America is ungovernable

[time]

This is probably going to upset a few people, so I put it in its own thread.

IMO, it's a pretty good summation of how the rest of the world views the US right now. The author is a former senior Australian government minister.

An ungovernable America is on its knees and all of us will suffer

 

[ddrueding]

The article sounds about right. It seems that the politicians have no greater fear than re-election; even if they are in control of a bankrupt nation. You'd think that the trillions immediately added to the debt once we lose our credit rating would be enough to get it off the table; any cuts or taxes will pale in comparison to that massive expense which will gain us nothing.

Why are Americans so stupid and/or uninvolved? Why do we tolerate such levels of complication and obfuscation that any corruption is undetectable? Because the country is too darned big. No one should have that much power. Even if California were it's own country (still too big, IMHO), it would have more people over a broader climate range and more diverse political opinion than all of Australia.

One size does not fit all; there are too many opinions here for anyone to get something close to their way. And why do you expect the people to get involved if their voice represents 0.0000000325% of the populace (that would be if every vote counted the same...which they don't).

The United States needs to be a bit less united IMHO.

 

[Mercutio]

I'd just like to make the case that there was no reason to expect any different outcome as the result of allowing the republican party to have a toehold of political power in the current climate.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm of the opinion that it really matters very little either way in a brass-on-the-Titanic sort of way.

Sure fundamental human rights are a good thing, and the Democrats are better at that. A responsible fiscal policy is also a good thing, and the Dems have shown more sense here as well recently (this is why I stopped being a Republican). But if nobody actually passes legislation that does anything to save the country from itself, why does it matter?

 

[Stereodude]

You guys are looking at it wrong. It's not Republican vs. Democrat. For the most part it's ruling class vs. the rest of us. Most of the people in Washington are all about the power, not what's best for the country. They make up the ruling class. They thing they know better than the rest of us. They went to ivy league schools and are smarter than the rest of us.

If nothing is done to gov't spending the CBO says ~14 trillion will be added to the debt in the next 10 years. The budget is so convoluted due to baseline budgeting that if they froze spending at the current level (which is outrageously high) on everything the CBO would rate that as a 9.5 trillion dollar "cut" when nothing has been reduced. These plans that are being discussed "cut" a few trillion from that 14 trillion dollar number and only add 10-13 trillion to the debt in the next 10 years. What sort of cut is that? Instead of doubling the debt in the next 10 years we're only going to add 90% to it? Oh, that's gonna make a fat lot of difference.

And, all this goes on after 9 trillion in new spending over the next 10 years was added to the budget in the past 2.5 years. So, they add 9 trillion in spending over the next 10 years in 2 years, and are all pounding their chests over the idea that they're going to "cut" a few trillion (max) out over the next 10 years. Heck, if they just rolled back spending to 2007 levels the budget would balance itself in the next 10 years. The idea that the world will continue to spend 10-20% of it's GDP buying our debt to finance their out of control spending is ridiculous.

Further compounding things, they get to spend the money from the debt ceiling increase now, and will "cut" later. Of course we all know the "cuts" never come. It doesn't matter if everyone in Congress and Obama agreed to freeze spending for the next 10 years and sign that into law giving us a 9.5 trillion "cut". Congress can't pass a law restricting the actions of future Congresses. Meaning that next year when it's budget time Congress and Obama can do whatever they want ignoring whatever they promised this year to do in 2012. They aren't legally forced to honor any sort of deal they worked out this year. So, they push the "cuts" into the out years in the 5-10 years from now range, the CBO scores the budget like those "cuts" will really happen, they get credit for "cutting" spending. and 5-10 year from now, it never happens and the cycle repeats every few years.

I won't even get into increased "revenue" (taxes) because it doesn't matter how much money the folks in Washington take, they will always spend more.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm of the opinion that it really matters very little either way in a brass-on-the-Titanic sort of way.

