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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2011, 07:02:07 AM
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A Tea Party Triumph
The debt deal is a rare bipartisan victory for the forces of smaller government.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903341404576480653492061150.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
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If a good political compromise is one that has something for everyone to hate, then last night's bipartisan debt-ceiling deal is a triumph. The bargain is nonetheless better than what seemed achievable in recent days, especially given the revolt of some GOP conservatives that gave the White House and Democrats more political leverage.
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The big picture is that the deal is a victory for the cause of smaller government, arguably the biggest since welfare reform in 1996. Most bipartisan budget deals trade tax increases that are immediate for spending cuts that turn out to be fictional. This one includes no immediate tax increases, despite President Obama's demand as recently as last Monday. The immediate spending cuts are real, if smaller than we'd prefer, and the longer-term cuts could be real if Republicans hold Congress and continue to enforce the deal's spending caps.
The framework (we haven't seen all the details) calls for an initial step of some $900 billion in domestic discretionary cuts over 10 years from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline puffed up by recent spending. If the cuts hold, this would go some way to erasing the fiscal damage from the Obama-Nancy Pelosi stimulus. This is no small achievement considering that Republicans control neither the Senate nor the White House, and it underscores how much the GOP victory in November has reshaped the U.S. fiscal debate.
No wonder liberals are howling. They have come to believe in the upward spending ratchet, under which all spending increases are permanent. Not any more.
The second phase of the deal is less clear cut, though it also could turn out to shrink Leviathan. Party leaders in both houses of Congress will each appoint three Members to a special committee that will recommend another round of deficit reduction of between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion, also over 10 years. Their mandate is broad, and we're told very little is off the table, but at least seven of the 12 Members would have to agree on a package to force an up-or-down vote in Congress.
If the committee can't agree on enough deficit reduction, then automatic spending cuts would ensue to make up the difference to reach the $1.2 trillion minimum deficit-reduction target. One key point is that the committee's failure to agree would not automatically "trigger" (in Beltway parlance) revenue increases, as the White House was insisting on as recently as this weekend. That would have guaranteed that Democrats would never agree to enough cuts, and Republicans were right to resist.
Instead the automatic cuts would be divided equally between defense and nondefense. So, for example, if the committee agrees to deficit reduction of only $600 billion, then another $300 billion would be cut automatically from defense and domestic accounts (excluding Medicare beneficiaries) to reach at least $1.2 trillion.
This trigger is intended to be an incentive for committee Members of both parties to agree on more cuts, but defense cuts of this magnitude would do far more harm to national security than they would to domestic accounts that have been fattened by stimulus. This is the worst part of the deal, and Mr. Obama's political goal will be to press Republicans to choose between tax increases and destructive defense cuts. The GOP will have to fight back and make the choice between domestic cuts and harm to our troops fighting multiple wars.
While the "trigger" includes no revenue increases, the committee itself could agree to raise taxes to meet the $1.2 trillion deficit reduction target. This means GOP leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have to be especially careful in their choice of appointees. No one from the Senate Gang of Six, who proposed tax increases, need apply. The GOP choices should start with Arizona Senator Jon Kyl and House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, adding four others who will follow their lead.
One reason to think tax increases are unlikely, however, is that the 12-Member committee will operate from CBO's baseline that assumes that the Bush tax rates expire in 2013. CBO assumes that taxes will rise by $3.5 trillion over the next decade, including huge increases for middle-class earners. Since any elimination of those tax increases would increase the deficit under CBO's math, the strong incentive for the Members will be to avoid the tax issue. This increases the political incentive for deficit reduction to come from spending cuts.
Mr. Obama's biggest gain in the deal is that he gets his highest priority of not having to repeat this debt-limit fight again before the 2012 election. The deal stipulates that the debt ceiling will rise automatically by $900 billion this year, and at least $1.2 trillion next year, unless two-thirds of Congress disapproves it. Congress will not do so.
