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I assumed no such thing. Raising the ceiling and cutting spending/adding revenues are two separate issues. The teabaggers tied them together and threatened default for the first time ever. Hell, the ceiling was raised 8 or 9 times during Reagan without problem, and several times under Bush, and those are the two administrations that are responsible for the majority of the debt we are dealing with now.

S&P explicity stated that this dysfunction was a major factor that lead to the downgrade.

And 'austerity' in a time of recesion is Hoover like and will only lead to a worse economy.

I forget.....CBO....IMF....S&P, something like that.

What do you think the figures are?

The IMF tied them together before the teabaggers did. You just need to look back a few months to early 2011.

Austerity comes from the outside, it doesn't matter if it is Hooverlike. You need to look at who gets a chair at the table during austerity talks.

The writing is on the wall.

The IMF didn't demand they be taken up at the same time and that we nearly bring the US into default over it, now did they? S&P talked about the process as being broken, not just the policy.

Go analyze the years 2011 -2021 that correspond to Obama's budget and see what the numbers are. Was it 80 billion/year to the rich that Obama wanted?

Personalizing public policy is a stupid way of determining what would work. Truth is Federal taxes are the lowest they have been in 50+ years. That also means that there is less and less going to the states, and then less and less going to local governments, counties, cities, towns, schools, etc. So your taxes in state, property, sales, income whatever each state has, will rise to make up for it.

When a person who makes, say 1 million plus pays around 18% of their income in Federal taxes and a person making 50k pays almost 30%, something is f'd up.

The solution is simply to cut government spending to be in line with taxes.

Or take the Democrat approach that all government spending is needed and taxes must be raised to come in line with government spending. How much you willing to pay in addition to what you pay now?

The experts have done sooooooo well.

Um, ? Yeah, I 'talked' about the numbers, the dow numbers at different times in recent history, yes. They show how it tanked under Bush, and is up under Obama with a huge drop immediately after the teabaggers were willing to take this country into default.

So again, yes, I did that. Just because it shows something that doesn't fit the right wing narrative is no reason to act like you got sand in your vagina.

Nobody wants the pain of yanking the bullet out and stitching up the wound. They'd rather just leave the bullet in, pretend to ignore it, and bleed to death slowly.

The pain of yanking the bullet out (cutting government spending by like 50% with NO tax hikes) would be more recession for a couple of years, probably a worse recession than 2008-present. But IMO it would be worth it in the long run.

I look for a global financial meltdown within 10 years. Sadly, that's what it's gonna take to snap people back to reality about how money, economics, free markets, etc. really work.

China bluntly criticized the United States after the S&P ratings cut to AA-plus, saying Washington had only itself to blame and calling for a new stable global reserve currency.

"The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone," China's official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.




FuzzNJ, this is what you need to be hearing.

I think I may have said before:

We globalists control everything.

Watch Europe. It is our future.



Let me add to it:

Austerity comes from the outside and comes quickly.

Kidding about what? I said Bush (and the congress at the time) spent too much. All of them are what inspired the election of the Tea Party people which is the only chance for any change to the situation, obviously and inarguably.

They wanted 4 trillion in spending cuts. They got 2 trillion via veiled promises that they don't believe will really happen because of the sacred cows involved.

You can't duck that reality by trying to claim the S&P wanted the USA to have more debt. They ripped Obama's plan months ago.

The dept ceiling thing brought the issue to the fore, but we never would have gotten here if Democrats didn't put us on an insane spending trajectory, and that is a FACT The rest is just BS and cover. But keep trying to blame the crowd that wanted to cut spending, that's going to work well in the next election.

This is a key point. China, Japan, the IMF, and the credit rating agencies did not say a peep until Obama released his budget forecast that called for 10 trillion USD in new debt over the next 10 years. Then they all chimed in and said that was obscene.

That was the proverbial shot across the bow.

You're just ignoring the core problem because you are complicit in causing it and perpetuating the fraud on the American people.

John Chambers of S&P already stated in an interview with Fox that had there been 4 trillion instead of 2 trillion in debt reduction, the downgrade would not have happened.

There is a 1 in 3 change of further downgrade over the next 6-24 months.

Well, couple things. One, you say bush spent too much, but end with Obama's out of control spending. It's why I keep reminding you of the wars, tax cuts and part D.

Second, to say that what the S&P report says is not really what they meant is the height of arrogance and stupidity. You are taking what you want out of the report and discarding everything you disagree with. It would be if I picked out the paragraph about how they downgraded the US because it doesn't seem realistic to assume the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to end and therefore create more revenue to help the situation and saying that was the only reason.

Third, it was a man made crisis because the two issues were combined in a way that was unnessesary and unnessesarily hostile and hurt our chances for a real solution.

And lastly, the entire meme that Obama has had runaway spending is false, and you just buy whatever you hear from your talk radio gods.

