After the defeat of the Harry Reid bill in the House yesterday, Barack Obama is back in the debt ceiling negotiations, giving in the Republicans as the running National Debt clock ticks away. A new debt ceiling proposal based on the House Speaker John Boehner bill is gaining ground. As a result, the Senate will delay their vote on the Harry Reid plan to raise the debt limit till this afternoon, and even that is doubtful. Already many question how the Senate blocks vote on the older Boeher debt ceiling proposal. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are unhappy but John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are more optimistic that a deal can be reached before the August 2 deadline. So let us look at the latest U.S. debt update to see where we are.
The latest proposal on the table will raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 Trillion dollars, which is the main item that the White House wants. For the Republicans, they get $1 Trillion dollars in spending cuts immediately, though spread out over the next ten years, as well as their ′super-commission′, a bipartisan board from both the House and the Senate to detail an additional $1.8 Trillion in cuts. The super-commission has until December to find those cuts, otherwise it will automatically trigger across-the-board spending cuts, including in defense and entitlement programs. Perhaps most importantly is that the new deal will mandate a vote for a balanced budget amendment in both the House and Senate.
According to some sources, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were quite upset after a meeting at the White House which followed the House defeating the Reid bill. What got them in a lather was learning that Obama was talking with Boehner and McConnell without Reid′s or Pelosi′s knowledge. Perhaps all of those new poll numbers showing Obama′s job approval rating at its lowest level convinced him that it was time to cave in on several key Republican demands, including no revenue increases. Later, Reid tried to spin the case that tax increases were still on the table, but it appears unlikely that such would be included in the latest deal.
After the Senate blocks vote on the House Speaker John Boehner bill, the House paid back by actually voting down the Harry Reid bill, or at least a ′mirror′ of it. This forced Barack Obama to cave on the debt ceiling negotiations, giving House Republicans nearly all of what they wanted. With only two days to go as the running National Debt clock ticks away, it looks like a deal to raise the debt limit may finally be close according to the latest U.S. debt update. Sources say that Boehner has 40 House Republicans, known as the ′Tuesday Club′, who are ready to vote for anything in order to avoid a government shutdown and possible bond rating downgrade.
July 31st, 2011 at 11:57 am
As I’ve said many times… obama has drmonstrated repeatedly that he is a center right president with zero negotiating ability.
Liberals have been betrayed, and the country will suffer immesurably. Hello austarity. Hello 1937.
July 31st, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Btw the poll numbers reflect liberals. Id give him massive negatives too. Read any liberal blog. People are wishing they’d voted for hillary who wouldn’t have been such a pussy for 3 years, politically speaking.
July 31st, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Obama is not a center-right president, he is a tool of the Establishment, which is left of center. Most of your top Wall Street types from JPM, Goldman, etc, encourage the move towards ‘State Capitalism’, a.k.a. Fascism.
July 31st, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Me-OW!!!
July 31st, 2011 at 3:48 pm
“People are wishing they’d voted for hillary who wouldn’t have been such a pussy for 3 years, politically speaking.”
Plus we could have ripped into her without being called racists.
July 31st, 2011 at 5:12 pm
he is a tool of the Establishment, which is left of center.
Regardless of whether “the Establishment” whatever that refers to is left, right, center, or alien, Obama is clearly right of center– right of nixon, probably slightly left of where Reagan was.
Most of your top Wall Street types from JPM, Goldman, etc, encourage the move towards ‘State Capitalism’, a.k.a. Fascism.
I agree with that pretty much. Insofar as they want to privatize profit, have undue influence on government, public policy, lawmaking, minimize or eliminate governmental regulation, standards, and safety, publicize loss, and pay no taxes.
July 31st, 2011 at 5:58 pm
“Obama is clearly right of center– right of nixon, probably slightly left of where Reagan was.”
You’re high.
No president in our history has ever been as close to the left end of the scale as this guy.
How you can say right of center is absolutely as ridiculous as denying the holocaust.
By Marxist standards hes ‘maybe’ a centrist.
By Maoist standards hes right of center.
Never mind his economic policies. On social, domestic, and global relations/policy hes a far left loon.
If it werent for Gates and the few cons he retained and maybe Hillary you’d see no sign of a hawk and his domestic staff, Napolitano, Holder, Kagen Appt. etc they’re clear cut leftists.
“I agree with that pretty much. Insofar as they want to privatize profit,”
Jeez, God forbid we get to keep the fruits of our labor
July 31st, 2011 at 6:35 pm
Well, he kept the Bush tax cuts going, he caved to the Rethugs on the debt ceiling disaster, pretty much everything he has done so far has been aligned towards the right save for the watered-down healthcare bill.
