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The fine art of compromise has been compromised by shoving heads up arses and telling constituents to do the same.

The indifferent, the not crazy, and moderates all see both sides as bickering children. We just don't have enough clout to make a difference.

 WarOne wrote:
The fine art of compromise has been compromised by shoving heads up arses and telling constituents to do the same.

The indifferent, the not crazy, and moderates all see both sides as bickering children. We just don't have enough clout to make a difference.

Exactly.

However, if there were federal statutes that states "one dept = one funding billing", that'll help.

And to dogma's point, yes it'll make it easier for larger spending increase... but at least it'll be fething obvious.

 WarOne wrote:
The fine art of compromise has been compromised by shoving heads up arses and telling constituents to do the same.

The indifferent, the not crazy, and moderates all see both sides as bickering children. We just don't have enough clout to make a difference.

The sad part is, we would have enough clout if we all got off our asses and voted for someone other than the big names the two parties throw up at us. Of course, figuring out who that someone should be is an entirely different problem.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 WarOne wrote:
The fine art of compromise has been compromised by shoving heads up arses and telling constituents to do the same.

The indifferent, the not crazy, and moderates all see both sides as bickering children. We just don't have enough clout to make a difference.

The sad part is, we would have enough clout if we all got off our asses and voted for someone other than the big names the two parties throw up at us. Of course, figuring out who that someone should be is an entirely different problem.

QFT.

George Washington himself said that political parties would be the death of this nation, and for the same reasons given above.

Man, I've been saying that Jon Huntsman or Cory Booker should run as Independents for years now, and I just had the realization that the two of them should form a bipartisan independent ticket together.

 d-usa wrote:
Republicans and the deficit, the ongoing joke of the "fiscal conservative" party, has been exposed once again:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/11/politics/gop-business-tax-cut/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Even thought the party is always insisting that everything has to be budget neutral and that you cannot have any spending increase without an offset somewhere else decides that we can just do without $287 billion.

$4 billion for the border crisis? Too much! We can't afford it!
$11 billion for roads? Too much! We can't afford it.
$35 billions for veterans? Too much. We can't afford it.

Cut $287 billion from the budget and give it back to small business? We can totally do that!

Wait, did you think Republican Congresspeople really wanted to reduce the deficit? Some do many don't.

Does anyone else remember from 1992 that GW Bush ran and won on a platform of increasing the deficit? Am I just imagining that?

I believe it was called Compassionate Conservativism or something like that?

Maybe sorta...not sure what "compassionate conservative" really means actually. "We care about you enough to tell you to get up by your own bootstraps"??? If that's what it meant, there was absolutely nothing new at all...that has been Republican philosophy since as far back as I can remember.

I do remember that GW Bush was very upset that the Clinton administration had amassed a budget surplus. He was gonna give that money right back to you (which he did through hefty tax cuts)...and the budget went from a surplus to the biggest deficit in US history by the time he left office, IIRC.

 whembly wrote:

And to dogma's point, yes it'll make it easier for larger spending increase... but at least it'll be fething obvious.

That wasn't my point. I only spoke to the greater ease of spending increases, and the inevitability of omnibus spending bills.

HHmmmm Clinton Era cut the military for a two front war...just not a sustainable two front war....but a chunk of surplus there.

So I guess PAYGO, which expired in 2002, followed the next year by the hefty Bush tax cuts on top of the Medicare prescription drug benefit Bush promised, had nothing to do with the end of the federal surplus. 2002, the year PAYGO was allowed to expire, was the last year we had a surplus...Bush knew he could not enact his campaign promises on tax cuts and the Medicare expansion while keeping PAYGO in place. Which is fine, but, like the OP, its hard for me to take Republican claims of wanting to reduce the deficit very seriously when the plain facts show otherwise. They love deficits, as long as the money is borrowed for things they like.

In any case, my only reason for bringing up GW Bush is because this "I hate deficits" thing is an old game in the Republican playbook. I think the Tea Party-types do sincerely believe it, but they're pretty far from "establishment" Republicans.