Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Mitch McConnell Forced by Tea Party to Vote For Debt Limit

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The House quietly voted to raise the debt limit this week and it signals that at least some of the right-wing extremists realize they need to avoid more lose-lose situations no matter what their die-hard convictions. Creating false emergencies over the economy of the United States and watching the Stock Market fall isn't a good idea in an election year. But apparently Senator Ted Cruz didn't get the memo, and immediately vowed to filibuster the whole thing again. His rabble-rousing in the Senate created drama yesterday when suddenly there weren't enough votes to pass what should have been a no-brainer vote to raise the debt limit.

In the end, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was pushed by his own right-wing contingency to vote "Aye" on the Debt Limit bill, creating a no-win situation for him. This year he is facing not only a Tea Party opponent in the Kentucky Republican Primary, but also a really strong threat in Alison Lundergan Grimes, his Democratic adversary. He has to appeal to the independents in order to save his bacon, but the Tea Party doesn't care about that - they see him as a RINO (Republican in Name Only) because very occasionally he shows signs of sanity. So of course they jumped on him when this vote came down.

According to this video paid for by Jim DeMint's Heritage Foundation, all this bipartisanship just shows that McConnell is a damned librul' BULLY, just like the IRS and Obama. How dare he expect that Senate Conservatives would ever vote for something that might help the country!











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From the New Yorker
There was a rare outbreak of sanity in the Grand Old Party on Tuesday, when Speaker John Boehner and a group of his allies joined with the Democrats to approve a raise in the debt ceiling without any preconditions, thereby avoiding the risk of the United States defaulting on its financial obligations. Never fear, though: the outbreak has been contained, and there doesn’t seem to be any danger of contagion.
By Wednesday morning, Senator Ted Cruz, the Texan firebrand, appeared to threaten to filibuster a Senate vote on the debt ceiling, and the Tea Partiers, gold bugs, Randians, birthers, anti-government bootboys, and other assorted wing nuts that make up a big part of the party’s base were happily ranting on about Boehner’s perfidy. If there’s one thing your typical Republican activist likes more than berating President Obama and the Democrats it’s attacking traitors and yellowbellies in his (or her) own ranks, and, once again, the long-suffering Speaker of the House is the primary target.

From WSJ
The drama came as the Senate began consideration of a suspension of the federal borrowing limit. The tension was not on the debt-ceiling vote itself, but on a procedural move that requires 60 senators to vote yes. That meant the chamber’s 55 Democrats needed five Republicans to move forward.
But who would the five Republicans be?
That question was apparently not answered in advance, and it ended up being settled out in the open, on the Senate floor.
. . . Before long, the doors to the Republican cloakroom swung open and a phalanx of Republicans marched down the aisle to the well of the Senate to switch their votes to Yes, including Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, John McCain of Arizona, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Orrin Hatch of Utah.
The tally hit 67. Mr. McConnell shook hands with Ms. Murkowski. Mr. Hatch hugged Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), who had also voted “yes.” Relief spread as the risk of a market-rattling defeat of the bill lifted.

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It should have been a very easy vote. In my view every Senate Republican should have stood together and said what every single one of us tells our constituents back home, which is that we will not go along with raising the debt ceiling while doing nothing to fix the underlying out of control spending problem.
~ Senator Ted Cruz R-Texas

Kentucky and America can literally no longer afford such financially reckless behavior from the likes of Mitch McConnell.
~ Matt Bevin, McConnell's GOP opponent in Kentucky Senate race

GOP Tea Party Anger Directed at Mitch:















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Monday, February 25, 2013

Republican Hack Bob Woodward Blames Obama for Sequester

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Republican Bob Woodward in The Washington Post
Misunderstanding, misstatements and all the classic contortions of partisan message management surround the sequester, the term for the $85 billion in ugly and largely irrational federal spending cuts set by law to begin Friday.

What is the non-budget wonk to make of this? Who is responsible? What really happened?

. . . Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.

Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, “We didn’t actually think it would be that hard to convince them” — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. “It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table.”

. . . So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made.





The White House pushback is a classic case of distortion and confusion. We unfortunately have seen this too often in recent presidential history. First, the White House spent months denying paternity for the sequester. To Jay Carney's credit, he acknowledged [Tuesday] it was their ‘idea.’ [Carney: ‘The sequester was something that was discussed, and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward because it was put forward by Republican Senator Gramm and Rudman back in the ‘80s as part of the Gramm-Rudman deal -- there is a history here to this.’] But they do not want to talk about that now. The rest of the White House statement reflects a confusion of chronology. I do not think it is willful. They are just mixed up, surprisingly so.
~ Bob Woodward in an email to Politico



The argument is silly.
You can't start a discussion about the sequester without starting with the broader context. The sequester was offered during the GOP's unprecedented threat to not raise the debt ceiling, potentially putting the U.S. into default.
If offering spending cuts two years down the road is the only way to avoid such a calamity then a U.S. President should offer that 100 times out of 100. But is it really Obama's "fault"? The sequester wouldn't even be a term anyone knows if it weren't for the debt ceiling nonsense.
~ Joe Wiesenthal on Business Insider