To rectify the situation, Newsweek and The Daily Beast have come up with an exclusive estimate of the amount the president has spent on new legislation since taking office in January 2009. This isn’t the sum total of all government outlays; that number would include spending on mandatory entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which no president can control, as well as spending on income-support programs such as food stamps and Medicaid, which automatically increases as citizens get poorer (i.e., during a recession). Instead, we focused on the times when Obama decided to spend money that wouldn’t have been spent if the government had simply been humming along on autopilot.

What we—along with the economic analyst Loren Adler at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank founded in 2007 by Republicans Howard Baker and Bob Dole and Democrats Tom Daschle and George Mitchell—found may surprise people who see Obama as the Big Spender in Chief. Over the last two years, the president has decided to “spend” $21 billion more on tax cuts—the GOP’s preferred policy response to, well, everything—than on government programs.

The math isn’t particularly complicated. So far, the Obama administration has pushed for six major, immediate spending increases that aren’t offset elsewhere in the budget: the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (aka “ the stimulus package”), which had a 2009-10 price tag of $340 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office; the GM/Chrysler bailout and other portions of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which have largely been paid back ($25 billion); unemployment-insurance extensions ($67 billion); COBRA extensions ($9 billion); Cash for Clunkers ($3 billion); and loans to automakers for energy-efficiency improvements ($8 billion). That’s $452 billion. Factor in $296 billion in stimulus funds that have yet to be spent and $136 billion in refundable tax credits that passed in December as part of Congress’ bipartisan tax compromise, and you wind up with $884 billion on the spending side of the equation.

That’s a hefty sum of money. But here’s the interesting thing: Obama’s tax cuts have been even bigger. The first of them, $238 billion in cuts for taxpayers and businesses, came as part of the stimulus package. The second portion, $721 billion worth, arrived in December, again as part of Congress’ bipartisan tax compromise. Subtract $54 billion in forthcoming stimulus-related tax hikes, and you’ve got a grand total of $905 billion in tax cuts. In other words, Obama has slashed one tax dollar for every dollar he’s spent on government programs.

(One yet-to-be-implemented program worth considering: Obama’s new health-reform law. In March 2010, the CBO estimated that “Obamacare” would produce a 10-year spending increase of approximately $250 billion and a tax increase of slightly more than $400 billion, totals that will tilt the equilibrium between Obama’s spending and tax cutting toward the former in future years. The CBO also estimated that the new law will reduce the deficit by $118 billion over the same period.)

Regardless of reality, Republicans have a strong incentive to keep characterizing the president’s spending as an “out-of-control,” “unprecedented” “spree” that “threatens” “our children’s future.” During a recession, especially a Great Recession like the one we’re only just beginning to emerge from, individuals and families tend to react by spending less and saving more, so they balk, despite the dictates of Keynesian economics, when the federal government doesn’t do the same. Accusing Obama of wasting money is an easy way to score political points with voters who’ve been forced to pinch their own pennies in recent months.

But during an accounting argument, it’s useful to have real, live numbers to battle over. On the rare occasion Republicans do allude to real stats, they tend to shout about the growing short-term deficit, a problem that has a lot more to do with declining recession-era tax revenues and increasing safety-net outlays than anything Obama has done, or not done. Instead, Republicans should be referring to the amount the president has decided to spend so far: $884 billion. They can say it’s too much, and that a thriftier approach would’ve been better for the country. Democrats can reply that rescuing the U.S. economy from a second Great Depression for less than the price of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was a relative bargain. Both sides, meanwhile, can debate the wisdom of cutting more than $900 billion in taxes while spending is going up. At least they’ll be arguing about facts, not fantasies.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/02/08/obamas-spending-exclusive-estimate-of-the-true-number.html

Obama executed half of Keynesian economics when it was the easy part. In his ten year budget forecast, he bailed on the hard part.

Since when? You are complaining about out of control spending and it's been like this for over 30 years. Hell, Reagan increased government spending more than all of em. Apparently you want to stop that, right? Government spending to stimulate the economy is Keynesian.

You would be surprised at how much can be saved if

1. All Gov't departments were made to take a 5% cut (each dept could meet the cut however they see as the best long-term solution i.e. Overhead reduction, salary cuts, "forced" retirement of any old enough to be eligible for full benefits, etc)
2. Eliminate ALL foreign Military Aid
3. Drastically reduce ALL foreign Economic Aid
4. Eliminate the "special" retirement/medical package politicians enjoy now
5. 100% Military withdrawal from A'Stan/Iraq and any other country we are currently stationed at that doesn't want us there (Okinawa comes to mind)

These are just the top 5 ways I will list, have many more that if all were implemented we could be actually paying the National Debt down instead of raising it

You might find 200 billion a year, tops. You want real savings......military, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. THat is why austerity is the only solution. Sacred cows need to be slaughtered.

Sorry, the two bush's were more as a % of GDP, but Reagan has the most increases in the ceiling.

Guess you didn't bother to read point #1

5% cut to ALL includes the programs you specifically list as well as EVERY other department in the Gov't there is...more to be saved there than $200 bil