be time to wipe the slate clean and try to start again. Otherwise our current system will drag us all down with it." I could not agree with you more!
SuperLib
Hang on, I'm having trouble following your posts....
BreitbartVictoriousJul. 22, 2011 - 10:40AM JST : 800 days with no federal budget is a perfect example.
BreitbartVictoriousJul. 22, 2011 - 09:56AM JST : We've gone 800 days without a federal budget.
BreitbartVictoriousJul. 20, 2011 - 02:40AM JST: 800 days without a budget.
BreitbartVictoriousJul. 19, 2011 - 07:33PM JST: The republic has gone 8 0 0 (eight hundred) days with no budget.
BreitbartVictoriousJul. 19, 2011 - 09:59AM JST: More than 800 days without presenting the American people a budget.
Do a Google search for "800 days without a budget" and you'll see how it's been a favorite talking point for some. There's even a YouTube video called "Talking with Todd: 800 days without a budgett." hehehe.
Have you guys printed the bumper stickers yet?
Moderator
There is no need to stalk another poster.
SuperLib
What's happening is the world's most dangerous game of chicken, all because a handful of elected officials are afraid that they will become one-term losers.
You can lower the debt over time. Everyone wants that. But you don't have to do it in a way that creates so much collateral damage that we all lose in the end. The Tea Party needs to actually stand up and educate their voters but they simply don't have the spine to do it. They just want to repeat the same mindless phrase of "no taxes" and get the votes while they can. I'm sure that by this point the senior leadership of the Republican party has sat down with them and explained the situation. But these guy lives in a vacuum and they obviously just don't get it. Yeah, we all like to hear about new blood coming to Washington and changing things. We'd just prefer it if they didn't destroy everything.
yokomoc
The 2008 financial crisis, the following debt crisis, the Arab revolutions are all just indicators that we've reached a breaking point in sustainability of the human population. It would be great if it was as easy as to just call all debts quits start over but that's overly idealistic and impractical, and unfair to the debtholders. The opportunity is there to start evolving to a new system based on sustainable use of resources but that requires forward thinking leaders. The guys we have just now mostly operate out of fear of the next election and out of paying back their own debts to the CEOs who got them there.
You have to understand as well that our debts are not just monetary. We have massive debts to the earth and the ecosystem that supports us. Carbon debts from the oil, coal and gas we've extracted and released into the atmosphere and ocean that will start to charge extortionate interest rates as the carbon sinks like the oceans and rainforests max out and become net carbon emitters, while the permafrosts melt releasing the methane trapped below. These debts become monetary as we pay more and more on disaster relief, and have to fast-track renewable energy and carbon extraction technologies into production decades later than they're required. We have potable water debts to the underground aquifers our intensive farming practices are drying up, and to the dry riverbeds and dying ecosystems below our dams. The resources we're dependent on are limited and dwindling, our credit card is overdrawn.
So no stable system is going to emerge before the failings of the old one are corrected for. There needs to be a lengthy transition period and it's not going to be painless.
My own feeling is that any change is going to come from the bottom up. There's already a growing groundswell of people power emerging worldwide connected by the internet. In future I can see true government by the people come in the form of e-government. There won't be elections, people can simply set their positions on various topics stored in a central database, which the people in government are then required to act upon. The people will be their own constitution. But the current systems of government are barely 20th Century never mind 21st Century so it'll take some brave nations to make the first moves to any new system.
BreitbartVictorious
superlib
Was it the world's most dangerous game of chicken back in '95, when the $4.9 trillion debt limit was reached and Congress refused to raise the debt ceiling? Nothing happened. We did not default on our debt.
Frustration with Obama's manifold failures is really getting to Laguna.
BreitbartVictorious
Global? The problems are not global. There are nations out there which can boast of having their house in order.
Athletes
In the reality, no politicians has a magic wand to reducing the debt level as more sustainable. For winning the election, every presidential candidate has to give sweet promises to voters. Such as medicare and tax cut. They have no money to pay for it. The easiest way is selling the government bond for rasing the debt.