To argue that the White House is "moving the goal posts" when it now asks for revenue in a sequestration replacement, you have to toss out the fact that the White House always wanted revenue in the supercommittee's sequestration replacement. This isn't confusing unless reporters make it confusing.
~ David Weigel on Slate







I don’t agree with my colleague Bob Woodward, who says the Obama administration is “moving the goalposts” when they insist on a sequester replacement that includes revenues. I remember talking to both members of the Obama administration and the Republican leadership in 2011, and everyone was perfectly clear that Democrats were going to pursue tax increases in any sequester replacement, and Republicans were going to oppose tax increases in any sequester replacement. What no one knew was who would win.
. . . Here in DC, we can get a bit buried in Beltway minutia. The ongoing blame game over who concocted the sequester is an excellent example. But it’s worth remembering that the goalposts in American politics aren’t set in backroom deals between politicians. They’re set in elections. And in the 2012 election, the American people were very clear on where they wanted the goalposts moved to.
~ Ezra Klein on Washington Post



. . . in this case Woodward is just dead wrong. Obama and Democrats have always insisted that a balanced mix of spending cuts and higher taxes replace sequestration. It’s true that John Boehner wouldn’t agree to include new taxes in the enforcement mechanism itself, and thus that the enforcement mechanism he and Obama settled upon — sequestration — is composed exclusively of spending cuts. But the entire purpose of an enforcement mechanism is to make sure that the enforcement mechanism is never triggered. The key question is what action it was designed to compel. And on that score, the Budget Control Act is unambiguous.
First: “Unless a joint committee bill achieving an amount greater than $1,200,000,000,000 in deficit reduction as provided in section 401(b)(3)(B)(i)(II) of the Budget Control Act of 2011 is enacted by January 15, 2012, the discretionary spending limits listed in section 251(c) shall be revised, and discretionary appropriations and direct spending shall be reduced.”
Key words: “deficit reduction.” Not “spending cuts.” If Republicans wanted to make sure sequestration would be replaced with spending cuts only, that would have been the place to make a stand. Some of them certainly tried. But that’s not what ultimately won the day.
~ Brian Beutler on Talking Points Memo















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Friday, February 15, 2013

Banker Poutrage as Senator Elizabeth Warren Kicks Ass


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I want to note that there are district attorneys and U.S. attorneys who are out there everyday squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial to ‘make an example,’ as they put it. I am really concerned that too-big-to-fail has become too-big-for-trial.
. . . nobody believes that the banks' books are honest. Second, would be that nobody believes that the banks are really manageable. That is, if they are too complex either for their own institutions to manage them or for the regulators to manage them.
~ Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, to Bank Regulators


From Upworthy
  • At 1:20, she asks the question we've all been wanting someone to ask FOREVER. Then a government lawyer stumbles over his words.
  • At 2:20, she rattles off another one. Then a government lawyer stumbles over his words.
  • At 2:55, she asks another lawyer the same question. Said lawyer then tries to not stumble over her words.
  • At 3:25, she asks the same question again. That lawyer asks for some time.
  • At 3:45, she gets our back and goes for the knockout punch.
  • And then right after that you reward her good behavior by sharing this with everyone on the Internet. You know you want to.





WARREN TERRIFIES BANKERS IN FIRST HEARING
~ Headline on Politico's Morning Money

While Senator Warren had every right to ask pointed questions at today's Senate Banking Committee hearing, her claim that 'nobody believes' that bank books are honest is just plain wrong. Perhaps someone ought to remind the Senator that the campaign is over and she should act accordingly if she wants to be taken seriously.
~ An Anonymous "Top Executive" Angry at Elizabeth Warren

People love when Warren squares off on Wall Street. It delights them, the sight of a bespectacled middle-aged professor absolutely hammering suit-clad financiers.
. . . She is ...talking to Wall Street in a way it's not used to hearing from elected officials, and it's making her a rising star in the Democratic Party. Bankers should probably stop griping, and start getting used to it.
~ Kevin Roose on NY Mag

The more scared the banksters get, the more satisfied I am.
Go get 'em, Sen Warren!
We couldn't be more proud!
~ RillyKewl on Huffington Post

Today's Headline on Huffington Post:
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They say when you hear a bell ringing an angel is getting their wings ...
I am sure there are belling ringing all over because a really honest , good person has been elected.
~ Enough240 on Huffington Post

I failed to mention the beauty of irony and Karma.
The banking industry fought hard to prevent Elizabeth Warren from running the new U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that she developed with her team at Obama's direction.
Oh are they sorry now. It makes me punch drunk that the great residents of Massacheusetts voted her into office. They know a winner when they see one.
Wall Street, Paybacks are a Beach! She's got your number...
~ California TowHead on Huffington Post

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