This just isn't right. The budget was passed, with Democrats and Republicans voted for it. It's just that now the Republicans are refusing to allow the funding of the budget which they already passed!
hmm, that was what I thought, but it's possible I was misinformed... but are you sure it's the same group of Republicans and not a partially new set with a new mandate from voters?
The freshmen have a much better idea what rank-and-file Republicans, and Americans in general, want: Deficit reduction, control of spending--which requires serious budget cuts and, since SS/MC are the biggest consumers of budget dollars, some kind of a reform in structure of SS/MC (present course leaves SS/MC/new healthcare plan eating up more and more dollars and taking more and more taxes from not just "the rich" but also average Americans, until the programs, if not our entire financial system, implode).
You can't really link to speech by McConnel as a fair and balanced representation as to where the blame lies. When right-wing journals like the Economist are being so condemning of the Republican approach to these negotiations, it's difficult to ignore:
http://www.economist.com/node/18928600
I linked to McConnel as a counter-balance to MSNBC, CBS, NYT, etc., not as a recommendation of "fair and balanced" in and of itself. Might be a fairly accurate representation of the meeting, might not be, hard to tell. What I do know is the news I heard on TV was highly selective/distoritve in what quote it pulled out of McConnel's speech, but on the other hand I've heard the Democrat message (the Republicans have ruined the budget process) in the news a lot.
I don't think it's fair to present one side and not the other, so I'm presenting the other, since I assume the one side has been heard (or is super easy to find). Nobody has to agree with the other, but I do think it's important everyone be informed what the other side is
from the other side.
You can hear the Democrat side from the media because the media (reporters and producers) understand the rationale of why Democrats think their policies are a good idea, but you cannot understand the Republican side from the media because the media does not understand the rationale of why Republicans think their policies are a good idea.
The Economist isn't a right-wing journal, btw; it contains some right-leaning articles but also contains some left-leaning articles... my impression is more left-leaning than right-leaning, although I could be mistaken.
Both parties have in recent months been guilty of fiscal recklessness.
absolutely true
The White House is offering an 83%-17% split (hardly a huge distance)
I don't know... sounds good but 17% of 9 billion is 1.5 billion; it's going to be really hard to get out of the recession by adding 1.5 billion new taxes. This year is hardly an average year and cannot be fixed by using average tactics; spending and deficit are at a high not seen since the 50's (see above bipartisan fiscal recklessness) and are set to surpass our previous all-time-high of WWII.
Also the cuts are, once again, not as significant as billed.
WSJ (an actual right-wing journal):
Congress is responsible for the way so much of this spending was wasted, resulting in little job creation and the slowest economic recovery since the 1930s. But in the U.S. political system, Presidents are supposed to be the fiscal adults. When they abdicate, the teenagers invite over their special interest friends and blow the inheritance.
The President is now claiming to have found fiscal virtue, but notice how hard he has fought House Republicans as they've sought to abate the spending boom. First he used the threat of a government shutdown to whittle the fiscal 2011 spending cuts down to very little. Then he invited Paul Ryan to sit in the front row for a speech while he called his House budget un-American.
Now Mr. Obama is using the debt-ceiling debate as a battering ram not to control spending but to command a tax increase. We're told the White House list of immediate budget savings, the ones that matter most because they are enforceable by the current Congress, are negligible. His offer for immediate domestic nondefense discretionary cuts: $2 billion.
As for Mr. Obama's proposed entitlement cuts, they are all nibbling around the edges of programs that are growing far faster than inflation. He's offering few reforms that would make a difference in the long run. Oh, and ObamaCare is untouchable, despite its $1 trillion in new spending over the next several years, growing even faster after that.
2 billion immediate cuts to 1.5 billion tax increase is a
57% to 43% split.
So now we have the inevitable showdown over the debt limit, which must be raised to pay for all of this spending. And Mr. Obama is blaming Republicans for being irresponsible because they won't raise taxes in return for promises of modest future spending restraint. And some people even fall for it.
We've said we think it would be foolish of Republicans to walk into Mr. Obama's debt-limit trap and let him blame them for the financial fallout, including a possible credit downgrade. But this is not because we think they will deserve the blame. Even if this debt-ceiling crisis passes, the threat of a credit downgrade will continue and grow until Mr. Obama changes his policies, or Americans change Presidents.
and Congress; more change is needed there, too (again, either policy or people).