Sure fundamental human rights are a good thing, and the Democrats are better at that. A responsible fiscal policy is also a good thing, and the Dems have shown more sense here as well recently (this is why I stopped being a Republican). But if nobody actually passes legislation that does anything to save the country from itself, why does it matter?

Here's what's been happening since Obama took office: Legislation is proposed. That legislation is immediately assigned an ideological bent as either part of the liberal or conservative agenda. If the bent is liberal, Republicans move in lockstep to oppose it. Democrats make real attempts to compromise, something that had been working pretty well for the preceding 200 years of US History. Negotiations are made, deals are done. In some cases, concessions reach the point of nearly being bullet points on a republican party platform. Then those same republican lawmakers decide that there needs to be a new goal post and refuse to vote for the new legislation.

Now, truthfully, I'm a leftist. We absolutely do not have anyone in government, except maybe Bernie Sanders, who represents anything like my point of view. I'm not cheerleading Democrats because they're my team. I think Democrats are spineless cowards.

But the alternative is a bunch of people who are completely willing to deny reality because it doesn't happen to line up with their ideology and they do it all the time. Last weekend the credit rating agencies had a special meeting with republican legislators to explain in small words what would happen if the US defaults on its debt obligations. They did not meet with democrats. They did not need to meet with democrats. They're acting like adults and trying to get something done. Congressmen walked out of that meeting and basically told the press "We don't think that's actually going to happen."

Oh, and the reason so goddamned many of these republican congressmen are having so much problem with the idea of raising taxes (which are, by the way, the lowest they have been in the history of the country, so if lowering revenues really helped out the economy the way they say it does, we'd be at something like the most prosperous time in our history as well) is that so damned many of them have signed Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which says that they won't vote for any tax increase ever. Norquist is a huge power broker in republican circles, but the essence of his viewpoint is rolling back social programs to the point before the New Deal was enacted in the 1930s because socialism like taking care of old people and making medical care available isn't fair to the already wealthy and his dad didn't like it.


It's not rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to have so little trust and respect for some of these people. On one side I can see spineless idiots at least attempting to build consensus and govern and on the other there's a group of people unwilling to do anything but have temper tantrums until they get their way.

 

[flagreen]

There is a decided lack of leadership with this adminstration. Clinton and Bush were both able to muster the political troops to carry the day when needed. Leadership is sorely lacking at the moment.

 

[Mercutio]

There is a decided lack of leadership with this adminstration. Clinton and Bush were both able to muster the political troops to carry the day when needed. Leadership is sorely lacking at the moment.

Saying "We will not give even one single inch until you are 100% supporting our ideological position" does not exactly suggest that yours are a people willing to be led.

 

[Striker]

I don't think it's a matter of no leadership.
It's a matter of a lot of people refusing to accept who the leader is because of who he is.

 

[Stereodude]

You and a friend are standing at the edge of a cliff. Your friend wants you to jump of the cliff and tells you you'll be fine if you do. You think you'll die if you jump. How do you compromise with your friend? And, after you "compromise" who actually did sacrificed their position?

 

[ddrueding]

America is too big to fail, and that is a bad thing.

 

[CougTek]

That's probably what the Romans thought before 476 A.D. Yet they did. Have no worries, if you collapse, others will find the way to fill the void. But I'm looking at the possible replaments and I hope the U.S.A will figure it out.

 

[jtr1962]

At this point, it probably makes a lot more sense to break the US into three parts, consisting roughly of the East Coast, West Coast, and everything in the middle. Ideologically, the states in each group would be closer together, and better able to get more done. Why this isn't being considered is obvious. Most of the red states in the middle get far more back in spending than they send to Washington in taxes. If these states were their own nation, they would either have to raise taxes to something reasonable, or end up looking like Mexico. Now they can just sponge off the coastal states. Both the East and West Coast states would be far better off as their own nations. Taking it one step further, large cities like New York would probably do fine as nation states. NYC sends more to both NYS and the feds than it gets back in spending, far more. Same with many other large or medium cities.