Given how much the current debate has damaged the public perception of Mr. Obama's leadership, this will be a relief at the White House. This is part of the negotiating price that Mr. Boehner had to pay because of the back-bench revolt that showed he couldn't guarantee a debt-limit increase with only GOP votes. This gave Democrats more leverage.
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The same supposedly conservative Republicans and their talk radio minders may denounce this deal as a sellout, but we'll be charitable and assume they've climbed so far out on the political ledge they don't know how to climb back without admitting they were wrong. They're right that this deal doesn't "solve" our fiscal crisis, but no such deal is possible as long as liberals run the Senate and White House.
The debt ceiling is a political hostage the GOP could never afford to shoot, and this deal is about the best Republicans could have hoped for given that the limit had to be raised. The Jim DeMint-Michele Bachmann-Sean Hannity alternative of refusing to raise the debt limit without a balanced-budget amendment and betting that Mr. Obama would get all the blame vanishes upon contact with any thought. Sooner or later the GOP had to give up the hostage.
The tea partiers pride themselves on adhering to the Constitution, which was intended to make political change difficult. Yet in this deal they've forced both parties to make the biggest spending cuts in 15 years, with more cuts likely next year. The U.S. is engaged in an epic debate over the size and scope of government that will play out over several years, and the most important battle comes in the election of 2012.
Tea partiers will do more for their cause by applauding this victory and working toward the next, rather than diminishing what they've accomplished because it didn't solve every fiscal problem in one impossible swoop.
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While this deal is obviously a joke, under the circumstances, I really can't believe even myself how poorly obama did in this.
He rejected a deal with Reid/Boehner a week ago to where Boehner agreed to 800 Billion in Revenu/Taxes, etc., and now has to accept this?
LMFAO! ! ! !
One and done.
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..How the Tea Party Won the Deal
By Peter Beinart | The Daily Beast – 8 hrs ago
http://news.yahoo.com/tea-party-won-deal-055100156.html
While the details of the debt ceiling deal remain fuzzy, this much is clear: Barack Obama may be president, but the Tea Party is now running Washington. How did this happen? Simple; this is what American politics looks like when there’s no left-wing movement and no war.
Let’s start with the first point. Liberals are furious that President Obama agreed to massive spending cuts, and the promise of more, without any increase in revenues. They should be: Given how much the Bush tax cuts have contributed to the deficit (and how little they’ve spurred economic growth), it’s mind-boggling that they’ve apparently escaped this deficit-reduction deal unscathed.
But there’s a reason for that: since the economy collapsed in 2008, only one grassroots movement has emerged in response, and it’s been a movement of the right. Compare that with what happened during the Depression. In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency and launched the hodgepodge of domestic programs that historians call the first New Deal. By 1935, however, he was looking warily over his left shoulder at Huey Long, whose “Share our Wealth” movement demanded that incomes be capped at $1 million and every family be guaranteed an income no less than one-third the national average.
At the same time, the Townsend plan to guarantee generous pensions to every elderly American had organizers in every state in the union. To be sure, FDR had vehement opponents on his right, but he was at least as concerned about the populist left, which helps explain why he enacted the more ambitious “second new deal,” which included Social Security, the massive public jobs program called the Works Progress Administration and the Wagner Act, which for the first time in American history put Washington on the side of labor unions.
Obama, like FDR, had a reasonably successful first two years: a stimulus package that while too small for the circumstances was still large by historical standards and a health care bill that while subpar in myriad ways still far exceeded the efforts of other recent Democratic presidents.
And then, unlike FDR, he ran into a grassroots movement of the right. Historians will long debate why the financial collapse of 2008 produced a right-wing populist movement and not a left-wing one. Perhaps it’s because Obama didn’t take on Wall Street, perhaps it’s because with labor unions so weak there’s just not the organizational muscle to create such a movement, perhaps it’s because trust in government is so low that pro-government populism is almost impossible.
