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Reflections on the Deficit Deal

By: streiff (Diary)  |  August 2nd, 2011 at 02:00 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I don’t make claims to prescience and have no idea what the final product of the current debt ceiling negotiations will produce. I’m guessing it will not be as good as the boosters claim and not as bad as the partisans on both sides suggest. Make no mistake about it, the debate and deal were of historic import. This is the first time that an increase in the debt ceiling has ever been seriously debated.

It would be a mistake, I think, to be discouraged over this deal or to take uncritically the view of my friend and colleague Francis Cianfrocca that Obama was a big winner. The left doesn’t see it that way. We didn’t win all that we wanted, though I must confess that I’m still more than a little unclear on what was expected to be achieved while operating in the shadow of a bill that had to be passed, but we moved the ball forward and I think we are well positioned for the next round.

Here is my assessment:

We won some tactical victories.
On spending we made some incremental gains. True, the total deficit reduction package doesn’t look like much in light of the long term deficit projections but when looking at those projections we need to keep two things in mind. First and foremost, if the people making the projections really had insights on what the future looked like they wouldn’t be drones working at the Congressional Budget Office. They’d be making serious money. The future is not just like the past only moreso. The same CBO’s ten-year projections in 1995 did not forecast a budget surplus in 1998. To the contrary, they predicted a budget deficit of $357 billion. The second thing to keep in mind is that you eat an elephant one bite at a time. We didn’t get into this mess overnight. We won’t get out of it overnight either.

We won a significant strategic victory.
We won a significant strategic victory in that the terms of the debate have been altered perhaps permanently. The idea that we can no longer spend without consequences has firmly set in the national consciousness. We have the Tea Party backed members of the House and Senate to thank for that. For the first time a Democrat president has acknowledged that entitlement programs will have to be modified. This isn’t to say he’ll go along with what we want but putting those programs up for grabs is a sea change in our national debate. Reform and rationalization of these programs is now, today, a viable goal. That wasn’t the case last year.

What we won matters and what we lost doesn’t.
The “joint commission” is one of the worst ideas to come down the pike in a while. The idea of splitting mandatory cuts 50-50 between defense and discretionary domestic spending is just wrong. This isn’t to say there isn’t wasteful defense spending. There is. But if we’re going to have wasteful government spending I’d prefer that it be focused on killing people and breaking things and not on regulating American business out of existence. It isn’t an unalloyed “Satan sandwich”. Cuts are cuts and I’d much prefer a round of across the board cuts in 2012 — real, honest to gosh cuts — than ephemeral cuts in 2022. Also the baseline for 2012 presumes the expiration of the tax rate reductions enacted under President Bush (President Bush… President Bush… my heavens how good that sounds). If those rates are extended the cuts required of the “joint committee” become larger and the odds of across the board near term cuts go way up. Regardless, this “joint commission” sunsets when a new debt ceiling bill comes up, which, coincidentally will happen shortly after a new Congress is sworn in in 2013. If we win the Congress and/or the Presidency there is no reason to continue this deal. If we lose the House and see another Obama administration, there is no way the Dems will keep this “joint committee.” If we have the status quo we have already won the rhetorical battle. In the meantime we should focus our efforts in getting whatever good we can out of this beast and go for a better deal next time around.

Like so many victories, military or political, this one is not clean cut and overwhelming. I do, however, think that it is a victory and it is a strategically decisive one in the deficit reduction debate.

COMMENTS

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  • ideasmatter

    Does anyone know anything else about the 12 man committee? How much authority will it claim over congress? In regards to spending, and tax hikes, how much authority? Can the house, and or senate, nullify the decisions of 7 members on that committee? How, if so? Also, will Boehner put at least one moderate on that committee since one moderate is all it will take for a 7-5 vote?
    The reason I ask, is that if this committee nullifys majority votes in the House and Senate, Obama may have just “taken back” the house, and rendered any attempt at a 2012 sweep up by the right, pointless. We can elect 400 tea party flavored conservatives to the house next year, but this committee ‘could’ render that a pointless effort. I might be wrong, or thinking the worse here. I do that, often. Anyway, it’s worth taking a second glance at.

    • streiff

      is that it will have 12 members, half from each party and presumably half from each house of Congress. Whatever it comes up with has to be voted up or down by the Congress. The Senate can’t use a filibuster, or so it is claimed, but I find it hard to visualize a situation where a Senate filibuster could accomplish what a House majority can’t. If the committee recommendations are voted down then the automatic cuts happen. What happens if Obama refuses to sign? I don’t know.

      • ideasmatter

        So it just forces a vote, and would be unable to arbitrarily force a tax increase., but acts as a trigger for cuts….in theory.

