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It's a stupid way to try and control spending, and is basically just farking with the faith and credit of the US. If they wanted to just control spending, they'd stop it at the spending bills. However, they remember what happened when they tried that in 1998 - the government shut down backfired on them spectacularly, because people actually use the government services they were denying. So instead they've decided to go for economic terrorism - basically, taking the debt limit hostage, knowing that it's too valuable a hostage, as it would fark with US credit for years, to be ignored, hoping that will force Obama to cave into their demands. Rather than face a sensible budget showdown, they're going all in,and will hurt US prospects even by attempting it, just as the debt ceiling debate last time damaged US credit ratings.

Basically, trying to ram through cuts by using the debt limit as a hostage is a stupidly destructive policy to have, and by taking that path the GOP shows they have no problems with hurting the US electorate to get their demands met.

No problem with what you said there.

psst, psst... they'll raise the limit like they always do.

 whembly wrote:

It's a stupid way to try and control spending, and is basically just farking with the faith and credit of the US. If they wanted to just control spending, they'd stop it at the spending bills. However, they remember what happened when they tried that in 1998 - the government shut down backfired on them spectacularly, because people actually use the government services they were denying. So instead they've decided to go for economic terrorism - basically, taking the debt limit hostage, knowing that it's too valuable a hostage, as it would fark with US credit for years, to be ignored, hoping that will force Obama to cave into their demands. Rather than face a sensible budget showdown, they're going all in,and will hurt US prospects even by attempting it, just as the debt ceiling debate last time damaged US credit ratings.

Basically, trying to ram through cuts by using the debt limit as a hostage is a stupidly destructive policy to have, and by taking that path the GOP shows they have no problems with hurting the US electorate to get their demands met.

No problem with what you said there.

psst, psst... they'll raise the limit like they always do.

Fair enough, I just thought most reasonable people would be against having their economic futures taken hostage by a political minority. Perhaps Obama should have all the Republican congressman's families taken hostage as a counter offer - after all, it's perfectly reasonable in your estimation to do so.

So you are okay with breaking decades of promises and refusing to pay our old bills?

 d-usa wrote:
So you are okay with breaking decades of promises and refusing to pay our old bills?

Guys...stop.

I'm not advocating that.

All I'm saying that in an unlikely scenario that the Debt Limit isn't raised, that the Federal Government CAN certainly pay the promises and current bills. It'll take some austerity-level effort... (ie, shut down non-essential/non-mandatory government functions) which would be so painful that the Congressional critters should be compelled to address the issues.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Maddermax wrote:

 whembly wrote:

It's a stupid way to try and control spending, and is basically just farking with the faith and credit of the US. If they wanted to just control spending, they'd stop it at the spending bills. However, they remember what happened when they tried that in 1998 - the government shut down backfired on them spectacularly, because people actually use the government services they were denying. So instead they've decided to go for economic terrorism - basically, taking the debt limit hostage, knowing that it's too valuable a hostage, as it would fark with US credit for years, to be ignored, hoping that will force Obama to cave into their demands. Rather than face a sensible budget showdown, they're going all in,and will hurt US prospects even by attempting it, just as the debt ceiling debate last time damaged US credit ratings.

Basically, trying to ram through cuts by using the debt limit as a hostage is a stupidly destructive policy to have, and by taking that path the GOP shows they have no problems with hurting the US electorate to get their demands met.

No problem with what you said there.

psst, psst... they'll raise the limit like they always do.

Fair enough, I just thought most reasonable people would be against having their economic futures taken hostage by a political minority. Perhaps Obama should have all the Republican congressman's families taken hostage as a counter offer - after all, it's perfectly reasonable in your estimation to do so.

eh... do you think we have a spending problem or things are honky-dory?

So is congress going to write a bill redistributing all the money they already authorized to pay old bills?

 d-usa wrote:
So is congress going to write a bill redistributing all the money they already authorized to pay old bills?

no... lol.

May be I need to go to bed...

I'm going to step back... we'll reconvene later.

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So you are okay with breaking decades of promises and refusing to pay our old bills?

Guys...stop.

I'm not advocating that.

All I'm saying that in an unlikely scenario that the Debt Limit isn't raised, that the Federal Government CAN certainly pay the promises and current bills. It'll take some austerity-level effort... (ie, shut down non-essential/non-mandatory government functions) which would be so painful that the Congressional critters should be compelled to address the issues.

And doing that will convince markets and investors that US politics is farked to the point that it's dangerous to trust them. It will damage, severely, the country even if a new credit deal eventually goes through.

 whembly wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Maddermax wrote:

 whembly wrote:

It's a stupid way to try and control spending, and is basically just farking with the faith and credit of the US. If they wanted to just control spending, they'd stop it at the spending bills. However, they remember what happened when they tried that in 1998 - the government shut down backfired on them spectacularly, because people actually use the government services they were denying. So instead they've decided to go for economic terrorism - basically, taking the debt limit hostage, knowing that it's too valuable a hostage, as it would fark with US credit for years, to be ignored, hoping that will force Obama to cave into their demands. Rather than face a sensible budget showdown, they're going all in,and will hurt US prospects even by attempting it, just as the debt ceiling debate last time damaged US credit ratings.

Basically, trying to ram through cuts by using the debt limit as a hostage is a stupidly destructive policy to have, and by taking that path the GOP shows they have no problems with hurting the US electorate to get their demands met.

No problem with what you said there.

psst, psst... they'll raise the limit like they always do.

Fair enough, I just thought most reasonable people would be against having their economic futures taken hostage by a political minority. Perhaps Obama should have all the Republican congressman's families taken hostage as a counter offer - after all, it's perfectly reasonable in your estimation to do so.

eh... do you think we have a spending problem or things are honky-dory?

The deficit is shrinking faster than it ever has since the end of world war 2, the recovery, though not mind blowing, is slowly bringing things back to a more even keel. If the Republicans were interested in paying down the debt, they wouldn't have been fighting desprately against the end of the bush tax cuts for the top 2% - which were a huge part of what CAUSED the debt. If they were interested in doing something about the debt, they would have done something back when Bush was busy ballooning the debt.

Anyway, I fail to see how crashing the economy again is going to help get the deficit under control now. You need a growing economy, and it IS growing currently, to help absorb the deficit. The Republicans tactics are going to damage that recovery and growth, so it's an ass-backwards idea, until you work out that they don't care about the debt at all.

I don't think the buget works the way you think it works...

 d-usa wrote:
I don't think the buget works the way you think it works...

??

Theoretically speaking, the Treasury could use all inflows for just five big items: interest on existing debt, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and unemployment insurance for months. It's just that they're may not be money left over for federal employees (they may be asked to take unpaid leave), pell grants could be delayed, military contracts could be delayed... there's all kinds of things they can do. The Federal branch has the discretion to do this. (shoot, there's even talk that the Prez could invoke the 14th amendment to issue new debts! But, that never happened before).

I'm just countering the perception that if the Debt Ceiling isn't raised, the whole shebang comes down.

Don't get me wrong...it'll hurt if that happens.

A large part of the budget is mandatory spending, the executive branch can not elect to refuse to spend that money. That can only be done through an act of congress. The only think the executive can do regarding mandatory spending is to veto the bill that includes it

The fiscal cliff is inevitible, it's like a death row. just delayed.