60 billion to 100 billion increase is quite a significant shift. What you see is what a blind man sees as he walks off a cliff. You are not my friend, that's called sarcasm there partner. Lookie here kido, you need to get some education in that brain of yours because truly you don't have a clue. Yeah, I'm a prick and all, but gosh darn it, I'm sick of dealing with morons.
How many days can he be on TV saying the same stuff? Nothing is happening with Democrats but that the president blesses it. He is the boss of the negotiations. It doesn't become his office for him to participate in the everyday public bickering. He has spokespeople and officials and leaders in Congress for that. He went on national TV to explain the issue to the American people and then he said he was confident Congress would be able to compromise and pass something to avert default. They already know his limit and it is an incredibly generous one. It is not an offer that merely gives away the farm but delivers it too. As I said before and you agreed, he's made them all sorts of offers, ones that would have been unimaginable for any Democrat president even 6 months ago, and the Republicans have said no to everything. Now it is up to them to see if they want to continue participating in the governance of this country or if they are bound and determined to drive it off a cliff, presumably with the insane notion that that would be to the public good. I think Obama went as far as he could go with the oppo party saying no to everything. I think he understands that having his name directly attached to the negotiations will serve to alienate the extreme-wingers from supporting anything. While working hard behind the scenes to try to avert default, he seems to be respectfully, if impatiently, giving them a couple days to find out if they are willing to raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances. If not, the parties' positions being once and for all clear on the matter, I would hope he would act unilaterally, as a last result, in order to save the damn republic. The more I read though the more I think Reid (and Obama) is hoping to get Boehner's bill so they can amend it to cover the period through 2013 and then send it back. If that happens, and it seems the most likely to me now of several unlikely possibilities, the Tea Party caucus will go crazy, but Boehner and a chunk of House Republicans would join the vast majority of House Democrats in passing and Obama will sign the "Boehner-Reid" plan into law, allowing everyone in the leadership to save maximum face. Boehner may likely to lose his speakership over it but that may be just as likely to happen no matter what he does at this point. He has, in any case, the distinction of being one the Republicans that actually wants a deal and he would have signed onto the "grand bargain," with 4X the debt reduction of his latest plan, much of that in SS, Medicare and Medicaid, in a heartbeat. And he would have been brilliant to do so as a matter of serving his party's interests. If this happens, and even Rush Limbaugh pretty much predicted it would on his show today, there is going to be a bill that represents real, clear compromise and it will be handed into Boehner and his caucus's laps to make the decision: deal or default. I actually trust Boehner to do the right thing and fight for passing the Reid/Senate-amended deal at the last minute. He's pretty much toast anyway. He may as well lose his position to lunatics while doing what he knows to be the right thing. I think Obama's heart is still with the grand bargain, an amazing deal for Republicans, and the one that cuts the debt about 400% more than any other plan from either side. And I think both Obama and the Republicans would have gotten what they wanted if the Tea Party caucus weren't so badly misinformed and just flat stupid. I think that if there were any reasonable number of Republicans in the House, while that deal would be disastrous in many ways, a winning coalition would have been made by the most centrist R's and D's, making it truly a bipartisan bill (though both poles will have been left out), and (like it or not - I don't) it would have been a major accomplishment for Obama and an even greater win for the GOP. So why didn't the GOP bite at the most delicious meal they could ever have imagined? Two reasons: To protect at all cost record the lowest tax rates for the rich in decades, and to deny Obama a victory. This is where we have come to now.
You are being insincere with your implication Mr. Clutch. The president has been leading from the beginning. He is the one who put cuts to SS and Medicare on the table to get a deal done. He was the one who has been calling members of congress to the WH for weeks trying to reason with them. Oops! I see the Batman was much more eloquent than I
Republicans and Democrats alike should be disgusted the the Tea Party is effectively holding the country hostage and risking economic disaster in order to push through their agenda NOT supported by most Americans. This is not democracy. The Tea Party has created it's own grave. It's time for sensible Republicans to abandon them and work with Dems to save our economy.
Well, it's 7-29, let's see what this congressionally-manufactured debt limit battle has accomplished thus far: 1. (maybe)hastened a credit limit downgrade that will cost billions to trilllions to US taxpayers in the long run 2. weakened Boehner to the point where he can't even pass gimme-layup bills among his own partisans 3. Distracted attention from "less important" economic issues like, you know, unemployment and economic growth and if we're lucky, we'll have 4. panic, chaos and a second recession. Fantastic job guys.
"Soon after Obama took office he pledged that his administrated would cut the deficit in half. Closing in on the last year of his term his pledge made in February of 2009 is laughable, and just another item on his list of lies."
Please. You don't get to spend four years working to obstruct and undercut someone every step of the way then accuse them of lying when he doesn't succeed because of your obstruction and undercutting. Typical right-wing mentality: can't think for yourself, so you just copy-paste whatever quote the latest Faux News talking head tells you to. Go back to whichever rock you crawled out from under.