I'm really fed up with what's going on in Washington. Basically, to me anyway, it seems the Republicans will do anything they can to make sure the economy doesn't improve before the 2012 election. They couldn't care less about the country, only that Obama doesn't get relected. Their philosophy until then is "If Obama is for it, then we're against it". For his part, Obama could have done things differently. He squandered far too much political capital on health care. If I had been in his shoes, my first focus would have been infrastructure, with the goal of building a national high-speed rail network within ten years, much more local transit, much more bike infrastructure, and a shift to less reliance on personal autos and fossil fuels. While controversial, these measures would have enjoyed far more support than his health care legislation did. Ironically, they might have helped cut health care spending by getting people walking and biking more, rather than sitting in their cars. Besides, without basic transportation infrastructure which works, nothing else in the economy is possible.

My opinion, and I've been saying this since 9/11, is I'll be surprised if the US in its present form exists by 2020. Fundamentally, we're toast. Infrastructure is falling apart, as is the educational system. The political will to fix it isn't there since both these things are seen as evil government spending. And on top of this, we're spending more than we get in taxes. By any reasonable standard, this is a disaster in waiting. It's like living in a house you can't pay for, which is also falling apart, and on top of that you're too dumb to be aware of how bad the situation is.

Next election, I'm writing in Beavis and Butthead. They couldn't be any worse than the clowns in power, on both sides.

 

[Stereodude]

Remember that the solution to gov't failure is more gov't. :idea:

The gov't has been responsible for infrastructure and education from the beginning and has poured piles of money down those holes yet they're disasters. So somehow the natural solution of course is to pour even more money down those holes and hope the results change. Just like the solution to the deficit and debt problem is to give more money to the people who have already proven themselves to be irresponsible with money.

Didn't Albert Einstein say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

 

[ddrueding]

The only thing worse than govt. running healthcare is something like Halliburton running healthcare.

 

[jtr1962]

Remember that the solution to gov't failure is more gov't. :idea:

The gov't has been responsible for infrastructure and education from the beginning and has poured piles of money down those holes yet they're disasters. So somehow the natural solution of course is to pour even more money down those holes and hope the results change. Just like the solution to the deficit and debt problem is to give more money to the people who have already proven themselves to be irresponsible with money.

Didn't Albert Einstein say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

The simple fact is certain types of infrastructure needed for a modern economy to function are too expensive, with too long a payback period (or perhaps there is no payback period, ever) for private industry to even consider investing in. The list includes railroads, roads, airports, seaports, canals, etc. What would happen if private industry were involved is cherry picking of what gets built. The most profitable projects serving the wealthiest 1% would get built. The other 99% would be getting around by bicycles on dirt roads, if they're lucky. Unfortunately, a modern economy can't function with bicycles on dirt roads. What you'll probably end up with is what existed in the Middle Ages, basically walled towns where the rich protected themselves, and had serfs to do the dirty work. If you needed to travel any distance, you faced poor roads plus the very real possibility of being robbed or killed en route. What good roads existed were mainly leftovers from the Roman Empire. Rome saw that roads were for the common good, along with adequate supplies of clean water. Unfortunately, long term the Empire fell apart from within for many reasons, including neglect of fundamental infrastructure, along with spending far too much money on unnecessary military ventures (sound familiar?).

There's no arguing government doesn't always choose wisely as to which types of infrastructure to build. There's also no arguing that there is a huge amount of waste and fraud involved in government contracts. That doesn't mean you throw out the baby with the bath water. Other countries have tons of government funded infrastructure which actually works. You have high-speed rail in Europe, Japan, and now China. The Netherlands has a system of long-distance bicycle highways we can only dream about here in the states, where one can commute at high speeds, with hardly any stopping. The difference between us and them is that they don't drag politics into every infrastructure project, nor slow it down with tons of red tape. And in most of these places public education actually works. It even worked fine in the US for a time, until it was sold out to the teacher's unions.