By todays standard Reagan would be a M@arxist (or whatever) – he raised the debt ceiling how many times? He raised taxes how many times?
July 31st, 2011 at 6:42 pm
The Rethugs found the perfect strategy to hold the country hostage. Now big corporations can continue to pay little to no tax, jump through all the loopholes, while Grandma gets the vice. Yay! You win. Republicans are a special breed of idiot.
July 31st, 2011 at 6:52 pm
Snow Crash, Obama is making Carter look good. He is kind of a centrist(when compared to Hu Jintao).
July 31st, 2011 at 7:00 pm
“Well, he kept the Bush tax cuts going, he caved to the Rethugs on the debt ceiling disaster, pretty much everything he has done so far has been aligned towards the right save for the watered-down healthcare bill.”
“HE” did nothing.
This was the Senate doing their best to keep his spending levels for him.
No one is happy with this sht. It does nothing but maintain the status quo.
It cuts 4billion a year (over 10yrs) , we spend that A DAY !
Take 917 Billion cut over TEN YEARS is AFTER the congress gives dickhead 900 Billion immediately
so the actual cut to the deficit is…..
17 Billion over ten years ?
Would cut & cap discretionary spending immediately, saving $917B over 10 years (certified by CBO) & raise the debt ceiling by less – $900B – to approximately February.”
Now do the math on that one little paragraph and tell me this makes a fckin bit of difference as if anything ever went down ten years later like it was supposed to ?
Its a joke, we’ll lose our triple A credit, interest on everything for everyone nationwide will go up.
So yeah, additional taxation after the 2nd will be the last thing we need on top of the jump in interest from shipping to mortgages, to cars, to business loans, payrolls…you name it.
Never mind the real fears, not the ones mongered !
July 31st, 2011 at 7:04 pm
“he raised the debt ceiling how many times?He raised taxes how many times?”
Yeah, you seem to forget that the economy could handle yearly increases in those days.
NOT EVEN AN INTELLIGENT COMPARISON TO TODAYS ECONOMY !
July 31st, 2011 at 7:14 pm
Everyone go buy a gun, and stop paying taxes
Ode to Barry
“We had our words, a common spat
So I kissed him upside the cranium with an aluminum baseball bat
Six foot two and rude as hell
I got to get him in the ground before he starts to smell
My name is Mud, but call me Alowishus Devadander Abercrombie
That’s long for Mud so I’ve been told
Told that by this sonsabtch that lies before me bloated blue and cold”
July 31st, 2011 at 7:17 pm
No president in our history has ever been as close to the left end of the scale as this guy.
How about that pinko who created the EPA and signed the clear air act, reestablished diplomatic relations with communist china, started earth day, created OSHA for workplace safety, cut spending by 1/3 on defense, proclaimed himself an Keynesian, expanded welfare and food stamps, and supported the ERA?
Most of that has been vilified by the GOP, but the liberal president who did it all was Richard Milhous Nixon.
Obama has nothing close to that “liberal” record and would certainly stand to the right of those values. The best he could do was implement a health care program that the Heritage Foundation was begging for 15 years ago. And now this total sellout, which is going to keep our economy in the toilet for the foreseeable future. With this insane republican bill as the alternative, we should have just defaulted. It would have been less a disaster for the country. This deal is bad. Very bad.
July 31st, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Even “Me” denies Obama. Poor POTUS.
August 1st, 2011 at 1:56 am
“How about that pinko who created the EPA and signed the clear air act, reestablished diplomatic relations with communist china, started earth day, created OSHA for workplace safety, cut spending by 1/3 on defense, proclaimed himself an Keynesian, expanded welfare and food stamps, and supported the ERA?
Most of that has been vilified by the GOP, but the liberal president who did it all was Richard Milhous Nixon.
Yeah, nice try.
The EPA had totally different implications in those days without 1/10th the reach it has today.
It did well, its outlived its purpose, its become an offshoot beech to gerbil warming which was non existent in Nixons days.
He established relations with China, so fckin what ?
Israel hates this guy more than any US president ever.
Using Nixon in one breath and Reagan in the next to make the same point makes you look pretty clueless
Right of center.
Give me a fckin break
August 1st, 2011 at 2:29 am
Yes, L.Rivera,
I just KNEW that ‘Me’ would have to crawl out of the woodwork and lament the shame of Obama. I somewhat agree with ‘Me’ that there is very little difference between Obama and Nixon. After all, Nixon was part of the Establishment-Rockefeller wing of the GOP. Heck, he worked for Rocky as a lawyer. ‘Me’ left out Nixon giving birth to ‘Trilateralism’, and severing the last connections our currency had with gold. Not to mention wage and price controls.