Before Bush was elected, he promised more tax cuts and he waged two wasteful wars which has no exit strategy. He ruined US economy and made the nation broke. Obama also promised unaffordable health care and pensions. His visions are out of touch too. Both of them raised US debt for getting higher.
US has been getting the trade deficit and budget defecit for a long time. There was a drain of huge resources from two pro long wars too. Unless there will be more export than import, buget will be still red for a long time. It is right time for painful adjustment. Deep spending cut is required. Politicians have to stop playing golf and cut their salaries and benefits first. Later on, defence and public spending too. Charge any migrant for migration fee who wants a green card in states. It will raise the government revenue in overtime. All free trade agreements have to abolished for the safety of American jobs.
If not, default is an only answer for sky rocketted debt problem.
Laguna
This is what you do: take a monotheistic religion and marry it to a political agenda by endless repetition. Then, make your country manifest of that deity's will, and voila! - you've created a world in which compromise is not just undesirable, it is evil, in which good-spirited opposition is seen as an effort to perpetuate evil, and in which dialog with the opposition is no better than dialog with the devil. This is the strategy one wing of the Republican party has taken, and now that that strategy has taken root, they are forced to ride it to its logical conclusion.
I have no problem in debate and disagreement with those of goodwill, those who hold opinions based upon observable, arguable fact. There are many in both parties who, fortunately, retain this sanity. I do have a problem with this radical Republican wing, with which there is no reasoning and for whom the very suggestion of disagreement with their agenda automatically implies traitor at best or demon at worst.
There seems to be a group of conservatives who are too intelligent to fall for this Tea Party propaganda but nonetheless encourage it as a means to achieve their ends, and their ends are quite clear: they want the American government out of American life. They are welcome to their opinion, of course, but as their efforts to achieve this legitimately have failed successively, they have taken to mendacious methods. Krugman has accurately described the US government as an insurance company with an army; these people would like nothing more than to downsize the government to include nothing but the latter.
Eliminating such insurance programs does nothing to eliminate their need, of course; in fact, their elimination will ultimately drive up costs as economies of scale are reduced. Americans have made clear repeatedly in the past that they do not want this. Utilizing an artificially created "budget crisis" to achieve their long-standing aims is this group's response to electoral rejection. Their mechanisms are dangerous and damaging, not just to American financial health but to the very concept of what it means to be an American. They will fail, but not without leaving a large amount of collateral damage.
yokomoc
I'm curious which nations you'd include in this, and why?
BreitbartVictorious
Agreed. The modern progressive movement is basically a substitute religion.
johninnaha
yokomoc
Superb!
Total agreement!
Thank you!
BreitbartVictorious
This newest deadline (Aug 2) is the fourth that tax cheat Treasury Sec Tim Geithner has said we must exceed or else the world will end.
It's just more of the Democrat plan - Crisis! crisis! we need to spend more!
BreitbartVictorious
3:58 should read
This newest deadline (Aug 2) is the fourth that tax cheat Treasury Sec Tim Geithner has said we must not exceed or else the world will end.
Triumvere
And the modern 'conservative' movement isn't?
Taka313
I cannot understand the thinking of people who want to severely cut government spending. For some reason, they think they will get their services cheaper and better.
They would rather pay FEDEX $10 to send grandma a Christmas card because they think the 43 cents from the U.S. Postal Service is communism or something like that.
We're not talking about America's best and brightest here.
Taka
yokomoc
Taka, research shows that e.g. the food stamp program contributes around $1.75 for every $1 paid out. Poor people spend the money they have available, the wealthy send more of it offshore where it does not contribute to production. Simple truths there.
yokomoc
Hey you got an answer to this?
BreitbartVictorious
taka313
The U.S. Postal Service lost 8.5 billion in 2010.
But I will still capitalize their name.
BreitbartVictorious
Do the search yourself. You have been in Japan too long.
yokomoc
There's no search involved - it's a matter of interpretation. I want to know which countries you believe 'have their house in order' and why. It's not a difficult question. Back up your stupid claims for once.
johninnaha
The only country to have its house in order is the good old U.S. of A., isn't it Breitbart?
Serrano
Taka313: "I cannot understand the thinking of people who want to severely cut government spending"
Then you cannot understand the thinking of most Americans.