        • streiff

          can’t overrule the Constitution… all revenue bills much originate in the House. And it can’t force either house of Congress or the President to approve.

          What it will do is set the terms of the debate.

          • gunslingr45

            why did the King errr Obumber sign it? has to be something marxist in it.

            Socialism billions dead, but liberals keep wanting to try it?..

          • mspector

            He gets the increase in the debt ceiling that he wanted. He gets a congressional “commission” that will allow further increases. The door is still open to tax increases. And assuming he wins in 2012, federal spending will increase every year that he is in office. If that’s the cost of having the Tea Party “change the terms of the debate”, it is an easy cost to bear.

          • streiff

            his debt ceiling increase. He also would have been in a very difficult position considering the House and Senate had arrived at a deal and he had been portraying Aug 2 as an Armageddon. The votes indicate that if he had vetoed it here is a good chance Congress would have overridden the veto.

      • Tbone

        That should work.

        • avgjo

          a much-needed laugh.

          I’ll be quoting that, if it’s alright.

      • cwfoster

        Don’t make me LAUGH! In March it was the ‘fight over the continuing resolution’ and it was “We’ll get them in the debt ceiling debate”, now we’re expected that there’s won’t be the ‘token RINO’ on the commission that’ll effectively give control of this dog and pony show to the Democrats? When the Democrats took control of the Congress and two year later, the White House, Pelosi basically said “We won, you lost, deal with it!” Well, what’s the good of US winning if we can’t even get these criminals to stop digging our mass grave deeper? Everyone says that we’re in ‘better position’ we’re “moving in the right direction”. You can start pulling a plane out of a dive and still smack into the ground hard enough to kill everyone on board. It’ll be cold comfort to win back control over a Bureaucratic behemoth that is too big to kill and an economy that is on life support that can only be kept alive by artificial means. They cut $100 Billion a year from the deficit over the next ten years? GREAT! the David Walker the former Comptroller General of the GAO says we’re THREE years from becoming GREECE! Get ready for all those bureaucrats to riot in the streets when we tell them we can afford them all anymore! (Oh WAIT, we’re already seeing that in Wisconsin, Indiana, and New Jersey!) If we DON’T get this fixed SOON, there wont be anything to fix!

    • jilocrest

      http://poorrichardsnews.com/post/8368174569/white-house-well-use-that-special-committee-to

      • ideasmatter

        Evil always first appears as reasonable.

    • snowshooze

      And they did this for what?
      To avoid accountability in an election year, I suppose.
      I checked the Roll Call and Begich / Murkowski voted as expected.
      I was amazed at the Senate vote going so much in favor of this budget.
      And the entire premise of this being a ten year plan just makes me go wild.
      However, that is also the only salvation.
      We aren’t married to it if we flip the house and get the white house, but we aren’t doing ourselves any favors by betting on that.
      In fact, I believe it may well do us damage that we did so poorly, and the Republicans are proving to be spineless
      . Who would want to send one into battle if all they are going to do is surrender?
      The backwash could go either way.

      • snowshooze

        NT

      • Repair_Man_Jack

        It’s been about as effective in solving the National Debt as sending Amy Winehouse to rehab was in getting her clean and sober.

    • kchand

      Those voting against, like Demint, Rubio, Sessions & Rand Paul will be “ineligible” from serving on it.

      • streiff

        That is just a falsehood.

        DeMint and Paul aren’t going to be on it for other reasons. I’d expect Hatch, who voted against it, and Sessions to be on it.

      • ideasmatter

        I heard that was just a twitter-rumour, but would not be suprised if it were true.

        But no conservative should stand on such a farce of a committee.

        It would yolk us to spending and taxing increases, by placing our one good apple in a basket of rotting flesh, and spun to make us own the thing.

        One moderate on the right to flip the whole vote to 7-5. And Boehner has several moderates he needs to repay.

  • baserunr

    All he wanted was the issue out of his way for re-election. If he really wanted tax hikes so much, why did he sign off on the extension at the end of last year?
    The Tea Party Conservatives are to be thanked for their valor, but as usual, we only won a moral victory. Virtually no spending is cut, McConnell is likely to put squishes on the 12 Disciples of Spending Committee (as is Boehner), and the accumulated debt limit gets its largest hike in history. How long can we keep borrowing? No one knows for sure, but it looks like we might find out soon. The most polite way to describe it is as a missed opportunity.

    • streiff

      The debate on the spending cuts recommended by the committee will be debated early next year. So the debate isn’t off the table. It will be an issue that our candidate will use during the campaign.

      I think Obama was a huge loser on this as he was shown to be ineffectual and was essentially cut out of negotiations by his own party. YMMV. We’ll see who is right in November.

      • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

        A president has to be seen in the lead, not acting like an ineffectual, petulant bungler.

