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John Boehner’s Debt-Limit Plan is a Good Start?
It is a good start towards replacing Obama as President next year.
It is, as many conservatives have said in floor speeches and statements of support for the Boehner bill, an important first step. The immediate cuts are small relative to our $14 trillion debt, but the trajectory of spending will now go down.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, it is important to remember this has to come to a vote in the House. (I suspect it won’t be all that close, unfortunately relieving some die-hards of the necessity of discarding their political purity.) It also has to get through the Senate, where other hardline Republicans, not to mention a whole lot of Democrats, will have to decide: Boehner or default?
And should this get through both houses, the president will have zero choice in the matter. He will sign it, and we will avoid default. And then the spinning begins. As for those GOP pols and pundits who favored the burn-down-the-building approach, there is perhaps time to reconsider whether they want to be on board with a vote that may change the course of our fiscal future and the shape of the Republican party.
Read Rep. Paul Ryan’s treatise on the revised legislation here.
And, looking at the polls today in the key battleground states, in another year, the GOP House Leadership will not have to worry about negotiating with Harry Reid or the White House.
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Day By Day July 27, 2011 – The View
Day By Day by Chris MuirChris, the best approach is probably to swallow hard, bend over and accept the Boehner Plan. It certainly is NOT perfect, but the GOP and people have won and should now consolidate the gains by beating Obama in the race for 2012.Then, it will be over to Harry Reid and Obama to decide whether they want to push America into default or not.
I bet they cave.
with Obama’s poor polling in key battleground states, the GOP can afford to sit back and wait while they select a nominee. The next four years are too important to be squandered over cuts that won’t be seen in 10 years.
Declare victory and call it a day —> over to Obama.
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The Day By Day Archive -
The Debt-Limit Debate: Call it a Day and a Win GOP
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, right, and Republican Conference Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas , center, listen as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va., left, speaks during a news conference at The Republican National Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Am I suggesting the GOP House Tea Party Caucus should hold their nose and vote for the Boehner debt-limit plan?
Yes, if you want to beat President Obama in 2012.The debt-limit debate is heading toward a culmination, with President Obama reduced to pleading for the public to support a tax increase and Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid releasing competing plans that are the next-to-last realistic options. The question now is whether House Republicans are going to help Mr. Boehner achieve significant progress, or, in the name of the unachievable, hand Mr. Obama a victory.
Mr. Obama recognizes these stakes, threatening yesterday to veto the Boehner plan in a tactical move to block any Democratic support. The White House is afraid that it will pass the House and then become the only debt-ceiling vehicle if Mr. Reid can’t get 60 votes for his own proposal in the Senate. This would short-circuit Mr. Obama’s plan to blame the GOP for a U.S. credit downgrade, any market turmoil, a possible default, and the lousy economy too.
Read all of the rest of the piece.
The fact is American voters WILL blame the GOP for a further collapse in the economy and the polling is clear on the matter. Plus, there is no need for frightened credit markets or a possible default.
We will never achieve entitlement or tax reform with a doctrinaire liberal in the White House. Any agreements to do so in “out years” would probably be unenforceable even if agreement were achieved. And we can only do so much while controlling one half of one branch of government. Ladies and Gentlemen of the House Republicans, you have laid some great groundwork to rectify both of those situations. Now it is the time to accept a well-won victory and move on.
Thompson is RIGHT – time to move on, vote for the Boehner Plan and if Obama vetoes it, then he broke it.
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Video: The White House Spends 10 Minutes Saying They Won’t Release a Debt Ceiling Plan They Might Not Have
White House press asks Carney a simple question: why not release the plan?Why not?
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Day By Day July 26, 2011 – Adult Party
Chris, President Obama has NO PLAN and neither do the Congressional Democrats.Why?
Because they want to continue to tax and spend – as their ideology dictates. An ideology which has bankrupted the USA.
There will be a debt limit deal between Speaker Boehner and Senate leaders. Then, Obama will whine and sign the deal as the “grand compromise.”
In the meantime, “The One” will continue to plummet in the polls.
Michele Bachmann has it RIGHT: A one term President.
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The Day By Day Archive -
Day By Day July 25, 2011 – Truck Stop
Notwithstanding Sam, but President Obama is throwing the American people under the bus in insisting on a debt ceiling deal that carries past the 2012 Presidential elections. Actually, he is playing Russian Roulette with the world-wide financial markets.The House GOP should send him a short term “all cuts” deal and dare the Democrats in the Senate and/or the White House to block it.
Then, the Dems/Obama break it, they OWN it.