Whatever the reason, it was the emergence of the Tea Party as the most powerful grassroots pressure group in America that laid the groundwork for Sunday night’s deal. The fact that polling showed Obama getting the better of the debt ceiling debate barely mattered. The 2010 elections brought to Congress a group of Republicans theologically committed to cutting government. And they have proved more committed, or perhaps just more reckless, than anyone else in Washington.
But it’s not just the absence of a mass left-wing movement that explains last night’s deal. It’s the end of the war on terror. From 9/11 until George W. Bush left office, the “war on terror” defined the Republican Party. That meant massive increases in defense and homeland security spending, but it also meant increases in domestic spending—such as the 2004 prescription drug bill—aimed at ensuring that Bush got reelected, so he could perpetuate the war on terror. In that way, “war on terror” politics resembled cold war politics, in which the right’s desire for guns and the left’s desire for butter usually combined to ensure that all forms of government spending went up.
The Tea Party, by contrast, is a post-war on terror phenomenon. Many of the newly-elected Republicans are indifferent, if not hostile, to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They’re happy to cut the defense budget, especially since cutting the defense budget makes it easier to persuade Democrats to swallow larger cuts in domestic spending. It’s the reverse of the cold war dynamic. During the cold war—especially in the Nixon and Reagan years--conservatives accepted that overall spending would go up in order to ensure that some that increase went to defense. Today, conservatives accept defense cuts in order to ensure that overall spending goes down.
The good news is that the Tea Party, more than Barack Obama, has now ended the neoconservative dream of an ever-expanding American empire. The bad news is that it has also ended whatever hopes liberals once entertained that roughly 100 years after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, roughly 75 years after the New Deal and roughly 50 years after the Great Society, we were living in another great age of progressive reform.
Given the era of fiscal scarcity we’re now entering, those neocon and progressive dreams are now likely dead for many years to come. Meanwhile, the Tea Party’s dream of a government reduced to its pre-welfare state size becomes ever real.
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Will the Tea Party even support this deal? It does nothing to solve the problem.
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Will the Tea Party even support this deal? It does nothing to solve the problem.
No its doesnt. But so long as Reid and Obama are there, short of shutting down the govt, nothing else can happen.
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The Tea Party neutered the Dems and the RINOs in this deal. Props to them for doing what they were elected to do.
While it does nothing to rein in the ridiculous deficit, for once there appears to be some sanity in Washington and a glimmer of hope that this country won't implode financially. If someone like Paul wins in 2012 then this country will right itself.
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No its doesnt. But so long as Reid and Obama are there, short of shutting down the govt, nothing else can happen.
I don't see the Tea Party supporting it. The problem is that there's probably enough support from everyone else to get it through.
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I don't see the Tea Party supporting it. The problem is that there's probably enough support from everyone else to get it through.
It at least showed that there is staying power w the Tea Party grass roots to pressure these scumbags in the govt.
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The Tea Party neutered the Dems and the RINOs in this deal. Props to them for doing what they were elected to do.
While it does nothing to rein in the ridiculous deficit, for once there appears to be some sanity in Washington and a glimmer of hope that this country won't implode financially. If someone like Paul wins in 2012 then this country will right itself.
lol
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lol
LOL at the fact you voted for obama and post gay pics of him in a cowboy hat as if he is anything but a communist failure.
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lol
lol at people thinking a nearly $15 trillion deficit is OK.
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LOL at the fact you voted for obama and post gay pics of him in a cowboy hat as if he is anything but a communist failure.
Lol at the fact that you are a faggy chicken little that could be comparable to Glenn Beck on steroids..
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lol at people thinking a nearly $15 trillion deficit is OK.
Mal is no different than any other hack socialist. He thinks the taxpayer is nothing but a pinata to be whacked daily to pay for all the bullshit he and the far left destroyers think is right, WITH NO REGARD TO THE HARD WORKING SCHMUCK WHO EARNED IT.