August 1st, 2011 at 2:43 am
On the other hand, comparisons of Obama with Reagan are unfounded.
When you look at the history of the federal budget, nearly every single increase in the debt ceiling up until last year’s blank check of $1.9 Trillion by Democrats in February were basically to fund a particular program or a single annual budget.
The Media made hay out of how Reagan raised the debt ceiling 17 times, but most of those increases were in the $50-100 billion dollar range. Keep in mind, too, that not one of Reagan’s budgets were ever passed in Congress. Tip O’Neil never lived up to any of his promises for spending cuts.
Likewise, consider GW Bush’s last debt ceiling increase of $700 Billion was specifically meant to cover TARP. Obama’s first d/c increase was to fund the stimulus bill, the second one was needed in December because the gov’t was short about $230B due to additional bailouts for Freddie and Fannie.
What makes this one, along with Obama’s 3rd debt limit increase unprecedented are that both are A) massive, $1.9T and now $2.5T, and B) both are not specific as to what they will actually fund.
As I have been saying all along, if you think all of the wrangling is over now, think again. We still have the 2012 fiscal budget due Oct. 1st. Look for plenty of drama.
August 3rd, 2011 at 6:29 am
The Media made hay out of how Reagan raised the debt ceiling 17 times, but most of those increases were in the $50-100 billion dollar range.
Here, try this math -
Multiply $50-100 billion times 17. What do you get? Keep in mind he was president from 1967 to 1975, and account for inflation. Let’s go on the low-end and say all debt ceiling raises were only $50 billion, and let’s account for inflation only from the last year of his presidency.
$850 billion in 1975 would be over 3.4 TRILLION in 2010.
Just a fun fact -
Entitlements contribute about 10%, Domestic discretionary programs about 7%, Tax cuts, well that’s a whopping 48%, the rest is defense.
If you have a hint of intelligence then you might realize that you’re not going to touch our debt by cutting entitlements alone. Look where the money is at!
August 3rd, 2011 at 7:47 am
Still Snow
at present levels its not the time to raise the ceiling.
Carter, Cilnton,all democrat presidents have also raised the ceiling.
No matter what you think of their administrations the economy could handle such inflation at the time.
The way Barry has things set up his administration is the last one that should be approved for any loan in any fashion seeing as how hes pi$$ed away trillions with not a damn thing to show for it.
@ Investors insight dot com.
“”It took the United States of America 233 years (1776-2009) to amass a national debt of $11 trillion. Yet President Barack Obama’s record large 2009 budget deficit estimated at $1.85 trillion and his own spending plans for the next 10 years (2010-2019) show that our national debt will likely double over the next 10 years.
Using the Obama administration’s own projections, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that, including the record 2009 budget deficit of $1.85 trillion, and huge annual deficits over 2009-2019 will result in an additional $11.1 trillion in national debt, on top of the current $11.4 trillion. As I will discuss below, the national debt will very likely more than double in the next decade because some of the CBO’s economic assumptions may be too optimistic.As noted above, the CBO also recently revised its estimate for the budget deficit for fiscal year 2009 to at least $1.85 trillion. But unless the economy rebounds soon, that number will very likely top $2 trillion by the end of September when FY2009 comes to an end. According to the CBO, Obama plans to run a FY2010 deficit of apprx $1.4 trillion and almost $1 trillion in FY2011.Keep in mind that these deficits do not include even half of the massive costs for Obama’s health insurance plan, which some experts now project will cost between $1.5 and $2 trillion over the next 10 years.”
Good enough ?
August 3rd, 2011 at 7:49 am
@ Weekly Standard;
“Heres the breakdown as opposed to that ridiculous most disingenuous rant you deposited
“How do Bush and Obama compare on closer inspection? Just about like they do on an initial glance. According to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, during his eight fiscal years, Bush ran up a total of $3.283 trillion in deficit spending (p. 22). In his first two fiscal years, Obama will run up a total of $2.826 trillion in deficit spending ($1.294 trillion in 2010, an estimated $1.267 trillion in 2011 (p. 23), and the $265 billion in “stimulus” money that was spent in 2009). Thus, Bush ran up an average of $410 billion in deficit spending per year, while Obama is running up an average of $1.413 trillion in deficit spending per year — or $1.003 trillion a year more than Bush.”
“To put that into perspective, when President George W. Bush took office, our national debt was $5.768 trillion. By the time Bush left office, it had nearly doubled, to $10.626 trillion. So Bush’s record on deficit spending was not good at all: During his presidency, the national debt rose by an average of $607 billion a year. How does that compare to Obama? During Obama’s presidency to date, the national debt has risen by an average of $1.723 trillion a year — or by a jaw-dropping $1.116 trillion more, per year, than it rose even under Bush.”