We’ve reached the stage of the game where senior House Republican sources will admit that they are terrified of breaching the debt ceiling and that they need Democratic votes to avoid it. They are still badly in denial about what they can get the Democrats to vote for but, hey, it’s progress.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Sure, because the Koch Bros. gave them the go-ahead. I’m sure many of them are still too dumb to realize it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/heritage-debt-ceiling_n_4070242.html
BTW, did you read the comments at that link? Frightening.
Tea Bagger comments at work are more muted. They talk about how bad Obamacare is and “government takeover of health insurance” and how we are “going the way of Greece” and the like but their only comments on the shutdown are that it’s all Obama’s fault because he refuses to deal. Democrats and our two Socialists share my fear that Obama will buckle at the last moment when the pressure is intense. Much fear about SS and Federal pensions, which is probably because our average age is 58 and our youngest guy is 54, the oldest is 79. I’m 68 and holding.
I’m… 30.
I have the same fear. It’s not that I have fear of losing pensions as we don’t have them, it’s that I don’t think SS and Medicare will be there because we’ll have been sold out as we have been time and again.
It’s scary. Al Gore’s lockbox sounded silly, but if that path had been followed, we’d be in a lot better place. The boomer wave is gonna be expensive, and it’s important that a Dems hold the WH and make gains in Congress because there’s a lot at stake.
As I pointed out above, we’ve already paid. And don’t believe that garbage about SS recipients getting it all back in 13 months. First, a dollar we paid in 1963 is worth a Hell of a lot more than the dollar we get back in 2013. Second, lots of us never collect a dime because we died coughing out our lungs from cigarettes at age 60 or blown to bits in VietNam. Third, there’s the time value of money, if you put a hundred dollars in the back are you getting something for nothing if you get back one hundred and two a year later? Shouldn’t you get something for foregoing 50 years of compound interest?
That’s why my generation paid double SS taxes, to build up a surplus so we wouldn’t be a burden on you. The fatal flaw in the plan is after thirty years of accepting the SS surplus, the pols don’t want to pay it back so they invent crap like chained CPI and means testing to welsh on payback.
My advice to you is fund any 401K that might be offered to you up to the matching limit (zero if there is no matching) and put all you can (legally and/or financially) into a Roth IRA. Stuff it with low cost broad based small or large cap ETF’s. Forget Gold and Bonds. Bet your whole future on the American economy. If that fails, you’re screwed anyhow, so bet that it succeeds. In the end they will revoke the Roth’s but they will probably grandfather the existing gains.
Second choice. A bit disloyal, but since you are young enough to learn a new language, emigrate to Europe. With the name of MNpundit, you are perhaps of Scandinavian descent? I just finished attending my 50th High School reunion. Our Norwegian exchange student from 1963 is very well and has had a good life. He and his wife are both retired government Engineers and living very well near Oslo. It gets cold in Winter, but what the Hell, it gets cold in Minnesota too and the world’s warming up anyway (You don’t really think the DLC is going to do anything about that, do you?)
Latino from MN actually. Not a drop of Scandinavian blood in my body though the wife’s family came from Denmark. Already taking your advice with IRA as best we can. 🙂
We’ve talked about emigrating to Chile in the next five years.
That seems like a nice country.
Also I love winter, dislike summer. The colder the better so living up in the mountains of Chile or Norway would probably make me very happy than the soggy oven of the summer plains!
take a look a Finland. wonderful place
at Finland, I meant.
To me, Southern California is ideal. Maybe Italy is best for me.
I’m 25, and I don’t support all this bs for several reasons, the obvious one being I don’t like throwing old people on the street, but also because SOMEONE is going to be paying; whether the children (who will also be poor) or the state.
More to the point, I’d have paid an increased SS tax specifically to be ready for this wave of retirees; that was the deal, right? Well now I’ll be told I’d have paid this increased tax, and then receive fewer benefits than those of the past? Do they think I’m fucking stupid? It’s going to degrade my support for the system, and I love me some direct cash transfers.
Huffpost is huge, almost on the scale of YouTube, so every story attracts its own “clientele”. You can pretty much predict the kinds of comments you will get on any given story. This one was guaranteed to attract the resident Tea Party trolls. It’s just par for the course. But the vast majority of commenters are happy, that’s the main thing.
Not that anyone listens to me, but the Democratic proffer I would recommend between now and October 15 to solve the debt limit is a reinstatement of the Gephardt Rule.
After October 15, the proffer is elimination of the debt ceiling law altogether.
From posturing to a fig leaf of posturing.
Or from posturing to nothing.
However, I don’t buy anonymous “senior Republican sources” being any serious information but “Republicans don’t want to be blamed for default.” They are still willing to cause it; they just don’t want to be blamed for it.
Ah TarHeel, if only YOU were POTUS! I’d sleep easy at night.
It’s one thing to have the ideas. It’s another to be able to persuade the direct reports (if not the other folks down the chain of command) to do them. And quite another to bargain with other branches of government.
If I were POTUS, I guarantee that you would not be sleeping better at night than you are now.
Analysis is different from executive authority.
You’ve got guts, brains, and good intentions. I don’t ask any more from a leader. Most of our politicians lack all three. Generally, what they do have is a big mouth and and an open hand to take the cash.
I’ll listen to you but you are completely wrong about the House Republicans being willing to fuck up our credit and be responsible for any ensuing political fallout. Yes, there a few dozen nihilists who feel that way. It will never happen.
I don’t know whether I am wrong or right about there being House Republicans who are not nihilists. I just know that for all the happy talk, not a one of them has broken with the leadership. Not a one of them has signed the discharge petition that the Dems were circulating for a bill with Lankford’s name on it.