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lol at people thinking a nearly $15 trillion deficit is OK.
Its aweful... those tax cuts worked wonders right.. and the wars.. wahoooo.. that shit balanced out shit out for sure.. Department of homeland Security.. we needed that shit..Fawking "War on Drugs" brings in the dough.. ::)
Tha fuck outta here
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Its aweful... those tax cuts worked wonders right.. and the wars.. wahoooo.. that shit balanced out shit out for sure.. Department of homeland Security.. we needed that shit..Fawking "War on Drugs" brings in the dough.. ::)
Tha fuck outta here
::) ::)
Yeah, and you support the guy who advocates all those same bullshit policies. Go figure.
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Its aweful... those tax cuts worked wonders right.. and the wars.. wahoooo.. that shit balanced out shit out for sure.. Department of homeland Security.. we needed that shit..Fawking "War on Drugs" brings in the dough.. ::)
Tha fuck outta here
You know Mal that on every single one of those issues, the current admin is just "as bad" as the former one, right? We are at least as involved in the ME, no cuts to homeland security and the war on drugs is something no politician will touch.
Same shit.....just a different smell.
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To me, had Reid and Pelosi retained the entire congress, we would not have even had this debate.
Pelosi would have just written a blank check to Obama and we would have not heard a word about it.
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To me, had Reid and Pelosi retained the entire congress, we would not have even had this debate.
Pelosi would have just written a blank check to Obama and we would have not heard a word about it.
I agree.
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Its aweful... those tax cuts worked wonders right.. and the wars.. wahoooo.. that shit balanced out shit out for sure.. Department of homeland Security.. we needed that shit..Fawking "War on Drugs" brings in the dough.. ::)
Tha fuck outta here
Are you talking about the wars that Obama expanded to Libya and Yemen? The far-left does seem to love their bloodshed in the name of "fairness". I think was Mao who argued that the 50 million Chinese he killed was in the name of "fairness", too.
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::) ::)
Yeah, and you support the guy who advocates all those same bullshit policies. Go figure.
Mal is no different than any other hack socialist. He thinks the taxpayer is nothing but a pinata to be whacked daily to pay for all the bullshit he and the far left destroyers think is right, WITH NO REGARD TO THE HARD WORKING SCHMUCK WHO EARNED IT.
bitch you don't speak on my political leanings and what my view of a hard worker is and his value to the country is. My Family worker their asses off and i do have a regard for people who earned it. My father has given more to this country than you could do many life times over. From Taxes, to enlisting (not drafted) in the Navy during the Vietnam war and doing 3 tours. From running (paid for with his own money) Boy scouts of America for 20 years. My parents are working people and i have respect for hard working middle class Americans. Don't dare come on here and say i have no respect for hard working contributors of this country. Your bitch ass screams on the sidelines and does jack shit to help build my country. You just whine bitch, complain and lie you little piece of shit. Now.. I've given my gripes about both administrations but your retarded ass still wants to make up shit to peg me with and say I'm some far-left guy.. but its you who are unrealistically far right..
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You know Mal that on every single one of those issues, the current admin is just "as bad" as the former one, right? We are at least as involved in the ME, no cuts to homeland security and the war on drugs is something no politician will touch.
Same shit.....just a different smell.
And thats what ive been saying from the outset.. but this Fuck seems to be under the impression that when Bush does it..its alright, but if obama does the same thing. Its totally fucked and the sky is falling
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bitch you don't speak on my political leanings and what my view of a hard worker is and his value to the country is. My Family worker their asses off and i do have a regard for people who earned it. My father has given more to this country than you could do many life times over. From Taxes, to enlisting (not drafted) in the Navy during the Vietnam war and doing 3 tours. From running (paid for with his own money) Boy scouts of America for 20 years. My parents are working people and i have respect for hard working middle class Americans. Don't dare come on here and say i have no respect for hard working contributors of this country. Your bitch ass screams on the sidelines and does jack shit to help build my country. You just whine bitch, complain and lie you little piece of shit. Now.. I've given my gripes about both administrations but your retarded ass still wants to make up shit to peg me with and say I'm some far-left guy.. but its you who are unrealistically far right..