        I think we are all losers on this one, but realistically it was probably the best we could hope for.

        • streiff

          disagree with you

  • banzaibob

    All Speaker Boehner had to do was let the Senate and the President know that CCB was the only option they had and if they didn’t like that then maybe we could put Obamacare on the table.

    But no he had to come up with other ideas to get a deal done. Now the Democrats smell blood and will be pushing to get more spending for “investments” in infrastructure to create jobs. He will probably cave on that issue as well as the 2012 budget.

    You know I thought when the Republicans took over the House the skirt in the Speakers chair was gone. Boy was I wrong.

    • snowshooze

      But I do not understand what the final drop dead outcome of that would have been. I made several comments and wrote my Sens/Rep pushing the idea, but with Murkowski and Begich, it was a wasted effort.

  • Charles Cianfrocca

    Francis is an Eeyore of long standing. My feelings are as follows:

    Was what we got enough? No, of course not. But we battled the left, with the whole press united behind them as usual, on whether there should not just not be more spending, but actually less, and WON THE ARGUMENT, in front of God and everybody. Things will never be the same.

    Urkel said ‘don’t call my bluff; I’ll go to the press’, and he did. Guess what — his numbers got worse. He will not be president in ’13.

    If the Bush tax cuts expire, the 1st thing the new president and congress will do, a month later, is to replace them, retroactively.

    The left’s confidence in the power of their press megaphone is badly shaken, as it should be. It’s like the 1st time Tyson lost. Being undefeated is like being a virgin – when it’s gone, …brother, it’s gone. Yes, unemployment and things generally will stay bad as long as this term lasts. But we know when it ends now, and we will fix it then.

    I say we did all right.

    • ideasmatter

      Capital will start hunkering down and moving overseas in anticipation of the Bush cuts expiring, the damage will be done before Obama leaves office.

      To bring the Bush-brand cuts back might be retro by then. Eliminating all cap gains and business taxes would be the next appropriate type of tax cut, to allow for the creation of new capital. Old capital will have expired or moved on by then.

      All moot if Porkulus II and QE III are initiated, which I suspect is next, based on what Obama is saying now that he has in effect, taken the House back.

      We did win the ideological fight though, on the street, where it counts.

      • Charles Cianfrocca

        …will flee before the expiration, but on the other hand, remember that, when it expires, the new POTUS and congress will already be elected. We’ll already know what they will be able to do. They can say it out in the open.

        Remember all the trouble Urkel was able to make as POTUS-elect, before he was even installed? It will be that on steroids when we just took the presidency and both chambers from his nasty a$$. That is the enviornment in which the discussion about letting the cuts expire will take place. “And that,” as The Grinch once said, “is a sound I simply MUST hear.”

        I say that in the end, they don’t even dare. Because if they do, when we then eliminate Zero-Care in the same bill, it’ll be just to throw him an extra kick on his way out.

      • streiff

        the Bush tax rates were much more vulnerable the last time they were extended than this time. The last time there was a Dem House and Senate. Plus this is an election year and a lot of Dem Senators aren’t going to want to run for reelection based on a tax hike. Obama may veto them as part of his campaign strategy but I think they will be passed out of Congress.

        I can’t see another Porkulus happening. QE II can be done by the Fed so who knows what’ll happen there.

      • baserunr

        correct. In fact, it has been my contention that capital began it’s “hunkering down” when it became evident that Obama was going to win the Presidency. The market began to sit on its thumbs as Steve Wynn would say, and the rest is history.

        I suspect that QEIII is coming, as it appears that Bernanke doesn’t know anything else to do.

    • earlgrey

      Trivial, but I am curious.

      • Charles Cianfrocca

        He has always been an eeyore. Always.

        Not that it hasn’t served him well, mind. There are worse ways to look at the particular world we inhabit. It is a practical approach, and probably not less accurate in the end than others one might choose. He’s right an awful lot more than he’s wrong on account of it.

        But not always.

    • e_rowe

      I hope you’re right.

      I think you are.

      This is all the more reason for us to pick an ideologically pure conservative as our candidate, and not to settle for someone in the mold of a Romney or a Perry.

  • Marcus_Traianus

    Something about winning the war one battle at a time keeps circulating in my head.

    Yes, and Mr. Obama is all about winners and losers, rich vs. poor, corporation vs. workers and other Marxist theories. So following that thought, whatever benefits him happens to our collective detriment ,or, more importantly, vice versa.

    We have now won the first battle by stopping the forward advance. Next we fight their attempts to flank us in the committee. Lastly, we end the war and take back our country in the next election.

    So much for the ban on martial metaphors.

