Good golly, what a mess!
John Boehner walked out of the debt negotiations yesterday afternoon and wrote an angry letter because the President wouldn’t bend over and take the “Cut, Cap and Balance” Act that would take away the President’s power to adjust the budget, “Cut” social and regulatory programs across the board (except military spending and other pet projects the House wanted to exempt), “Cap” spending along unrealistic inflation measures (setting up the poor for a total screw-job as inflation kicks in) and Balance – well, only the kind of people who think Fox news is “fair and balanced” could have the nerve to use the word balance in a bill that would cut $400Bn of annual spending – EVENTUALLY (just $144Bn is saved in 2012 in this joke of a bill) and raise not one penny of revenues.
Keep in mind that we have a $1.4 TRILLION Dollar deficit this year so even cutting $400Bn off that figure leaves us with a $1Tn revenue shortfall so this plan, and all plans put forth, are not in the least bit serious about balancing a budget as THE INTEREST ALONE on a $1Tn shortfall over the next decade would add another $350Bn a year of mandated interest payments, causing the CUT of yet another $350Bn in spending until, eventually, the sole purpose of the US Government is to pay the interest on our debt.
You can’t run a country based on “No New Taxes – EVER” the same way you can’t run a home budget or a business saying you never, ever, ever intend to increase your income enough to pay your debts or even keep up with inflation. What happens to a business like that?
As the NYTimes points out, Obama, in fact, had already gone much too far in trying to make his deal palatable to House Republicans, offering to cut spending even further than the deficit plan proposed this week by the bipartisan “Gang of Six,” which includes some of the Senate’s most conservative members. The White House was willing to cut $1 trillion in domestic and defense spending and another $650 billion from Medicare, Medicaid and even Social Security.
…