1. Meltdown.
2. My statements are based on your posts.
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Are you talking about the wars that Obama expanded to Libya and Yemen? The far-left does seem to love their bloodshed in the name of "fairness". I think was Mao who argued that the 50 million Chinese he killed was in the name of "fairness", too.
Im not a far left liberal. And i don't like any of the wars. I don't think we need to be spending the bread for that. But don't sit here and tell me that Obama went from zero to -$14trillion.. because that's total bullshit.
Republicans kill me... They run up the defect.. and its all good.. Obama does it... spending is out of control...
Republicans say government stay out of our shit..but then pass the patriot act.
Republicans say Government needs to shrink, but then create "Department of homeland security"
Shit is fucking hilarious, that from a ideological standpoint, there is no fucking difference. But in some peoples eyes.. one had a majority successful term and the other one is the 2nd coming of Castro
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1. Meltdown.
2. My statements are based on your posts.
and my assertions that you are a liar come from your posts. You have zero integrity as a human being or an American. Funny part is, you're fine with that
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And thats what ive been saying from the outset.. but this Fuck seems to be under the impression that when Bush does it..its alright, but if obama does the same thing. Its totally fucked and the sky is falling
Really? Again you oversized dope, show me one post in my 60k posts saying that. Even one will do.
And yes, we are on the verge of collapse.
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and my assertions that you are a liar come from your posts. You have zero integrity as a human being or an American. Funny part is, you're fine with that
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Really? Again you oversized dope, show me one post in my 60k posts saying that. Even one will do.
And yes, we are on the verge of collapse.
you said the majority of his term was good.. You said he did good for 6 straight years.
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you said the majority of his term was good.. You said he did good for 6 straight years.
I said he was ok for his first term, I agree with that. It was the second term which was a disaster and wiped out any good he did in the first term.
However, the present thug took the worst of Bushs' last two years and tripled it.
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I said he was ok for his first term, I agree with that. It was the second term which was a disaster and wiped out any good he did in the first term.
However, the present thug took the worst of Bushs' last two years and tripled it.
you said the first 6 years of his term was good..
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you said the first 6 years of his term was good..
Geez dude - you really are cracked in the fucking head.
How many times do I have to go over this?
I have been entirely consistent on my feeling about GWB.
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Geez dude - you really are cracked in the fucking head.
How many times do I have to go over this?
I have been entirely consistent on my feeling about GWB.
you said majority of his tenure was good.. its cool.. you supported Bush.. hey.whatta ya gonna do
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you said majority of his tenure was good.. its cool.. you supported Bush.. hey.whatta ya gonna do
And it was.
It was once he decided to pursue amnesty for illegals in 2005, dubai ports, etc everything started coming off the rails. Not to mention appointing Bernake and letting the wars linger on and on and on.
And once that witch pelosi came in, he mailed it in and let the nation slide right into collapse by going along with her insanity.
The idiot you voted for took the very worst of GWB and times it by 10.
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ya can't call it a tea party victory if the loudest voices in the tea party are voting AGAINST it.
They got some moderate reduction in spending, but they didn't get to deal with the issue before the election as they desired.
Neither side won - they both compromised. For either side to claim a win is stupid.
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ya can't call it a tea party victory if the loudest voices in the tea party are voting AGAINST it.
They got some moderate reduction in spending, but they didn't get to deal with the issue before the election as they desired.
Neither side won - they both compromised. For either side to claim a win is stupid.
Funny considering if obama had his way, pelosi were still in speakership where this would have ended up instead.
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Funny considering if obama had his way, pelosi were still in speakership where this would have ended up instead.