    • snowshooze

      The Government considers a flat budget to be one with around 7% adjustment to account for standard growth, there may be additional inflation offsets.. they are pretty slippery.
      But yes, it sounds good. Too bad there is absolutely nothing binding except the 2.5 trillion Obama was just handed, which he will tear through so fast we will need another one next year. Then again… all bets are off.

      • streiff

        but we are farther ahead than we were last year.

        • Marcus_Traianus

          We have advanced further than one can expect as you so appropriately articulated.

          Do we want more? Do we want to win and set this country back on a course where we return to job growth and a sound economic future? You bet your shiniest Buffalo Nickel we do.

          But we have a President and Senate who have seen no such urgency in this cause. That is, until it became an electoral issue.

          Make no mistake, they know their end is near but will fight to the last man. They call us terrorists? No. This is counter-terrorism. The terrorism started when they spent trillions of dollars, forced through new entitlements we could not afford and as a result inflicted this economic disaster on our country.

          People in this country, the greatest country on the face of this earth fearing for their futures? That is the real terror. But it is about to end. When this next election is over and we have a new President, I will be the first to call out “Geronimo”.

          They have spent the last two years building monuments to themselves on the backs of hard-working Americans who have carried the burden. We are about to rise up, tear down their temples and peacefully return this government to its rightful owners; the people of this nation.

          • snowshooze

            Of which I have absolutely no control.
            I can’t advocate it, slow it or bring it quicker. It is just there.
            But I do observe, and what I see is they are pushing their luck.
            I do noy believe this to be a good thing for our country.
            But the current alternatives just suck.

      • avgjo

        As I understand it, all the hullaballo that just ended in Congress results in a net $7 Trillion + increase:

        http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20086501-503544.html

        Obamacare will get all kinds of funding; Obama has a slush fund for re-election and future generations are encumbered with EVEN MORE debt.

        Last time I ran afoul of lots of good, well-meaning folks who thought that Boehner’s CR cave was good for America. That didn’t turn out so good. I’m afraid that all this positive outlook is more of that.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Glad I’m not the only one who thinks this.

  • bcochran1981

    products that are good/great sell themselves. There’s a lot of people spending a lot of time and energy trying to sell me on this compromise. While not determinative, it certainly tells me something.

    • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

      By that argument dosing sailors with lime juice to prevent scurvy should have taken hold in civilian and military navies in about six months, instead of roughly three hundred years. For that matter, you probably didn’t type out your comment on a Dvorak keyboard*.

      Sorry: dissemination of innovation was a minor interest of mine during grad school. :)

      Moe Lane

      *To be fair; neither did I.

      • bcochran1981

        it’s not determinative. Not even close. You provided excellent examples. But when I’ve got people jumping up and down screaming “It’s good! It’s great! You’ve gotta listen to me. You just don’t understand how great it is, let me explain it to you so that you do.” Over and over and over again, well, frankly, it pings my BS radar. The actions and arguments of a lot of the debt ceiling supporters, to me at least, smack of used car and door to door salesmen.

  • wbb1950

    Streiff–if the cuts embodied in this deal are insufficient to stave off the downgrading of our credit, and if the downgrading of our credit coupled with the obsessive printing of money pursuant to a discredit Keynsian formula produces a no growth economy as some experts now predict, then this has to go down as one of the great missed opportunities. If you saw what I posted earlier about Congressional democrats hoping for a collapse of the stock market as Obama and company predicted gloom and doom, I think it is reasonable to assume that Obama will not act in the interests of the country and that is a third reason to be highly skeptical of this deal in my opinion. I think the distinction between a deal on the one hand vs a solution on the other is the key to it. We needed a solution and all we got was a deal. A solution was a hill to die for, a deal is not.

    • streiff

      I don’t disagree with all your premises. Though I think the idea that Dems wanting a stockmarket collapse (other than Bernie Sanders and Raul Girjalva) is beyond farfetched.

      I don’t see what solution you could expect to happen, one that will entail rewriting the tax code, and the enabling legislation for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, in the context of a debt ceiling debate.

      You can always find hills to die on. Usually you do that inadvertently (Little Big Horn, Gloster Hill, Isandlwana) and usually you accomplish damned little in the process.

    • wbb1950

      If the effect of this deal is to allow for the downgrade our credit and inflation, then how long will it be before we also lose our reserve currency status? And when that happens, we will lose our current ability to export our inflation to the world. That is another worry,

      • streiff

        do you see as being a possible replacement.

        Odds are we’re going to see the Euro implode in the next 2-3 years. No one in their right mind is going to hold Chinese currency. I don’t see the pound sterling making a comeback.

        We have a significant problem. Whether that problem is more severe than those of other countries is arguable. So while we may not look as great as we did we’re going to be the best game in town for quite a while.

        • snowshooze

          If you care to hold paper.

          • streiff

            to function as a reserve currency for nations… or even for Apple Computers.