Bottom line, you're right to quote Einstein here, but for the wrong reasons. Rome and every other big empire, including the USSR, only fell apart when they failed to invest in domestic infrastructure. If we think we can keep taxes low at the expense of infrastructure, then we're just repeating the mistakes of the past. And the rich benefit just as much from this government spending, in the form of an educated, mobile work force which they can employ to further build their wealth and/or buy their products.

 

[Stereodude]

No, you don't throw the baby out with the bath water, but you'd be foolish to keep the status quo and keep adding water to the bath until the baby drowns also.

 

[time]

They think they know better than the rest of us. They went to ivy league schools and are smarter than the rest of us.

The politics of envy. Isn't that the Tea Party angle, that just because some people are smarter and better educated, we don't want them to make decisions for us? Isn't that pretty much like telling your accountant that just because they have qualifications and specialized experience, you don't want them deciding whether or not you can afford something?

I've noticed that in this country as well, almost the entire populace is economically illiterate - most are flat out innumerate.

 

[time]

I don't think it's a matter of no leadership.
It's a matter of a lot of people refusing to accept who the leader is because of who he is.

I suspect you're right.

But in any case, surely the current leadership failure is within the Republican members of Congress? They appear to be a split party, something I feared when party leaders started embracing the Tea Party, despite the latter being radicals rather than conservatives.

 

[time]

How many people here understand the difference between the budget and the borrowing limit? What is happening here is that after months of argument, Congress finally passed the budget in April for the year that ends in September. :roll: It's now August, obviously the money is well and truly committed and no doubt mostly spent, but Congress wants to change their mind and bankrupt the government.

If the US was a company, the creditors would move in and the perpetrators would be prosecuted and/or sued. In this case, it means that credit will dry up for everyone (if you can't trust the US government, who can you trust?), and what there is will cost a hell of a lot more.

It's got nothing to do with agreeing to imaginary 9 trillion dollar increases in spending, it's a straight out breach of faith in failing to honor your fiduciary promises. If they weren't members of Congress, they'd be facing treason charges.

The vehicle to balance the books is the budget, and ideally in a timely fashion rather just procrastinating to allow political posturing.

 

[ddrueding]

Of course you are right time, and my intelligent republican friends agree; the spending limit should never have been on the table in the first place. Fixing the budget is not done by refusing to pay outstanding bills, but by not racking up future bills.

 

[snowhiker]

You guys are looking at it wrong. It's not Republican vs. Democrat. For the most part it's ruling class vs. the rest of us. Most of the people in Washington are all about the power, not what's best for the country. They make up the ruling class. They thing they know better than the rest of us. They went to ivy league schools and are smarter than the rest of us.