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The Day By Day Archive -
Mark Steyn: Planless Dems
In this post, Mark Steyn talks about the austerity budgets in Europe and what may be coming very soon to the United States, if the Congress and President Obama do not get serious about government spending.It seems reasonable to conclude from the planlessness and budgetlessness of the Obama/Reid Democrats that their only plan is to carry on spending without limit. Otherwise, someone somewhere would surely have written something down on a piece of paper by now. But no, apparently the Department of Writing Down Plans is the only federal expense the president is willing to cut. You begin to see why the Europeans are a little miffed. They’re passing austerity budgets so austere they’ve spawned an instant anti-austerity movement rioting in the street — and yet they’re still getting downgraded by the ratings agencies. In Washington, by contrast, the ruling party of the Brokest Nation in History has no spending plan other than to plan to spend even more — and nobody’s downgrading them.
Well, don’t worry. It’s coming. The domestic media coverage of this story has been almost laughably fraudulent: To the court eunuchs, a failure to raise the debt ceiling by a couple of trillion would signal to the world that American government was embarrassingly dysfunctional. In reality, raising the debt ceiling by a couple of trillion without any spending cuts would confirm to the world that American government is terminally dysfunctional.
In the debt-ridden treasuries of Europe, they’re talking “austerity.” In the debt-ridden treasury of Washington, they’re talking about more spending (Kathleen Sebelius is touting new women’s health programs to be made available “without cost.”) At the risk (in Samuel Johnson’s words) of settling the precedence between a louse and a flea, I think Europe’s political discourse is marginally less deranged than ours. The president is said to be “the adult in the room” because he is reported to be in favor of raising the age of Medicare eligibility from 65 to 67.
By the year 2036.
If something is not done soon, the financial markets will react for the Congress and the President.
It won’t be pretty and all the POLS will be able to do will be to try to blame the other side.
Why can’t they simply pass a short term compromise and have the great debate in 2012?
Or, does President Obama relish a financial crisis for re-election demagoguery?
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Mark Steyn: No Bargaining with Barack Obluffer
Another masterful piece from Mark Steyn.There is something surreal and unnerving about the so-called “debt ceiling” negotiations staggering on in Washington. In the real world, negotiations on an increase in one’s debt limit are conducted between the borrower and the lender. Only in Washington is a debt increase negotiated between two groups of borrowers.
Actually, it’s more accurate to call them two groups of spenders. On the one side are Obama and the Democrats, who in a negotiation supposedly intended to reduce American indebtedness are (surprise!) proposing massive increasing in spending (an extra $33 billion for Pell Grants, for example). The Democrat position is: You guys always complain that we spend spend spend like there’s (what’s the phrase again?) no tomorrow, so be grateful that we’re now proposing to spend spend spend spend like there’s no this evening.
On the other side are the Republicans, who are the closest anybody gets to representing, albeit somewhat tentatively and less than fullthroatedly, the actual borrowers – that’s to say, you and your children and grandchildren. But in essence the spenders are negotiating among themselves how much debt they’re going to burden you with. It’s like you and your missus announcing you’ve set your new credit limit at $1.3 million, and then telling the bank to send demands for repayment to Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s kindergartner next door.
Nothing good is going to come from these ludicrously protracted negotiations over laughably meaningless accounting sleights-of-hand scheduled to kick in circa 2020. All the charade does is confirm to prudent analysts around the world that the depraved ruling class of the United States cannot self-correct, and, indeed, has no desire to.
Read all of the piece.
The charade had better self-correct or we will be no more.
The time is NOW.
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Poll Watch: Americans Prefer Spending Cuts But Are Open to Tax Increases
According to the latest Gallup Poll.Americans’ preferences for deficit reduction clearly favor spending cuts to tax increases, but most Americans favor a mix of the two approaches. Twenty percent favor an approach that relies only on spending cuts and 4% favor an approach that uses tax increases alone.
These results are based on a July 7-10 Gallup poll, conducted as government leaders from both parties continued negotiating an agreement to raise the federal debt limit. Both Republicans and Democrats appear willing to raise the debt limit, provided the government outlines plans to significantly reduce federal deficits in the future. The parties generally agree on making deep spending cuts, but do not agree on whether tax increases should be included to help reach their target goals for deficit reduction. Many Republicans in Congress oppose any such tax increases; thus, the legislation may not pass if tax hikes are included.
Americans do not necessarily share this view, with 20% saying deficit reduction should come only through spending cuts. That percentage is a little higher, 26%, among those who identify as Republicans. Republicans do, however, tilt heavily in favor of reducing the deficit primarily if not exclusively with spending cuts (67%) as opposed to tax increases (3%). Fifty-one percent of independents share that preference. Democrats are most inclined to want equal amounts of spending cuts and tax increases (42%), though more favor a tilt toward spending cuts (33%) than tax increases (20%).
So, what does this all mean?
There is political cover for Republicans to accept some tax increases or tax reform in return for receiving massive concessions from Congressional Democrats and President Obama on government spending.
But, whether Republicans will accept ANY tax increases and then vote to increase the debt ceiling is doubtful.
The best approach may be for the GOP House to vote for a three or six month debt ceiling extension without tax increases (all cuts) and dare Democrats in the Senate to filibuster it or President Obama to exercise his veto.