            There are several currencies out there with great fundamentals but they are just too small to be useful.

          • snowshooze

            To be a nation and everyone wants to get into your currency… but you don’t have enough of it…
            I think I would sell more currency in exchange for gold, using that gold to back the currency… but I wouldn’t accept any currency swaps.
            Sorry, we honor gold, oil and livestock here… but we don’t need any dollars…

          • Tbone

            16,000 francs would buy a pound? So how many pounds of gold would you need to back even 1 trillion in francs? And, how many trillion francs would you need to be a reserve currency?

          • snowshooze

            Just a bit different…

          • Tbone

            How many francs to be a reserve currency? If you don’t know the answer, just say so and we can move on.

          • snowshooze

            Sorry. Let’s move on.
            Which Franc.. the swiss? I would expect.
            It changes daily.

          • Doc Holliday

            the old saying about the Swiss Franc is that when currencies rise against the dollar, the swissie rises faster, and when currencies fall against the dollar, the swissie falls slower.

            For me owning the swissie is just a way to diversify a portfolio cash position. However, I don’t recommend any particular trade in the franc or any other currency. I was lucky to buy the franc quite a while back. If I trade the franc near term it would likely be to sell it. The Swiss gov is a bit irked that their currency is rising so fast. OTOH, another trading axiom is that if you sell a winner, you better be ready to pick a new winner. I can’t find many winners these days.

            again, I am not recommending anything. Even if I liked a particular investment, I would never recommend it to someone else, the reason being trades/investments have expiration dates, mine might be a week and yours might be a 20 years.

          • snowshooze

            And I have continued on the sidelines of gold… but it just keeps going up…
            My Uncle sticks to $5,000.00 as being the top…but I am afraid to stick my toe in.
            What does it cost… on the sell… if you move gold physically? I mean buy it, hold it in your hands… stuff it in the safe, dig it out, hual it off and sell?
            And in the artificial market… gold could do anything.. scary to go in hard.

          • Doc Holliday

            I was lucky at bought physical gold at about $350 if I remember correctly, that was in the last five years. At the time people thought it was overvalued, just like today. It is not so much the price that matters as the supply and demand vs. all other investments. I did buy it, but of course not enough lol. I mean, when something goes up, is it ever enough?

            You ask a very good question about physical gold. A potential buyer must understand the costs of purchasing, storing, liquidity issues etc. For example, some states charge sales tax on gold bullion, that will cut your profit potential down a bit.

            I can give one direct piece of advice. If you are going to buy gold in physical form, I would go for the American Eagle. It is legal tender in the USA and backed by the government. Of course there is a world market and kruggerands, Maple Leafs etc are really just as good. But I would not go for gold bars, they just are not as liquid.

            Most of my gold is in the GLD along with investments in mining stocks. Mining stocks add a bunch of other variables such as execution, input costs, etc.

          • lastgopinillinois

            would be to buy gold bullion from GOLDMONEY or BULLIONVAULT over the internet. The actual bullion is secure in their vaults so you pay a monthly storage fee. There are commission fees and one of the outfits uses a buying and selling “spread”.
            If you type both names on a web browser it will give you a site that compares both side-by-side.

          • snowshooze

            I would hope the Brethern.. ( And Sisterhood ) here might take notice of your valuable advice.
            Thanks,
            Mark

      • Common_Cents

        The US is winning the last man standing game. We look better than the crap sandwich alternatives because they are further advanced down the socialism hole. Obummer is trying to catch us up though.

        • snowshooze

          But I do not see wgy we should have to raise the stakes.
          A win is a win, less so if we make it cost more.

    • http://travismonitor.blogspot.com Freedoms Truth

      No downgrade now. Maintain negative outlook.

  • kyconservative

    Check out this take on the deficit deal and tea Party from Salon magazine. Maybe we do need our own country now.

    http://www.salon.com/news/tea_parties/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/08/02/lind_tea_party

    • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

      but what else do you expect from an evil old marxist like Micheal Lind

    • rightwingmom52

      I skimmed about the first 50 and found these jewels:

      “The South = fat, stoopid and lazy.” (Speaks for itself.)

      “What could possibly be more offensive, to parents of children in more religious, conservative parts of the state, than a proper explanation and presentation, in the classroom, of the fact and extremely robust theory that is evolution?” (Well, is it fact or theory?)

  • wbb1950

    I guess my ideal of a solution would be based on the objectives Eric has identified which are the reasons the people voted Republicans into congress in 2010 as Eric has identified them–stop the spending defund Obamcare and a balanced budget amendment. I also think that the pending loss of our AAA rating should have been put on the table. The how to do it part would be as outlined by Michael Hammond. The thing I worry about now is even if we get control of both branches of government in 2012 will they defund Obama care. I am skeptical that Romney would do so for reasons that are self evident. We have a better shot at it with Perry. That is how I see it anyway. Any further thoughts on this streiff? I have to run now but wil catch up later.

