Debt Limit

[RoyalShock]

I can't properly comment before my phone dies (some kid "needs" the outlet). Not that it matters.

Unplug his device, take the power cord, then tell him you're from the government and he just received a free civics lesson.

[Maggie]

I can't properly comment before my phone dies (some kid "needs" the outlet). Not that it matters.

Unplug his device, take the power cord, then tell him you're from the government and he just received a free civics lesson.

You are a MAN Royal, not a gentlemen, but a bad, bad....fellow. No really touch the pecks, kiss them. kiss the chrome- flex, baby - come on!

Thanks for the advice - I won't try it (but the "them" doesn't listen). What is more, I am not amused.

Piss.........off, maybe you can learn a thing if you take a civics lesson, actually read (I can talk on your own ground, even if that is the conservative libertarian faculty lounge)- Christ, you have fine timing, make your case.

[Maggie]

Later, have to fly. Sorry, might of been a joke. But I am not in the mood.

[wufan]

I can't properly comment before my phone dies (some kid "needs" the outlet). Not that it matters.

Unplug his device, take the power cord, then tell him you're from the government and he just received a free civics lesson.

You are a MAN Royal, not a gentlemen, but a bad, bad....fellow. No really touch the pecks, kiss them. kiss the chrome- flex, baby - come on!

Thanks for the advice - I won't try it (but the "them" doesn't listen). What is more, I am not amused.

Piss.........off, maybe you can learn a thing if you take a civics lesson, actually read (I can talk on your own ground, even if that is the conservative libertarian faculty lounge)- Christ, you have fine timing, make your case.

Wow. Not really your style, and I certainly didn't follow.

[RoyalShock]

I can't properly comment before my phone dies (some kid "needs" the outlet). Not that it matters.

Unplug his device, take the power cord, then tell him you're from the government and he just received a free civics lesson.

You are a MAN Royal, not a gentlemen, but a bad, bad....fellow. No really touch the pecks, kiss them. kiss the chrome- flex, baby - come on!

Thanks for the advice - I won't try it (but the "them" doesn't listen). What is more, I am not amused.

Piss.........off, maybe you can learn a thing if you take a civics lesson, actually read (I can talk on your own ground, even if that is the conservative libertarian faculty lounge)- Christ, you have fine timing, make your case.

Ummm, yeah . . .

It was a joke, meant totally in jest. Given that this is the politics forum I thought it would be obvious. My apologies.

Did a TSA agent have his way with you just beforehand?

(I did it again right there. Joke :) )

[BOBB]

I can't properly comment before my phone dies (some kid "needs" the outlet). Not that it matters.

Unplug his device, take the power cord, then tell him you're from the government and he just received a free civics lesson.

You are a MAN Royal, not a gentlemen, but a bad, bad....fellow. No really touch the pecks, kiss them. kiss the chrome- flex, baby - come on!

Thanks for the advice - I won't try it (but the "them" doesn't listen). What is more, I am not amused.

Piss.........off, maybe you can learn a thing if you take a civics lesson, actually read (I can talk on your own ground, even if that is the conservative libertarian faculty lounge)- Christ, you have fine timing, make your case.

Ummm, yeah . . .

It was a joke, meant totally in jest. Given that this is the politics forum I thought it would be obvious. My apologies.

Did a TSA agent have his way with you just beforehand?

(I did it again right there. Joke :) )

I got it. Chalk it up to airport fatigue.

[WstateU]

[Maggie]

Thanks, Big Ol' Badass Balla. I am not that unhinged.

San Diego to Newark (and all in between) make for a cranky boy (incoherent too). Sorry, Royal - now I have to catch a cab.

[SubGod22]

Vladimir Putin Calls US a 'Parasite' on World Economy

SELIGER, Russia -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday accused the United States of acting as a "parasite" on the world economy by accumulating massive debts that threaten the global financial system.

"The country is living in debt. It is not living within its means, shifting the weight of responsibility on other countries and in a way acting as a parasite," Putin told a group of pro-Kremlin youth in central Russia.

[RoyalShock]

Vladimir Putin Calls US a 'Parasite' on World Economy

SELIGER, Russia -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday accused the United States of acting as a "parasite" on the world economy by accumulating massive debts that threaten the global financial system.

"The country is living in debt. It is not living within its means, shifting the weight of responsibility on other countries and in a way acting as a parasite," Putin told a group of pro-Kremlin youth in central Russia.

As much as I detest deficit spending, I have a couple of questions for Mr. Putin:

1. Does Russia live within their means?

2. Who exactly is forcing other nations to purchase our debt?

[SubGod22]

Debt Deal: Spending in Perspective

The following chart looks at total projected federal spending according to the Congressional Budget Office’s adjusted March baseline and its score of the debt deal. The chart only considers the reduction in outlays resulting from the deal’s cap on discretionary spending, which the CBO says will save $917 billion over the next ten years. It does not consider the $1.2-$1.5 trillion in future “deficit reduction” that Dan Mitchell discusses here.

A Deal, Not a Solution

The net result of this deal is that – if every penny of the proposed cuts actually occurs – our official national debt will rise to about $20 trillion by 2020. That it otherwise would have reached $23 trillion is scant comfort. With our country careening toward a fiscal cliff, Congress has chosen to tap on the breaks, not change direction.

More troubling, the deal fails to deal with entitlement reform. It is Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that are driving this country towards insolvency, but this plan does not include any structural reform of these programs. They are exempt from the first round of cuts, and the level of cuts that can be proposed by the supercommittee are far too small to encompass anything like the Medicare reforms that Paul Ryan proposed early this year. And both Social Security and Medicaid are exempt from the across-the-board cuts that kick in if the committee’s cuts do not occur. In that case Medicare would be trimmed, but only in terms of further reductions in reimbursements to providers.

