The debt ceiling debate is finally over
For better or for worse with the news tonight that the House has approved the debt ceiling bill the debate is finally over. I have to admit that while the conservatives only hold a majority in the House and too much shouldn’t have been expected, that I still feel a little disappointed.
I will start with the one positive that I can find in this debate and that is the fact that the Tea Party has asserted itself as a major player that cannot be ignored as we move forward. If we continue to elect people aligned with the Tea Party we one day may be able to make the changes that are so desperately needed, but until then I guess we have to take whatever victory we can get. I think the left now understands that the Tea Party is nothing they should be laughing at any more, and that is a positive.
Now for the disappointments: Firstly, there are only $10 billion of real cuts over the next two years and after that all bets are off–this is a mere pittance when looking at the overall budget deficit. There is no guarantee that the next Congress will implement any of the additional $1 trillion in cuts which are supposedly included in the initial phase of this legislation, this is basically a shell game and everyone involved knows this.
And secondly; the second phase of this deal includes the formation of a super committee which will be tasked with finding an additional $1 trillion in cuts. This sounds good on the surface I suppose because, unlike the first committee which Barack Obama created, the results of this committee cannot be ignored or else triggers which both sides find unacceptable will be implemented.
This committee will consist of six members of the House and six members of the Senate, equally split between Republicans and Democrats and they will have to issue a plan by the end of the year. My problem with this committee is this: the Constitution gives the House the authority to initiate all spending bills, and with this deal the House has willingly abdicated the biggest responsibility it was charged with under the Constitution. This is a major win for Barack Obama when you consider the fact that the Tea Party/conservative/Republicans control this one branch of the federal government; he has effectively taken the purse strings away from the conservatives in the House and handed it over to what by definition must be considered a much less conservative committee. The Republicans have surrendered the greatest tool they had in controlling this out of control president.
The Tea Party had been controlling this debate, the argument had changed because without the Tea Party you can rest assured that tax increases would have been part of this compromise, and now the Tea Party has been rendered irrelevant and subservient to the will of this party of twelve. Tax increases will be back on the table at the end of the year and we have the weak-kneed Republican establishment leadership to blame for this–this is more proof that we need to elect more true conservatives to the House, Senate, and hopefully to the White House.
America's Watchtower 
“The Republicans have surrendered the greatest tool they had in controlling this out of control president.”
I must admit, this did not occur to me. But you are absolutely right. Now I’m angry again! Good catch, Steve.
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Sorry! 🙂 You can rest assured that if the Democrats controlled the House the president wouldn’t have wanted to form this commission. In my opinion this was a ploy to take this power away from the Republicans and it worked.
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That’s why we call them the “stupid party!”
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I understand your frustration, Steve. I would caution, however, to wait until we see who the Republicans nominate to the committee. If we get the right people who will hold their ground against the liberals, maybe it will not turn out so bad.
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I think we probably will put three good, solid conservatives on this committee, but if they deadlock with the three Democrats these automatic triggers kick in and the wrong cuts may be made. It just seems like we gave some control away.
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I feel like only a tiny bite was taken out of the pie… very tiny. And the hard choices have once again been postponed.
Beware this debt commission that will meet… one already did and was ignored. Although this time cuts will have to be made, I just don’t see much progress happening.
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What ever happened to the recomendations from that first debt commission, the results were completely ignored. I feel as if this has accomplished very little and in fact the Congress showed they are unwilling to make the tough choices.
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I doubt that there will be any agreement by the Committee. They are salivating at the thought of finishing off the defense budget. As has been presented, the potential cuts to Medicare will be to the providers only. Thus, hospitals and Doctors will wind up out of business and employees of the government. Most hospitals are operating at or close to a deficit. We just stepped into his trap.
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I don’t think there will be any agreement either and I think it is all part of the plan. Interesting how this relates to Obamacare, the Republicans were played for the fools they are.
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You’re far from alone in being disappointed in the results. All the Republicans had to do was insist that no further talks would take place until the Senate voted on Cut, Cap and Balance and that would have forced a vote the Senate did not want to swallow. If they voted it down, they would be blamed, if it passed, we would have won. Instead they offerred more plans and as every conservative expected, they too were rejected by the Senate so that they could create the weakest possible bill that would raise the debt limit tremendously, thus letting the spending continue, and it takes us to after the 2012 elections. We own the House but its lead by John Boehner, who is a man who can not take dickering and will not stand pat.
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The more I think about it the more disappointed I become, the Republicans totally misplayed their hand and we will all have to suffer for it.