    • streiff

      how anyone could think that a Republican House could pass a BBA. We can’t get 2/3 of the House in favor of it much less the Senate. The same goes with defunding Obamacare.

      The fact is with control of one house of Congress we have to accomplish what we can. We can try mightily but we shouldn’t be disheartened when we don’t get it all.

      • e_rowe

        All the debating about CCB or BBA missed the point. Passing something like that in the House, only for it to be vetoed or not passed in the Senate couldn’t have been any more than a symbolic gesture.

        All the talk about those things was just a diversion from the real issue, which was the debt ceiling. Are the Republicans serious about restoring fiscal sanity? If they are, then they prove it by balancing the budget, not by doing something to make it look like they helped bring about a situation where some future Congress would magically be enabled to do something they themselves don’t dare to try.

        • snowshooze

          And flatly denied any alternatives, refused any watered down versions from the Senate…
          What is the bottom line?
          House stands on CCB and BBA or bust. ???

          • e_rowe

            But only if the elephants actually wanted not to raise the debt ceiling.

            As long as it was the case that they were dead set on raising it, and making it perfectly clear to all parties that they did, then they had no chance of getting any concessions.

          • snowshooze

            Elephants just aren’t gettin’ ‘er done..
            But that is what I had decided, if the House must be the authors of all matters of the purse.

  • Scope

    according to Reagan is government programs. What’s to say that when/if the Republicans gain control of the House, Senate and the WH, that this whole debacle can go out the window, along with many other pieces of liberal legislation such as Obamacare and Banking Reform to name a few? Is it not true that no future congress can be bound by the current congress? This poop package doesn’t cut much, and it takes 10 years to accomplish. Can’t a new conservative congress start cutting, and just keep going, surpassing the number, and time it takes to accomplish more and faster?

    As far as the commissions recommendations, if they can’t agree on what to cut, or the House and/or Senate doesn’t pass their recommendations, the automatic trigger cuts 50% from defense, and 50% from Medicare, from what I’ve read. This would happen about a year out from the elections, and I can’t possibly see the Democrats allowing a 50% cut to Medicare. That’s their scary fearmongering tool against the Republicans, even though they cut Medicare by $50 m/billion ? in Obamacare, As to the defense cuts, the liberals already cut defense by $400 billion. If the 50% cut happens to defense, our military members would have to lay down their arms in the field, and pay their own way home from foreign countries. We wouldn’t even have the money to supply H2O for water pistols with that much of a cut.

    Back to my original point, no future congress can be bound by the legislation of the current congress.

    “First and foremost, if the people making the projections really had insights on what the future looked like they wouldn?t be drones working at the Congressional Budget Office. They?d be making serious money.” Bingo

    • Scope

      would also be the ones doing the projections that would be required for the currently written BBA (both house and senate versions). As you said they didn’t project a budget surplus 3 years in on a 10 year projection. Does anyone think these people would be accurate or even in the ballpark for projecting a balanced budget? Heck, they either missed, or purposely double counted the Medicare savings which brought Ocare in under the promised price tag.

      With the language in the house or senate BBA concerning war, or engaged in military conflicts, can’s they still keep unbalanced budgets by staying in perpetual war or military conflicts?

  • izoneguy

    THE TEArrorists are coming home to roost.

    American Tipping Point

    • runner12

      Anyone who is feeling as discouraged as I was last night should read it. It makes many good points and is encouraging.

      The Tipping Point has arrived. Long live the Hobbits!

  • e_rowe

    We win = the debt ceiling does not go up

    We lose = it does go up

  • Doc Holliday

    compared to where we were a year or so ago, we did ok. Even if we did not “win”, we certainly slowed down the path serfdom. The thing that has bewildered me is that so many on our side truly believed we had to win everything this week.

    What we need to tell the Repubs now is: ” thanks for last week, now what are you going to do?” That is how Lincoln did it.

    • http://travismonitor.blogspot.com Freedoms Truth

      “The thing that has bewildered me is that so many on our side truly believed we had to win everything this week. ”

      I agree.

      This deal does barely 2% of what we need to do to fix our budget and spending problems. It’s a TINY start. What is most important in this deal is what we do NOW to maximize the positive leverage and traction and minimize downside.

      1. Push everyone on Capitol Hill to public support for a BBA.
      2. Fight to get FY2012 spending cuts maximized.
      3. Demand ZERO GOP votes for funding Obamacare.
      4. Demand the GOP repeal all Obama tax hikes.
      5. Demand the passage of the full faith and credit act, so that the default scenario can never happen again.
      6. Push for BBA provisions to be added as Congressional rules, and as a law.
      7. Demand only real true no-tax-hikes-no-way fiscal conservatives on the ‘committee’ from the Republican side.

