LOL, don't listen much to Harry Reid, I take it.

Looks like it's all over.

Top Sen aide confirms outlines of latest deal: Debt limit hike thru early Feb, government funding thru early Jan, budget conf by Dec 15. Aides to several GOP senators tell me tonight's closed-door conf mtg will likely clinch deal on R side--if McConnell is enthusiastic. Per HOUSE Rs arriving back to DC, budget conf part of Sen deal is real, and it's what folks are hearing from their Sen pals. Leadership is being pressured by growing group of House Rs to just let Sen deal come to floor if it has budg conf + short-tm CR/DL. That famous Bloc of 30-50 con Rs in House is expctd to oppose, but they were always going to oppose, so "time to move on," says one House R. Ryan's quiet/dogged effort to get Rs to rally behind budg conf as a prize worth celebrating will be tested tmw morn at conf... med-device tax has been punted to next round of talks.

Robert Costa (robertcostaNRO) on Twitter

The Senate Dems have tried almost 20 times to get a budget conference. That shouldn't be a big deal.

I think I didn't make my post very clear. The implication was since Clinton had seemed to make some attempt to account for spending with taxes that it has gotten really messy with the blame game since Clinton (ie Bush/Obama 2001-present). I have zero respect for most of the GOP they just happen to claim to hold economic principles that I actually really believe in. I think the only reason I seem anti-Democrat is because Obama has been president for the past 6 years. W Bush was equally as awful and I wasn't in the politics threads as much then but I'm sure I would have been thought of as pretty anti-GOP then. I have always held that the views CNN take on the Republicans and Fox takes on the Democrats are pretty much reality of both parties.

Yeah all the problems are solved. Lets kick this can down the road until Jan 14 (with a suprising failure of the December 15 budget committee to do anything. Why start Oct 15 when you can start closer to the fear mongering deadline?) and then act like the world is coming to an end again then!

Agreed. This solves nothing, it's just more fucking can-kicking.

Agreeing with your agreement.

The most annoying thing to come out of this is somehow the Democrats will claim this as some sort of "win" because they overcame the GOP shutting the government down, the Republicans will claim it is a victory because they "took control of their party", and they both will cause 95% (of which I don't include you) of the population to continue blaming the other "side". Repeat in Jan 2014.


Oh and I almost forgot (huge sarcasm meter on here) both sides will be relected at an almost 95% rate this November probably both running against the supposed ill of the other side in the upcoming 2014 debt ceiling showdown. Remind me again why I am such a pessimist? :)

The economy would crash because a lot of people own Treasuries and considered them safe investments. When your safe investments take a hit, you're in trouble. Things like money market accounts would take major hits.

And that doesn't even tough interest rates. The rate at which the country borrows would skyrocket. Things tied to our treasury rate such as student loans, credit cards, mortgages, and so on would spike as well.

I don't know how you can assume it's fear mongering. Interest rates are a big deal and have a huge impact on our economy.

Here's a wrapup of the proposed deal by Ezra Klein:

The outline of the emerging Senate deal is this: The government is funded until Jan. 15. The debt ceiling is lifted until Feb. 7. There are a handful of small Affordable Care Act changes: Stronger income verification, which Republicans want, and a one-year delay on the reinsurance tax, which Democrats want.

Oh, and there's a bicameral budget committee that needs to report back by Dec. 13.

The timing of all this is designed to create a fight about sequestration. The Jan. 15 deadline means funding for the federal government runs out at the exact moment sequestration's deeper cuts kick in. The Dec. 13 deadline means that the full House and Senate would have time to consider any package of recommendations the bicameral committee comes up with, if the committee actually manages to come up with anything.

The deal isn't official yet. It hasn't passed the Senate yet. And it certainly hasn't passed the House yet. But if it does clear those hurdles -- and, again, that's a big if -- it'll mean Republicans and Democrats have agreed to take what began as a fight over the Affordable Care Act and make it into a fight over sequestration.

That's what the Democrats want. It's also what some Republicans, including Rep. Paul Ryan and Grover Norquist want. But it's not been what the Ted Cruz wing of the Republican Party wants. The question now is how much pull they really have. This, from Robert Costa, suggests the answer might be "less than they did a few weeks ago":

We were already going to have this battle again on January 15th, because that's when the Second Round of Sequestration hits, no matter what the budget is at, it is immediately set to 967B (a drop of 20 billion from where it is now). Since they didn't decide what to do with Sequestration this fight, 1/15 was the logical point to start the fight.

So, the Republicans shut down the government for two weeks and caused billions of dollars in damage to the economy, and caused the borrowing rate to go up, causing tens of millions of dollars in unneeded costs.. and got, just about squadoosh.

According to Michele Bachmann they got happiness out of it, and can you really put a price tag on that?

yeah, they got happy:

The RedStaters and Freepers are having the following discussion right now..