Absolutely correct. Been that way for years.

~~~~~

I think once (or if) the puppet masters (huge mega-corporations) see economic and/or social collapse negatively affecting their bottom line(s) they'll start pulling the necessary strings to get things "working" again.

 

[jtr1962]

I think in the long run the wealthy and megacorporations will start to see that it's in their own interests to pay higher taxes despite the present, nearly religious opposition to any type of tax increase. I fear though this won't happen until the system completely collapses. The present antitax sentiment is more a symptom of lack of trust in government to spend tax dollars wisely than anything else. That's really what needs to be fixed. We need greater transparency. Citizens are entitled to know that every dollar they pay in taxes will be spent to greatest effect, without back door deals allowing the well-connected to skim off the top, or labor unions squandering the money with wasteful labor practices. Once this confidence is restored, much of the philosophical opposition to any kind of government spending will disappear. Sad to say, I think it'll take a third party to do that. The two existing parties are so entrenched with special interest groups who will see to it that any politician not supporting their agenda won't get elected.

The irony in all this is I started out as a Reagan Republican. I've since grown to hate the GOP with a purple passion. Back in the 1980s I hated what I saw as waste and bloat in government, especially in NYC where at one time well over 1 million people were on welfare. We cleaned that up, but have gone way too far in the other direction, gutting even useful social programs. Today's Republicans make Reagan look like a liberal. Today's Democrats as a group are probably more conservative than the Republicans of the 1980s.

What puzzles me most are people who are deluded into voting against their own self-interests. I'm mostly referring here to the poor working stiff who chants the party line on keeping taxes on the wealthy low. It should be obvious by now that trickle-down economics doesn't work. It had to be tried I suppose, but the experiment should have ended with the first Bush. The only thing trickling down nowadays are salaries. I'm dumbfounded then that the working poor will vote for people who will gut just about anything which benefits them, such public transit or public schools or parks, on the silly notion that they will pay lower taxes as a result if they should become wealthy. Never mind that the chance of some poor working slob becoming a millionaire is the lowest it's been in probably 75 years. The disconnect evident in today's voting habits is frankly astounding.

 

[Stereodude]

Of course you are right time, and my intelligent republican friends agree;

Of course anyone who doesn't agree with you is intelligent...

the spending limit should never have been on the table in the first place. Fixing the budget is not done by refusing to pay outstanding bills, but by not racking up future bills.

Uh... What exactly do you think the debt limit is for? It's to limit spending. To prevent you from racking up future bills. If you're just going to raise it every time you get near it why have it in the first place? Washington will never fix the budget. All the "fixes" work on the premise of spend now cut later. Except the "cut later" part never happens.

If the debt limit isn't raised, none of our outstanding bills won't be paid. The gov't also won't default. The gov't takes in more money a month than it needs to service the debt. It will just have to cut some spending and prioritize how to spend what's left.

The whole things is an utter farce. It would be like you calling your credit card company to demand an increase in your credit limit because you're up against it and threatening them that you won't be able to pay your bills if they don't raise your credit limit so raise it or they'll get nothing.

Only the gov't would try to tell people that the solution to out of control spending is more spending. And the AAA credit rating on US debt is going to be negatively impacted if we don't raise the limit so we can spend more and further the believe we will never pay it back. Wait, what???

 

[Stereodude]

The politics of envy. Isn't that the Tea Party angle, that just because some people are smarter and better educated, we don't want them to make decisions for us? Isn't that pretty much like telling your accountant that just because they have qualifications and specialized experience, you don't want them deciding whether or not you can afford something?

I've noticed that in this country as well, almost the entire populace is economically illiterate - most are flat out innumerate.

Please... The average American understands at some level what those in Washington are unable or unwilling to understand at any level. You don't have to go to Harvard or Yale to get it. You don't have to be considered "smart" by the media to get it.

The fact is you can't spend more money than you make indefinitely. People know this from their household budgets. Yet somehow the idiots in gov't can't figure this out. But, yeah... that's it. We're just not smart enough to understand.

 

[Stereodude]

It should be obvious by now that trickle-down economics doesn't work.

I don't agree, but I hear this mantra repeated over and over. Could you please explain to me what alternate economic theory does work?

Is there evidence somewhere that shows that confiscating 90% of the income of "rich" people and giving it to the "poor" via gov't program and tax credits leads to a booming economy?

 