  • runner12

    you think we were, but I do agree that Obama was not the winner. His do- nothing approach has backfired.

    But I would not dance around and claim victory. After all in the end it increases the deficit and spending and creates another worthless committee. The Dems will hold senior citizens and defense hostage to get tax increases, Obama highlighted tax increases in his speech today. I am proud of the Senators who voted against this worthless bill.

    That being said, there is always a silver lining in everything. In this scenario, it is that we are winning the war of ideas. We have moved the discussion. But if we want more than moral victories in the future, we must purge the RINO’s and pro-life statists from the party and elect limited government conservatives.

    • runner12

      Another positive thing that came out of all this is that it showed the character of those who are in the GOP and who claim the mantra of conservatives.

      It is easy to repeat conservative talking points when the crowds are cheering you, it is an altogether different thing to stand on principle when you are being called names by others in your party, the media, and the Left.

      I don’t know about anyone else, but it is the ones who stand on principle that I want on the front lines fighting the good fight alongside us.

  • victrola

    The amount of risk Republicans would have taken on to “call Obama’s bluff” was simply not worth the expenditure. He’s already about as low as you can go in approval ratings. We definitely got our pound of flesh, to have risked everything for that extra ounce would have been plain stupid. We would have given him a very convenient scape goat for the coming economic crisis had we started bouncing checks.

    On the policy side, what did people realistically expect to happen here? An actual Constitutional Amendment? Real entitlement reform to MediCare and Social Security? The only Democrats will let that happen is AFTER they’ve been dragged out of their offices and are out of power. They will let the country completely collapse before they make any real reforms.

    The best we could have gotten was spending cuts and no tax increases, and that’s exactly what we got; and as a nice side bonus, Obama’s standing with the American people is in the toilet. Now on to the next battle.

    • lastgopinillinois

      “The only Democrats will let that happen is AFTER they?ve been dragged out of their offices and are out of power”

      THAT after we had dragged them out of their offices, we held them in front of a firing squad and shot them all for treason against the Constitution.
      WOKE up wearing a smile.

  • earlgrey

    They never admit that the amount in total dollars and GDP is so much bigger under Obama. I am so sick of the lies and distortion.

  • wbb1950

    I would have thought it was farfetched too to assume that the White House and Congressional Democrats, after hyping their end of the world as we know it scenario would hope that it happend . . . until I read this:

    In the end all Barack Obama and his corrupt party of Obama Dimocrats had left was fear. Barack Obama wanted a market panic and crash:

    ?I just got off the phone with a source on Capitol Hill who has spent the past few days trying to convince Republicans to vote for a debt ceiling hike.

    He told me that the biggest obstacle he faces has been ?market complacency.?

    ?Frankly, a bit of panic would be very helpful right now,? he said.

    As he explained it, lots of people in Washington, D.C. expected that this would be a week marked by panic in the markets. Stocks would tank. Bonds would get clobbered. The dollar would do something dramatic. And all of this would help convince reluctant lawmakers that they had to reach a compromise on the debt ceiling.

    ?We were following the script from 2008. When the market collapsed after TARP failed, that spooked everyone enough to get them to fall in line. We thought the same thing would happen this week,? he said.

    Instead, the market has just been on a quiet, non-panicked slide.

    Stocks have sold off by a couple of percentage points, but nothing that indicates a real fear trade in the works.

    Everyone in D.C. has a theory about this. Some believe the market is sending a message that a deal will get done. Others think the market doesn?t understand politics. [snip]

    ?Every day we wake up and think that stocks will send a shock up to Capitol Hill. And every day nothing happens,? the source said.

    He?s still holding out hope for a panic sell-off at the end of the day.

    ?It?s the only thing that?s going to bring everyone together on this,? he said.?

    Now that is a congressional source who purports to speak for others in his party. The use of the word “we” is telling. Does Messiah Obama think this way too? Would he wish that for another stock market reversal like the one he profited from in 2008? if he could come out of it smelling like a rose? You bet your sweet bippy he would. Experience has shown that he is the kind of individual who would throw anyone and everyone under the bus to advance his own interests. Ergo, I do agree wishing a stock market reversal on the country is farfetched, but surely no more farfetched than an Obama presidency.

    On the subject of a hill to die for I thinking more of Thermopolae, Valley Forge or the Alamo where the cost was worth it. The Little Big Horn was not of that calibre. Rather, it was payback for a war policy which began with William Tecuseh Sherman who said our policy toward the Indian is one of extermination. Like others who came after him, he advocated wars of annihilation.