And I also know that the parties in World War I did not think it would last long either. It is going to take some political courage for House Republicans to break out the death spiral they are in. I am not sanguine that they can do it.
It’s difficult to determine how many halfway sensible R’s there are. But you can be sure that leadership is pressuring everyone to stay on board so that their negotiating position is maximalized. And when it comes time to cave, the most vulnerable ones will have their votes protected and just the minimum will get it over the top.
And if there are indeed those helpful House Republicans, they should find going back to the Gephardt Rule an acceptable compromise. After all it was Netie who trashed it just to set up this kind of nonsense.
Unfortunately for them, it’s crystal clear they would be blamed for it, so they’re backing off. Anyway, the senior republicans are not so important. Koch Bros. are the main act. Check the link. Heritage Action IS the organization that planned this thing in the first place.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/heritage-debt-ceiling_n_4070242.html
What can they get Dems to vote for?
My politics is composed of 82% daydream, but I really really wish that Obama would say, “I’m very happy to negotiate with the Republicans after this nonsense with the government shut-down is over. For example, they want to roll back the ACA. I want to raise the federal minimum wage to $12.50/hour. They want to give business owners the ability to withdraw contraception coverage from employees’ heath care policies. I want a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that every American who is eligible to vote has an equal opportunity to do so. They want to lower taxes on the super-rich, I want free college tuition. There’s plenty to negotiate about! But we can’t manufacture crises in order to increase our leverage.”
What scares me is is that the Republicans have 1,000 asks. They want a thousand things. The Democrats? We want the government funded at a minimal level. Our inability to negotiate by asking for more than we hope to receive is pathological.
What if we trade the pipe line for immigration reform?
That is a preposterous tradeoff. They have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Why do they have to be related?
No, they don’t have to be related, but it’s still a bad idea. If we want to have a future, we also have to think about climate and energy, not just Social Security and Medicare. Continuing to invest in fossil fuels at this point in history isn’t much less irresponsible than defaulting on the national debt.
It’s very hard to weigh the relative value of two non-monetary items in a political trade when they are totally unrelated. It makes for bad deals that one party will feel they got cheated on later.
Probably both parties will feel they were cheated later.
That sounds reasonable–so forget it!
How about we trade immigration reform for a 2% wealth tax on assets over $50 million instead of over $25 million?
We don’t even know how to ask for the moon anymore.
We have been playing defense for so long. Our wish list needs to be developed. If a trade is out of the question how about forcing a vote in the house on the senate bill?
I will be kind and take that as an attempt at humor.
The Obama Era is like one long civics lesson for everybody (including House Republicans), ain’t it? Day after it’s like “No, this is how this very basic function of government actually works.”
Iz our Republicans learning?
Based on the ones doing the talking for attribution, the answer is No.
You betcha!
What I’m finding interesting is the pundits who have relied on Rep right wing talking points for so long that they can’t get their head around what is happening before their very eyes. Wolf Blitzer case in point. And for the Erick Ericksons and the George Will’s of the stickier Right, there’s just no sanity left for them to pull out of a hat.
On our local site, the TBaggers are going heavily into the conspiracy theories: ‘Pentagon sources have told the EU that Obama is going to invoke Presidential War Powers and take over military’
And yipee, Sat is opening day of hunting season so the guns arrive.
Blitzer actually clarified that he meant take the website down, not delay the individual mandate.
I disagree, but I also can understand how people can differ on that one. The website is not in a good place and with the shutdown and typical government procedural rules it’s uncertain when it can get to a good place.
I fear we’re in the final act where they decide ‘fuck it’, shoot all the hostages and commit suicide by cop.
Except for the parts where the suicide is really more like blowing everybody elses shit up and then complaining that it’s the President’s fault and their Insane Kongress Posse followers will drag themselves out of the rubble and crawl to the polls to re-elect the fuckers back into office.
I am not at all sanguine about the future. I think we have actually bugfuck insane people driving this thing off the cliff because they’re convinced they can fly, hopped up on randite fantasy and theocratic end times delusion.
There’s a scary, terrific song off of Santana’s “Supernatural” album called ‘Put your lights on’ with this chorus:
Cause there’s a monster living under my bed
Whispering in my ear
There’s an angel, with a hand on my head
She say I’ve got nothing to fear
When I hear people like Ted Yoho talk with glee about burning the world economy down, or Mitch McConnell talk about ransoming hostages…this is what they sound like…
Folks, now is not the time to get scared.
What I mean it, yesterday was the time to get scared, but not today.
Oh, well then…..I feel better now.
Good. Have a beer.
It’s funny you should say that. Someone just posted on my Facebook wall a few minutes ago about Michele Bachmann’s remark that we are in the End Times. And my reply was, “End Times, huh??? Then I think I’ll just go ahead and have a beer, then!!!”
It’s like it was “meant to be”.
End Times = Miller Time? Yeah, I can see that.
I’m going for an Oktoberfest Brew. After all, if Crazy Eyes is right, this might be the last batch that I will be able to enjoy.
Make mine Schadenfreude. (With apologies to Booman, but this one’s on me, Boo.)
These days wimmens skirts are so short, it won’t be long now. Hallelujah.
Republicans have set a new record. Only 28% of Americans have a favorable opinion of them — the lowest figure ever recorded. The only thing I want to know is, where did the extra one percent come from?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/republican-party-rating_n_4072716.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Pulled the wrong lever? Like the 2% of African-Americans that voted for Romney?
Well, I would have expected 27%. THE 27%.
But they may actually be below that.
http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1244976
Dang, the GOP is not just below the Mendoza Line, it’s like they batted 0-4 and grounded into 3 double plays.
End of the world!!! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mokoolapps.bridgespuzzles