"Not only should we primary Republicans, but if we lose primaries, run against them as independents..."

"You know that's going to lead to a Democrat SuperMajority, right?"

"YOU TRAITOR!"

The Water Cooler~ What the GOP primary challengers should do. | RedState

Which is the burden that falls on the gutless cowards in the Senate who are at best pseudocons.

The outcome was, alas, predictable, because a lot of those frauds (like Isaakson) aren't worth a bucket of warm zombie shit.

Hundreds of billions of dollars apparently.

:D

The Harry Reid who is close to making a deal with Mitch McConnell while the House is sitting on their thumbs?

T-2

and trending green. Not out of the woods yet, more drama to come over the next 48-72 hours with the GOP House.

Agreeing with your agreement of the agreement.

Or something.

Yup. The GOP House is still trying to shovel that horseshit and tell everyone that there's a pony at the end of it.

Congrats Tea Party, looks like you've done it again. Done it again being fucked over America.

The Boston Globe ‏@BostonGlobe 5m
Fitch puts United States "AAA" credit rating under review for a downgrade. #shutdown #credit

Credit rating really doesn't matter.

Whooptie-fucking-do.

That S&P downgrade two years ago sure seemed to have a tremendous impact on all our lives now didn't it?

Here's the funniest part of all the shenanigans however ... when S&P first issued their "negative" outlook before their downgrade, they said According to S&P, meaningful progress towards balancing the budget would be required to move the U.S. back to a "stable" outlook. And yet raising the debt ceiling for the umpteenth time does absolutely nothing toward balancing a budget.

except when it causes borrowing costs to raise..

And the GOP can't even pass their own plan, which means they have the Senate Plan... or default.

Robert Costa ‏@robertcostaNRO 5s
Pressure mounts on conservatives to vote nay RT @Heritage_Action Key Vote: “NO” on House Spending and Debt Deal

Except the deficit's growth has shrunk significantly, (mostly because of higher revenues due to economy recovering). See the Money/CNN link I posted earlier.

I am completely on board with the quote (which I can't find right this second) from some congressman or another who said "no deal is preferable to a bad deal"

Looks like Boehner has to decide between his party and the country. The Senate deal will pass if brought to a vote, but it may cost Boehner the speakership. Will he have the courage to keep the country out of default?

But would it, the speakership loss I mean?

Isn't the likelihood still that there's no better candidate who can get the required numbers to replace him at this point? Replacing him with another pseudocon clone doesn't seem worth the trouble to me, that's just punitive for punitive's sake at that point.

Or is there a new analysis of the situation that I haven't seen? (but would like to if somebody has linkage)

I think if they can force a vote Boehner would resign rather than risk losing. If I were him I'd be happy to leave. Who the hell wants to try to lead that group.

What if the Democrats say bring the clean CR and debt limit increase to a vote on the floor of the House and we'll support Boehner as Speaker along with the non-crazy Republicans.

I'm fully expecting the Tea Party to be ok with punitive for punitive's sake. Sounds right up their alley.

It would be even funnier if they replace him with Cantor or Ryan. No one will be red enough meat for them. Cantor is just Boehner light but a "young(er) turk" while Ryan is policy wonk- but are there the leadership chops?

I'm currently reading A Tale of Two Cities and the Tea Party seems so comically like the caricatured "citizens" and "patriots" of France that Dickens lampoons.

SI

T-1.

Woo hoo. Here we go.

CNN Money shows stock futures up at +65 strangely. Not sure I get that.

House Republicans Sing 'Amazing Grace' As Their Latest Plan Dies

my favorite part was the Democrat jokingly asking if that was what they sang at funerals. Pretty appropriate I think. :)

The problem with the credit rating downgrade, as I understand it, is that it'll cause a massive sell-off of government bonds. This is because many institutions are required to hold only AAA debt. The S&P downgrade didn't affect this because 2 of the 3 agencies still rated U.S. government debt as AAA. But if Fitch goes to AA all of those institutions will have to sell up and find other AAA vehicles. The belief is, as I understand it, that such a sell-off would have a serious destabilization effect on the financial markets.

United States credit rating has nothing to do with AAA, AA, etc

United States credit rating...

I would guess the markets will respond tomorrow. Today most everyone in the market probably feels the way I do... political threatre with them coming in at T-1 minutes to save the day.

I still have no idea what the Tea Party is.

Is it the brand that Sarah Palin and company co-opted and made entirely meaningless when it comes to policy?

Is it die-hard capital-L Libertarianism in a world where it's simply not practical?

Is it simply the media's buzzword for anything that they don't like?

Or is it a sentiment that carrying a $17 trillion debt - about $60k for every man, woman and child in the United States - and growing it at around $1 trillion per year is sacrificing our future for a few more entitlements today?

I have no idea. If it's the latter, sign me up. Otherwise, I have no interest.