    • wbb1950

      And the funniest part of it all is this: Obama did his level best to engender a sell off so he could cut the deal and then claim credit for the recovery. But the market did not cooperate. Instead the market ignored the gloom and doom, waited until Obama cut the deal, and then it gave him the sell off which he hoped for before the fact.. We should start calling Barack Rodney Dangerfield because he gets no respect.

  • Menlo

    Take out the direct quotes, and this is one piece that actually reports the truth.

  • californiagold

    The reality is, Obama got most of what he wanted which was..

    1) A debt ceiling increase

    2) A commission that will recommend raising taxes

    3) a delay of the next debt ceiling discussion until 2013

    Republicans ended up with the possibility of cuts (or slower increases in the rate of growth) that probably will never materialize. And even if they did, those cuts wouldn’t even make a dent in the long term debt problem.

    Finally, if the republicans were really serious during the debt ceiling negotiations, they should have used the gutting of ObamaCare as the only bargaining chip. By doing so, they would have had the support of the majority of Americans. Instead we got commissions, side deals, and the very real possibility of huge tax increases.

  • drfredc

    This deficit deal is roughly the equivalent to calling a deep throw down the sidelines, but the pass rush broke down and the QB had to scramble around in the backfield for about half a day before heading for the sidelines and a whopping 2 yard gain. It’s now 2nd down, with more to go…

    It’s just one play with minor progress in a longer game.

    So don’t get your panties in a wad about how no touchdown was made on a hail-mary to BBA going deep…

    Time to get back in the huddle and push the ball up the field some more…

  • http://undo4me.com WmCraig

    To win you have to get the language straight.

    Boehner’s republicans have authored the largest increase in borrowing in the history of the Republican party.

    Boehner is a legacy republican that didn’t flushed with the rest of it when America thought they were cleaning house in 2008. Most people realize that they American’s were rejecting Republican spend thrift ways. Boehner reads it the other way, that America wants spending and he plans to give it to them,

    So, get the story straight, it was a spending deal hidden behind a bogus default threat designed to make everyone feel like it was a win to authorize more spending then any Republican congress has in the history of the party.

  • btpull

    If you think the Republicans won the debt fight just do not look at the score board. Simply ignore the fact that the deal adds 17% to the debt, it only slow down spending slightly instead of decreasing it, and give Obama a pass until after the election.

  • donr

    I have been a salesmen all my life and have been in thousands of negotiations and the people who were to watch our backs must have been on a long potty break. They simply were not in the negotiations at all.
    They, the Dems and the Pres., took us to the cleaners, no doubt about it.
    I talked to my Representative and he was not smart enough to grasp what was coming at them, deer in the headlights.
    They won all the coin on the table, we won nothing, not one Redstate cent. We are lucky we made it out clutching out pants, minus our wallets and belts.
    What a bunch of pathetic losers.
    Don R

  • gunslingr45

    said it best….
    ?The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public?s money.?
    We are done, someone call Nero and get a match.

    ?If you can?t support our troops feel free to get out in front of them.?

  • justfedup

    No time to read the bill. You have to pass it to find out what’s in it? A super committee of 12 & with 7 votes it goes to obama? Who needs the Constitution, prof obama said it’s full of negative rights anyway. So will the government now be in the compentent hands of patriots like Shumer, Durbin, Feinstein, McCain, Frank, Wasserman-Schultz & maybe George Miller? Remember you only need 7 votes. The system of Checks & Balances has one last weak firewall. If re-elected all obama has to do is replace 1 right leaning Supreme Court judge. Then GAME OVER! I’m so glad we don’t need to purify the GOP.

    • avgjo

      This morning, Brian Darling from Heritage was on a local talk show. I called in and asked him and the host about primarying Boehner and Cantor, since we’ve gotten more of the same backroom, closed door meetings, arm twisting, unknown bills, etc. Mr. Darling gave some BS answer about ‘careful what you wish for’ we could get worse, they said. I didn’t get the chance to respond.

      The problem is fear has possessed our so-called leadership at all levels. It’s irrational. Whether its in GOP leadership or conservative media, there is fear everywhere. Fear to call a spade a spade (as in using the word ‘liar’ when it fits). Fear of the MSM. Fear of Obama getting re-elected (which will certainly happen if these half-way efforts by GOP continue.) Boehner should have been threatened with a primary from day 1 if he didn’t carry our Tea. But he hasn’t. And the fear of the likes of Mr. Darling from Heritage this morning will ensure that he (Boehner) is more afraid of the left than his own side. And he will sell-, er, act accordingly.

      • justfedup

        “Group of Pansies”

        • avgjo

          the very bottom (that’s where I am) if needs be.

          We really have no choice. The alternative is unspeakable.