[Santilli]

I should know better, but here goes.

First off: Having been in public schools for 10 years, I can from my experience, tell you it's a system that mirrors our government.
One quick example:
The miserable excuse for a Superintendent employed a media person to represent her, using the school funds, and paid her 125,000 a year. How many teachers are paid that?

The message of the Tea Party is the same of the revolution:
When the government becomes so oppressive, back then it was with overtaxing, etc. it is time to radically alter the system.

I haven't really looked at the American budget, but, I suspect the first thing that should go is aide to other countries. To borrow against
our future and then give that money to other countries, at the same time they are saying it will lead to our fall is madness.

Another area that might be looked at is the cost of the American Government. Does it produce anything? Do government agencies
do anything? Regulatory agencies in particular make it so difficult to produce products that we are going to end up like the U.S.S.R.

Then we have the issues of The Constitution. Most of what FDR did was out of desperation, and, most of it unconstitutional. He had to threaten to pack the court to get the justices to approve his programs. It really took a war to get the economy back on track, and, we ended up producing things for people who never paid us back, adding to the debt.

Perhaps the saddest part is DavidD is right, the states have become too big, and unmanageable, and, only the rich or groups wise enough
to understand that the only way to keep rights is to lobby for them, or, they will be taken away.

California is a real piece of work. The model used above, about rich feudal lords is already happening. Look at L.A. On top of this, the AVERAGE Mexican student percentage for a California public school is 51%. That figure is eventually going to be the voting %. Yes, we have been invaded, and Mexico has won, while our group of Nero's fiddle away.

I actually believe in our Constitution, and, that is one of the best government designs ever. However, we are so far from that design
that our solutions are not going to be easy.

In essence I am going to use California Transit as a model for the effect of a bloated government. CalTrans takes a huge part of the
California Budget. They tell us how we are supposed to act, not serve us, by putting in car pool lanes now that require payment to drive in(Feudal model support?) yet create traffic jams for the 85% of people that have to use those roads. Why? Because our government wants to tell us what kind of cars to drive, and how to drive them.

Caltrans has started a tremendous number of projects around here, yet they don't finish many. I would guess their plan was to get as much of the budget as possible, by starting a bunch of projects, and,
getting as much funding as possible. To continue to get this funding, they start, and fail to finish stuff that creates a loss of productivity
to the people who are paying their salaries. In other words, the goal
of Caltrans is no longer to serve the people of California, but, to perpetuate and grow as big as possible, taking as much money as possible from the people of California. I can think of a few other Federal Agencies, BATF in particular, that mirror this model.

 

[CougTek]

IThe message of the Tea Party is the same of the revolution:
When the government becomes so oppressive, back then it was with overtaxing, etc. it is time to radically alter the system.

I thought their message was : "We're a bunch of illiterate moronic rednecks, with an IQ and yearly earnings in the two figures, who would like to bring America back to 1825". It's certainly the perception the rest of the world has about them and every time they show up in the news, United States make fools of themselves.

I haven't really looked at the American budget, but, I suspect the first thing that should go is aide to other countries. To borrow against our future and then give that money to other countries, at the same time they are saying it will lead to our fall is madness.

I haven't look at your government's budget either, but I'm pretty sure the budget allowance to occupy/invade other countries is a lot higher than the enveloppe for humanitary help. I would be very surprised if the war in Irak didn't cost more money than the food and reconstruction help sent by the U.S. government to all other countries combined during the last decade.

Another area that might be looked at is the cost of the American Government. Does it produce anything? Do government agencies do anything?

The CIA cost a fortune for sure, but good luck convincing the people in charge to trim down the main agency that keep them in charge.

Most of what FDR did was out of desperation, and, most of it unconstitutional. [...] It really took a war to get the economy back on track, and, we ended up producing things for people who never paid us back, adding to the debt.
[...]
I actually believe in our Constitution, and, that is one of the best government designs ever.
[...]
I would guess their plan was to get as much of the budget as possible, by starting a bunch of projects, and, getting as much funding as possible.

Where's Woody Nitpicker when we need him? Is there a coma festival I'm not awared of? Try to stop smoking and maybe you won't need to make so many pauses during your speech ;-)

 

[Stereodude]

I thought their message was : "We're a bunch of illiterate moronic rednecks, with an IQ and yearly earnings in the two figures, who would like to bring America back to 1825". It's certainly the perception the rest of the world has about them and every time they show up in the news, United States make fools of themselves.