Yes, and if Rand Paul had his way, we'd be talking about when we start the penny plan to reduce the deficit to zero in 8 years.
Since neither the Tea Party nor Obama got their way, it's called a compromise. neither 'won'.
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Yes, and if Rand Paul had his way, we'd be talking about when we start the penny plan to reduce the deficit to zero in 8 years.
Since neither the Tea Party nor Obama got their way, it's called a compromise. neither 'won'.
Obama would never agree to anything balancing the books.
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Im not a far left liberal. And i don't like any of the wars. I don't think we need to be spending the bread for that. But don't sit here and tell me that Obama went from zero to -$14trillion.. because that's total bullshit.
Republicans kill me... They run up the defect.. and its all good.. Obama does it... spending is out of control...
Republicans say government stay out of our shit..but then pass the patriot act.
Republicans say Government needs to shrink, but then create "Department of homeland security"
Shit is fucking hilarious, that from a ideological standpoint, there is no fucking difference. But in some peoples eyes.. one had a majority successful term and the other one is the 2nd coming of Castro
Has nothing to do with who fucking ran it up. It has everything to do with the fact we're nearly $15 TRILLION in debt and the country is insolvent. I don't give a fuck who did it, I just want it fixed.
That's the problem with this partisan shit. Everyone is happy to point fingers but no one wants to do anything to fix it. They think that because the RINOs ran it up with the help of Pelosi and Co. that the Dems should be allowed to do it unchecked for 8 years. That would be "fair", right? This country's long-term fiscal health be damned as long as it is "fair".
By the way, a large number of the "Republicans" in the Tea Party are first-term members of Congress and aren't the least bit culpable for the debt run up by the past Congresses. They're just doing what Americans elected them to do.
The entitlement welfare state is failing in Europe and its failing here. Time to put it down and get this country back on its feet.
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Obama would never agree to anything balancing the books.
agreed, but this has nothing to do with original topic. Did the tea party "win"?
They got some of their way, as did Obama. They both won some, and they both lost. Both blinked. Surely, you'll have d-bags arguing "but we won 51% and Obama only won 49%", but the sane thinker knows both sides compromised and both got some of what they wanted.
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agreed, but this has nothing to do with original topic. Did the tea party "win"?
They got some of their way, as did Obama. They both won some, and they both lost. Both blinked. Surely, you'll have d-bags arguing "but we won 51% and Obama only won 49%", but the sane thinker knows both sides compromised and both got some of what they wanted.
Why are you even bothering trying to spin it? It's the far-left that's acknowledging the Tea Party won, not the Tea Partiers themselves.
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agreed, but this has nothing to do with original topic. Did the tea party "win"?
They got some of their way, as did Obama. They both won some, and they both lost. Both blinked. Surely, you'll have d-bags arguing "but we won 51% and Obama only won 49%", but the sane thinker knows both sides compromised and both got some of what they wanted.
The fact that the RINO's, the MSM, people like yourself who spend every waking moment trying to prop up obama, and other devotees of this horrible admn, have tried at every step to disparage the tea party people and they are still there plugging away is a good sign that they are relevent and effective.
Again - the problem is obama. Until he is gone, anything meaningful that will improve the nation and economy will be impossible.
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Why are you even bothering trying to spin it? It's the far-left that's acknowledging the Tea Party won, not the Tea Partiers themselves.
the far-left is playing the victim card here, as you'd expect them to.
The far-right is doing it too - Crying about how they're STILL going to vote against it. Connie mack was on msnbc this morning whining about how obama bullied the repubs, and he had to vote against it because it completely missed what the tea party wanted.
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Again - the main obstacle is obama. Like I keep saying he is the worst cock block this nation has ever had.
Until he is long gone, nothing remotely productive will occur.
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It would be ironic if Tea Party Repubs and liberal Dems in the House both voted against this bill. The Dems have more to lose by voting against it, because there would be a risk of a debt ceiling stalemate where entitlement programs go unfunded.