Eric, I think the best thing we can hope for, and I hope you talk about this on your radio show, is to push through the August 2nd. “deadline” with no deal.

Even if the Aug 2 date is the real deadline (see today’s Wall Street Journal for why it probably isn’t), it will not result in Armageddon, which means that the Whitehouse and Geithner will be thoroughly discredited, as they have been crying to anyone who will listen that the economy will be destroyed if we can’t get a deal by August 2nd.

Judd Gregg talks about this on the Hill

(http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/judd-gregg/173167-opinion-gop-must-plan-for-debt-limit-fallout

But he has the political implications all wrong.

First, it is highly unlikely that Obama would not send out social security checks, as the Republicans would immediately be able to point out that there was enough money, but social security is not one of his priorities. Second, any choices the Whitehouse makes are going to anger some constituency, and the story will turn to the President’s priorities and why someone else is getting paid while “they” are not, not to mention the difficulties of justifying making interest payments to China. Most importantly though, the world will not come to an end on August third, and after months of claiming that no deal by August 2nd will result in Armageddon, the President’s and Tim Geithner’s credibility will be shot when it doesn’t happen. It will be reduced to merely a spending fight, with a thoroughly discredited president.

But most troubling is this “Super Congress” commission…

We’ve done 17 of these in the last 30 years over the deficit. They are as useful as sending Amy Winehouse to rehab.

The House Republicans should have passed a short-term debt limit increase weeks ago and called Obama’s bluff. With Democrat control of the Senate and the Whie House, the House Republicans need to be thinking play defense and slow the game game down. The idea of grand initiatives just isn’t in the cards. Forcing Obama to raise the debt ceiling again, while getting some spending cuts, and avoiding tax increases is a win for the Republicans, no matter how you look at it. I wish the Republicans had done this week’s ago.

when are we going to make it clear to Boehner that this makes his future career questionable at best? McConnell’s plan went down in flames, and I believe that part of that was the unified front on primarying him put on by RS and others.

Boehner needs similar treatment. Not later, either. That will do us no good.

The plan would raise the debt ceiling by $1 trillion, but would only cut $100 billion next year (at best) to get a combined total of $1.5 trillion in cuts over ten years if subsequent Congresses leave everything alone. The odds of that happening are zilch. And do we really think in an election year either side will want to even touch $100 billion as a best case scenario?

Why do you support the CCB when it only cuts $111 billion in the next year and the odds of it happening are even smaller? Something doesn’t make sense.

Reid was on camera a little while ago saying that his plan gives the GOP everything they want – no tax increases and painful cuts greater than the amount of the debt limit increase. So there’s no reason for the GOP to vote against it except for their fear of the far-right extremist tea party.

He was followed by Chuckie “I never met a camera I didn’t like” Schumer, who added that the Boehner plan was not only wrong, it was DANGEROUS.

They are obviously terrified of having to vote on it again before the next election.

Did those of you hammering Boehner really believe that it would be possible to do comprehensive budget, tax reform, and entitlement reform in a debt ceiling increase bill? Seems to me that getting $1.2 billion in budget savings for a six month debt extension with no tax increases would be a pretty good days work for the Republican House. Other than lamenting the inablity to achieve the impossible, I’m trying to understand why the Boehner plan is so awful.

Either we stop borrowing & balance our budget, or we continue borrowing more money until we can’t afford to even service our debt, forcing a default. All the proposed plans claim to save us, but they (including CCB) are all just setting us up for the eventual failure of the United States. So the title of this post should actually read “Boehner & the rest of GOP leadership committed us to default a long time ago when they refused to cut spending & balance the budget.”

I will preface what I am saying by stating I have not seen the details, only concepts/big numbers.

Nonetheless- credit agencies will downgrade US debt? You sound fairly certain in that prognostication. But given this is pretty close to the numbers on CCB, what’s to say they don’t do that irrespective? Plus it’s already built into the current market anyway. So I am not seeing a meltdown come out of this deal.

I am also pretty sure Obama does not want to have this conversation next year again. Hence the reason, he, not either party in Congress, scrapped the deal Boehner and Reid had. Hardly, someone who will be hailed as the conquering hero and Mr. Obama knows it.

I am all for negotiating hard and leading the way on improving our economic situation. But in the end we only have so much leverage. Let’s not overplay that hand.

above posters fail to realize is that if this plan is accepted, the debt limit will go up with no specifics in cuts. If there were clear details as to the cuts, that would be worth considering.

BUT since the plan is based on ambiguous, non-specific cuts it is a clear failure. We criticized Pelosi (rightly so) for claiming that we would have to pass Obamacare before we know whar is in it. If the GOP House goes along with this we are doing the same thing.

Does anyone really believe that a future debt conmission will actually cut spending with big government Dems/Repubs on it? Do you really think the establishment leadership would place a Ryan or Rand Paul on those commissions? If you do, you need to pick up the phone, call your doctor, and have your head examined.

Until there are specifics, I say the House GOP politely, but firmly tells Boehner, etc to go kick rocks.

I guess this is in response to the Republican plan or somethign or maybe Reid’s plan.

To me the messiah is starting remind me of Mr. Bean.

The idea that politicians, who gain their power by spending other people’s money, can cut spending in any meanful way is a waste of time.

IMHO, the only way for politicians to be able to make serious budget cutting decisions is to devolve as many of the various social marketplaces under their budgetary control back to individual taxpayer choices via some sort of reasonably constructed Taxpayer Directed Budget process. The ‘tough’ decisions for politicians aren’t so tough when they are made by taxpayers. Productive taxpayers, not politicians and special interests, would direct our nation’s future toward prosperity as well as compassion.

Give taxpayers the option to direct a portion of their tax dollars to various charities and non-profits. For example, if 5% of the budget goes to education, a taxpayer might choose to send 5% to their local school district, their state schools, some local private non-profit school. If 20% goes to welfare, then taxpayers might choose from a wide selection of charity programs, from local to regional to national, according to their whim, not the whims of politicians buying special interest votes with taxpayer money. Etc.

A TDB could have appeal for taxpayers of any political persuasion.

And it would quickly and permanently get spending under control, and paying off the debt to follow.

Bloated programs would be quickly cleaned up, overlap dealt with, failing programs would go away, dollars would flow to actual perceived public needs, not politician and special interest desires. The result would be a vibrant cost effective individually driven social marketplace that could be vastly superior to the one size fits all money pits of today.

For more, visit http://drfredc.com/allright/tdb/tdb_form.htm

With this Republican leadership… it is my belief that we have always been committed to a “downgrade”. Boehner…. Cantor… etc….. have all been too leaky of vessels for any true conservative to put hope into.

Downgrade? Now it is just a matter of to what “degree” of downgrade that we are all going to suffer.

Seeing this whole putrid process transpire… anybody who thinks more “government” is the answer truly has #@%*-for-brains.

Ned Reck

… Due to an unnecessary and incorrect dig in the last paragraph. You should know better than this

” This plan only keeps faith with “cut, cap, and balance” in the way members of Congress are faithful to their wives back in district and cheat on them with every short skirted intern while in Washington.”