Funny week. If I look at Fox and conservative web sites, the Republicans are busy saving the world, but Obama is refusing to listen. If I look at CNN and the liberal web sites, the Republicans are busy humiliating themselves so badly they won't win a single seat in 2014.

I suspect the media is as irrelevant this week as the term, "Tea Party."

Nate Silver on twitter:

From my perspective, it began as D with a tinge of B, and morphed into A & C.

It began during the late Bush II era with the bailouts, picked up steam as a rallying point against our out of control spending and government size, became newsworthy enough to be co-opted by Palin and her ilk, and has now become the ultra neo-conservative wing of the Republican party.

And it's a shame, because as I said last time around, "D" is GOING to lead to catastrophe sooner or later, and the sooner it hits the "easier" (in quotes because we're way past the point of it being "easy") it will be to ride out and recover from.

Even the charts posted earlier showing our debt as a percentage of GDP to show that this debt is somehow manageable show that we're up to WWII levels, in what is supposed to be a time of recovery. This is unsustainable and SOMETHING has to be done before it's forced on us.

It comes back around to what "few more entitlements today" do you want to cut?

I don't believe I've seen the line items for:

• "something I call pork because it's for a project like a park or road in another Congressional district that they don't need but I'm happy when those sort of things happen here because we need them"
• "those horrible people typically with a different color of skin who have the latest iPhone and luxury cars and use food stamps"
• "tax breaks for people richer or poorer than me who cheat on taxes or get more than I think they deserve or don't pay their fair share"
• "military hardware or personnel expenditure that is unnecessary despite the fact that I have no real military knowledge"

Those are the really popular ones every time I hear that we want to cut the budget. Never mind that most of those add up to a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. But they sure make great straw men and villains that are ruining this country!

SI

And as I've said many, many times before - it's going to take a massive financial catastrophe before something is done. Nobody's going to make the hard, unpopular decisions that have to be made, until they have absolutely, positively no choice. Nobody in power has any interest in doing much beyond keeping their own side in power.

Define "catastrophe". We're already doing the slow bleed that levels these things out over time. Money will inflate and suddenly a $20T debt will have the same buying power a $10T debt did a decade ago. That's why debt as a percentage of GDP matters much more than raw numbers but $17T sounds more scary! And it will suck for all of us as wages have stagnated so that a $50K per year job buys what $25K used to.

What do you expect in a global economy where other major powers can pay 3 people $2 per hour for what used to be done in this country by one person for $15 an hour when money was worth more. How exactly are you going to "correct" that flaw in the labor market? The flaw was really that 1/20th the world's population (USA) had 25%+ of the world's economy as we were the only major infrastructure not flattened by WW2. We got to ride that wave for 20+ years and it laid the groundwork for us to be the epicenter of a once in a century technological breakthrough (the computer age). But that's gone and the next major breakthrough (probably something energy-related) has just as likely odds of happening in China or Germany or Japan or Russia or Brazil as it does here. And that place will be the next great world economic power.

The debt, however, can be a convenient scapegoat when we're all screwed by the next economic crisis. And since we fixed nothing from the last one and the major players are back to doing the same thing as before so we'll be due for one in the next decade that will probably make 2008 seem tame. Hell, they're even emboldened because no one really went to jail and they were even rewarded for what happened. And when that happens and when we have no more levers to pull on the money supply because we're stupidly still pushing them right now and that interest rate on the debt spikes like crazy. Then it will probably be the aforementioned catastrophe. And that's the real reason we should be paying down the debt.

SI

Oh, hai! You just said in 2 sentences what it took me 3 paragraphs to bloviate.

SI

The Chinese are loving this...

Vote Coffee. He'll fuck you less.

That's my forthcoming campaign slogan. :)

"Let's face it. I'm *going* to fuck you. It's what politicians do. I promise you, however, I'll fuck you just a bit less than the other guy."

The Tea Party, best I can tell, is a group of folks who wants the US to go back to being The Andy Griffith Show, but is afraid that without their heroic efforts is a step away from becoming Good Times.

Yes, the media loves to throw us off the scent because the above chart is "boring". And then, our beloved leadership takes fucking sides so we can't ever get anywhere. Democrats are all about Health and Human Services...not going to cut a penny. Republicans are all about the Department of Defense...not going to cut a penny. And we back our team up in every last single argument. So our only choice is to spend more and kick the can down the road...

Here's a great non-partisan video for our amusement. This is what our government looks like if it were a single family...

Went up at the same time as our last credit "downgrade" as well.

Agree with your first paragraph sentiments. But the whole "government as a single family" analogy is so flawed - it's been covered here multiple times before, and numerous times out there on the internet - it's disingenuous at best of you to be bringing it up again.

Do you not understand that it's flawed, or are you just repeating the analogy ad nauseum in the hopes that people stop calling you on it?

And this analysis is about as sophisticated as an episode of Saved By the Bell.