That's what you get when you believe everything you see on CNN.

 

[ddrueding]

That's what you get when you believe everything you see on CNN.

When you look around the world and see that only one broadcast network doesn't completely disagree with you, it might be time to re-evaluate your definition of "the truth".

 

[flagreen]

America is doing just fine. We've been in much worse spots before and made it through. This crisis will pass too. All this negativity and hate from those abroad is the price we pay for being the last remaining super power. And despite how this curret situation turns out, 11 Nuclear Carrier groups says we'll remain on top.

 

[Santilli]

"I haven't look at your government's budget either, but I'm pretty sure the budget allowance to occupy/invade other countries is a lot higher than the enveloppe for humanitary help. I would be very surprised if the war in Irak didn't cost more money than the food and reconstruction help sent by the U.S. government to all other countries combined during the last decade."

No argument. I suggest cutting both the war budget and the the aide.
Take a bit of that money and focus on domestic issues.

We don't really need to do foreign aide since we are driving all our companies out of the US with taxation and regulation.

 

[Stereodude]

When you look around the world and see that only one broadcast network doesn't completely disagree with you, it might be time to re-evaluate your definition of "the truth".

Yes, so I can be a sheep just like everyone else. :tdown:

Good thing Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers didn't listen to people like you.

I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up what the New York Times wrote about Robert H. Goddard (one of the fathers of rocketry) in 1920 where they baiscally destroyed his career into rocket research with an ignorant editorial attacking his idea that caused his funding to dry up. It only took man landing on the moon & 49 years for them to issue a correction. link

But these are the infallible beacons we should be listening to. :drunk:

 

[CougTek]

Something really needs to be done.

 

[Stereodude]

Nonsense! We'll just continue to spend more and more every year. That's the plan of both parties in Washington. The "cuts" are simply reductions in how more they will spend each year. There is no plan to actually spend less than they did the previous year.

To give you an idea how messed up budgets are in Washington courtesy of baseline budgeting the 800+ billion dollar "stimulus" plan got added to the baseline, so that extra 800 billion is now in every years budget going forward. So they didn't just spend 800+ billion once they're spending an extra 800+ billion every year. So, in one fell swoop spending got increased 8 trillion dollars in the next 10 years. But everyone is supposed to get excited that they're talking about "cutting" a few trillion over the next 10 years after they already added 8 trillion in "stimulus" to the budget.

 

[ddrueding]

That has nothing to do with the debt ceiling. Deciding how much money we should spend going forward is a very important debate, but it has nothing to do with paying our outstanding debt.

Not paying people from whom we have already accepted goods or services is economic malfeasance, and would be criminal if it were anyone but the govt. Not to mention economic suicide; even if the interest rate only doubled (an underestimate, IMO), that is more than 7 trillion on it's own.

 

[snowhiker]

Worse case scenario for America?

So what is the worse case scenario for America in the next 10-15 years?

/crazy scenario/

http://www.forbes.com/wealth/billionaires/list

I wonder when a bunch of these folks are going to get together for a secret meeting on how to --REALLY-- save the American (and world's) economy. Because in 10-15 years when our national debt is 20-30 trillion and America (along with the rest of the world) really goes into the shitter...... 30-70% unemployment, massive food riots and wars/death... there's going to be shit to pay.

These billionaires our going to lose everything. And a bunch of yahoos with guns are "gonna git that sum-bitch {insert hated rich/white guy} and hang him from a tree."

/end crazy scenario/

 

[Stereodude]

Not paying people from whom we have already accepted goods or services is economic malfeasance, and would be criminal if it were anyone but the govt. Not to mention economic suicide; even if the interest rate only doubled (an underestimate, IMO), that is more than 7 trillion on it's own.

Uh... Even if the debt ceiling isn't raised that doesn't happen. The gov't isn't at any real risk of default. They take in more money each month than is needed to service the debt.

The whole thing is a bunch of ruling class spin. Tell everyone the world is going to end if they don't support _____ so that people will support the plan. It's not any different than the spin they used to pass TARP.

 

[Santilli]

Bernard Madoff has been the financial consultant for Congress for the last 50 years. They make him look like a nickel and dime store thief.

 

[CityK]

The whole thing is a bunch of ruling class spin. Tell everyone the world is going to end if they don't support _____ so that people will support the plan. It's not any different than the spin they used to pass TARP.

• Manufactured !
• Fear mongering !
• Manipulation !

Oh my! I see all is well in Washington.

And now for some light, afternoon special, humour: I'm just a bill...