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All it did was give Obama and the Democrats another 2.7 trillion to spend.
They WILL spend it.
The committee of twelve will do nothing but dead lock and what ever they do come up with still needs Congress to enact it.
If Congress does nothing then there will be across the board cuts in November December and the Republicans will be called Grinch.
They should have taken the opportunity to reduce the ceiling or shut down the Government but the elite Republican Guard did not have the stomach to be blamed by the Media they love so much.
Any Republican who voted Yes to this bill should be removed and replaced with a Tea Party Rep. Thats the only way this will get fixed.
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I agree with everything you said! The Republicans didn’t have the balls to take on the combination of Obama and the media and they rolled over and played dead.
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It will require a super majority vote to overturn any decision made by the “super congress”. This doesn’t just apply to spending, folks. Anyone think that a “super congressman” will throw in some gun control legislation as an amendment to be voted on by the super congress? Don’t think it won’t happen. That’s just one of our inalienable rights that will be in danger.
Boehner f’d up BIG time and my rep, Bob Gibbs, voted to create the “super congress”. I’m awaiting his response to my call concerning which article of the Constitution this falls under. I’m so disgusted and angry right now, I can’t see straight. The media is, once again, complicit. They are not making this super committee out to be as big a deal as it really is.
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I’ll have to check that out and you had better be wrong.
Thats an ingredient for rebellion
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I hope so too, but I wouldn’t put anything past this rogue regime!
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We got sold down the river on this by the Republican leadership and it is obvious at this point that we need to throw more of the establishment out because they simply do not have the balls to make the tough decisions.
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Up until Monday, I was in the “let it crash” camp. However, yesterday something happened that took me by surprise and made me realize that I’d known the answer all along.
The thing that has me thinking this might have been the only thing that could have been done is my knowledge of how finances work on computers. It was being said by many of the people on our side that we could service the debt, pay for Social Security, Medicare, Military, VA, and have some money left over by managing the amount of money coming in from payroll taxes every month, and let the rest slide. I was on this side of the argument from the start because I wasn’t thinking about computers.
However, today most computerized financial systems are set up to automatically pay out at given times of the month, and if someone suddenly decides, “We’re only going to pay this and this, and not pay that,” everything in the system has to be brought to a screeching halt, decisions have to be made about how to work around the unpaid items, and THAT would be a monsterous undertaking. I can’t begin to tell you how disruptive interrupting a pre-set financial system would be. If we were still writing paper checks, selecting what to pay, that would work, but most payout transactions today are computers moving numbers from one place to another in preset batches.
There is a very strong possibility that they simply could not stop the payouts in time. This was brought home to me when my VA disablity payment turned up in my bank account on Monday, BEFORE any final decision was made on the debt ceiling. That was one of the things that was “not going to go out on time” that the Democrats were warning us about. But it went out. That by itself tells me that they may not have been able to stop ANY of the payout transactions.
So the problem was never what to pay, but rather that EVERYTHING would be paid, and those payments would start bouncing if the funding wasn’t in place.
I am annoyed, however, that the Speaker never bothered to ‘splain that. I honestly believe that’s what the REAL problem was. If anyone had ever bothered to tell me that, I’d have understood it.
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The answer to this problem, however, is to have preset SOPs on what to do if we decide to pay this and not that. It might be an interesting problem to give the Treasury Dept something to do. When properly set up, the situation would be quite different, given that who gets paid what would depend on which job stream gets scheduled on “payout” day.
It’s obviously possible to work around it, but they may not have work-arounds in place at this time.
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Allen West had a bill to prioritize SS, national defense, the vets, and the interest on the debt but it gained no traction. This would have been the answer but of course Barack Obama wanted the uncertainty in the air.
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That is an interesting point that I hadn’t thought about, but I think this might be proof that Obama had already taken steps to prioritize SS, and the vets and was simplying lying to the American people that these payments might not go out.
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Whatever it was, I have proof on my bank statement that I received my VA disability pension on 8-1-2011, BEFORE anything was decided about the debt ceiling. Those FTP transactions come in overnight, so it was there in the early morning. The votes weren’t done until late afternoon.
I honestly don’t think they could have stopped the computers even if they’d wanted to.
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Maybe that is why Obama needs that internet “kill switch!” 🙂
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now that this charade is over will fast and furious get any coverage? Im not holding my breath,
I pick “imigration reform” for the “next crisis” pool.
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Not holding your breath would be a great plan because the media is never going to cover this story.
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