Budget Deal Doesn't Cut Spending

Republicans and Democrats have come together on a “historic” budget deal that cuts federal spending by more than $2 trillion over 10 years. The Washington Post’s lead story calls the cuts “sharp” and “severe.”

However, the budget deal doesn’t cut federal spending at all.

House Speaker John Boehner’s bullet points on the deal say that it cuts discretionary spending by $917 billion over 10 years, as “certified by CBO.” These discretionary “cuts” appear to be the same as those in Boehner’s plan from last week. The chart shows CBO’s scoring of those spending cuts (see here and here).

[SubGod22]

The Debt Deal: Failures of Leadership and Resolve

In related news, credit ratings agencies have signaled that that a small deal — which this is — is unlikely avoid a downgrade of U.S. Treasury securities. If a ratings downgrade actually occurs, the negative economic fallout will interrupt this deal's framework of achieving spending cuts — by forcing future lawmakers to renege on the cuts. Today's failure to deliver deeper spending cuts will then be correctly viewed as the missed opportunity that it is.

The media is calling this deal a victory for Republicans, especially for the Tea Party. How so? None of the targets of the House Republicans' Cut, Cap, and Balance legislation is included in it. It does not remove tax increases from consideration by the new joint committee. Republicans also were not able to push through their preferred shorter-term increase in the debt limit to hamper President Obama's re-election effort. Finally, although the deal schedules a vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment after October, 2011, nothing — not even a future debt-limit increase — is contingent upon it. Thus, a crucial element of guaranteeing fiscal discipline beyond 2021 has been bargained away.

The deficit cutting debate will now be pushed under the rug until the joint committee concludes its deliberations. That committee is charged with recommending deficit reduction to the tune of only $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. As I've noted elsewhere, even cuts of $4 trillion over 10 years that were under consideration earlier would be insufficient to prevent the federal government's fiscal condition from worsening by 2021.

[SubGod22]

Debt Ceiling: Budget Experts See Deal as 'Spit in the Ocean'

But this is nowhere close to the amount of savings we need to really get on top of this deficit and debt challenge," she said. "We're on course to borrow about $10 or 11 trillion over the next 10 years. ... .And $2.5 trillion in savings over 10 years is not going to fix the problem. It's not even going to set us on the right course quite yet."

There was also skepticism that the deal, which culminated months of partisan bickering and anxious backroom negotiations, did not even contain real cuts to deficit spending.

"When we take a step back and look at what this big package actually does, it does very few things specifically; it simply changes the ground rules for Congress, to make it more likely that they'll find more cuts going forward," said Sean West, a fiscal policy analyst for Eurasia Group, the capital risk-assessment firm.

"This package claims to reduce about $2.5 trillion from what the debt otherwise would have been; but the discretionary spending caps I discussed are just slowed growth. ... When we think about how big the problem is, with the retirement of the Baby Boom (generation), with low revenue coming in as a result of the financial crisis and the economic slowdown, we've got a much bigger problem than $3 trillion of vague cuts can address."

4 Ways Debt Deal Betrays Conservatives and Short-Changes America

Americans who want less government are the big losers in the debt deal. Republicans’ fearful leaders didn’t merely acquiesce to a phony deal. They also helped enshrine Obama-level spending and deficits, put off meaningful entitlement reform and gave the biggest spender ever to enter the Oval Office a solid platform for reelection.

The deal relies on some of the oldest tricks in the Washington.

First, the cuts in the supposedly $2.4 trillion deal are heavily back-ended over a 10-year period. Previous cuts of this style were enacted in law during the Reagan and Clinton administrations. When the out years finally arrived, the promised cuts were easily circumvented and ignored.

The only reductions that matter in Washington are ones that reform or eliminate programs, or which are written into the next year's annual budget. But this deal eliminates no program and the cuts that are envisioned for Fiscal Year 2012, which begins October 1st, appear tiny when compared with the overall budget, which is nearing $4 trillion dollars.

Second, the cuts, such as they are, are reductions to projected future spending increases. This is contrary to how every family and reputable business does budgeting. For them, a cut means spending less in the future than you have in the past. For Washington, a cut is when you spend slightly less than your wildest spending dreams for the future.

Let me put it another way: It would be as if you were deeply indebted and decided to buy a Ferrari for $100,000, but then reconsidered and decided to buy a Ford for $25,000. In Washington, they would say you “saved” $75,000 and everyone would pat each other on the back. Normal people would say you still spent $25,000 you didn’t have and put yourself further in the hole. The debt deal puts America further in the hole.

Third, the deal’s savings are said to be mandatory based on certain "triggers." We’ve seen this movie before, and it doesn’t end well. In 1985, when Americans began to be concerned with deficits a fraction of today’s size, Congress passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act. It was supposed to bring about automatic cuts to spending within five years if Congress didn’t make cuts on its own. When it came time for the cuts to be triggered, a simple legislative sleight of hand in 1990 eviscerated the law.

Fourth, the deal doesn’t merely delay real reform—it makes it harder. Republican leaders bargained away a hurdle requirement that the Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) be passed out of the Congress and sent to the states for ratification. This had been the one real deficit reform, which was forced on the leadership by conservatives in the House.

[WuDrWu]

You are starting to see the real deal, and what has been mostly smoke and mirrors by both sides.

I hope, nay I pray, the American public takes the time to fully understand what has happened, and pick up the torch and continue what has just begun here.

[1979Shocker]

I read that our credit rating could still be downgraded.

The stock market is definitely not liking it today.