Vote in the poll.

I'm going to lean to the side that congress takes the easy way out again and let's the automatic cuts across the board happen. 1.2 trillion over 10 years is already a huge joke especially considering the size of our deficits. If there's this much struggle over a small amount of cuts, how the hell can we fix a 14+ trillion dollar national debt? I have no faith in the US government in preventing a national default or hyperinflation.

Thoughts?

Bowles-Simpson had it about right - they should have made it the law.

The automatic cuts were untenable to both parties, and that was by design. Instead they will find a loophole or another way to punt (which appears to be the path that's going to be taken).

Anyone who thought this committee was going to accomplish its intended purpose was overly optimistic and foolish.

That's why people calling the Tea Party financial terrorists was so laughable. Anyone with a modicum of common sense knew it was the only leverage to force some fiscal responsibility on Congress, and of course they ultimately punted for the umpteenth millionth time.

It's also why I find the class warfare somewhat comical. If we allow Washington to continue to spend unrestrained, eventually the govt will default on its debt and/or inflation will become so great that it will be a de-facto tax on the wealthy by destroying everyone's savings account. It will be, again, the middle class ultimately being screwed by that.

It all forces me to look very carefully at my holdings in commodity funds. There doesn't seem to be a safe global currency anywhere, and even then it's impossible to have a truly diversified portfolio with respect to currency unless you overlay an FX basket (expensive and complicated for a retail investor). Some will say gold, but that's far to speculative for my liking. Commodities and real estate can insulate your portfolio against inflation and govt default, but as we've seen those two asset classes have also become quite volatile and prone to bubbles/speculation. Still better than the alternatives.

What is the REAL joke is that these aren't even cuts. The fact that the media and Congress acts like they are is an insult to Americans. I guess you really DO get the kind of government you deserve, I doubt 10% of the population is smart enough to realize this fact. These are cuts in increased spending, deciding that spending will increase 4% instead of 7.5% isn't a cut.

gut;982998 wrote:The automatic cuts were untenable to both parties, and that was by design. Instead they will find a loophole or another way to punt (which appears to be the path that's going to be taken).

A couple of Senators (Mcain and Graham) said as much today. They are going to find a way stop the so called "cuts" from taken place.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/11/09/mccain_and_graham_spell_out_how_they_ll_get_around_the_supercommittee

"We'll do everything we can to prevent [the trigger] being implemented," McCain said. "You can't bind future Congresses."

I think we really need term limits in Congress just like the POTUS. Congress has shown time and again they don't have the stomach for the tough decisions if they hope to be re-elected. I think an amendment was proposed this year but didn't hear - I assume it never made it out of committee. I think the House moved this through back in '93/'94 but the Senate killed it.

Not to mention, it's a joke that Representative are elected every 2 years. They end-up spending like 25% of their time campaigning (pretty much the same for POTUS). I mean, imagine if you hired a 2-yr associate or consultant at your company, and they ended-up spending 6 months of your time and $$$ looking for their next job.

So we won't balance the budget now, nor will we commit future Congresses to do just that? Sickening.

More sickening is that they'll circumvent the "fail-safe" $600B cut in military spending....or @ $60B a year, which amounts to 8-10% of the budget. Ridiculous. I think there's more than enough fat there to do just that, and any balanced budget is ultimately going to require an even deeper cut to military spending. Probably also the source of blocking this action, because they don't want a deep cut off a lower base.

tk421;983012 wrote:What is the REAL joke is that these aren't even cuts. The fact that the media and Congress acts like they are is an insult to Americans. I guess you really DO get the kind of government you deserve, I doubt 10% of the population is smart enough to realize this fact. These are cuts in increased spending, deciding that spending will increase 4% instead of 7.5% isn't a cut.

Its really a shame that ignorance of this continues. The media has been derelict in its duty to inform the American people. You have very few congressmen attempting to correct this ignorance. Not even Republicans because they want to play off this ignorance to prevent any reductions in the rate of growth to their pet programns. Rand Paul and a few others are about the only ones actively trying to correct the ingorance of so called "cuts" in Washinton.

When DC politicians want a 10% spending increase but ultimately decide on a 6% increase and then point their fingers at the other side and yell, "These eeeevil non-caring SOB's 'cut' the budget by 4%" has always driven me insane.

The sad thing is Amerika's illustrious "4th Estate" jumps on the blame-game bandwagon and harps on the "cuts" rather than pointing out the truth that the 4% cut was actually a 6% increase in spending. What's even sadder is the Amerikan sheeple buy-off on the insanity.

Actually there is a third option and it just basically involves ignoring the automatic cuts.

Who cares? Is something significant going to come of this?

[LEFT] [/LEFT]


[LEFT]Wall Street Journal - Editorial

NOVEMBER 22, 2011

Thank You, Grover Norquist

The super committee's failure is rooted in a clash of visions.

So it's all Grover Norquist's fault. Democrats and the media are singing in unison that the reason Congress's antideficit super committee has failed is because of the conservative activist's magical antitax spell over Republicans.

Not to enhance this Beltway fable, but thank you, Mr. Norquist. By reminding Republicans of their antitax promises, he has helped to expose the real reason for the super committee's failure: the two parties disagree profoundly on a vision of government.

Democrats don't believe they need to do more than tinker around the edges of the entitlement state while raising taxes on the rich. Republicans think the growth of government is unsustainable and can't be financed no matter how much taxes are raised

Sounds like we need an election.

Of course it would have been preferable if the two sides had come together now to cut spending, reform the tax code and remake Medicare. Preferable, but implausible. That would have required President Obama to have shown more respect for the will of the voters when they revoked his credit card by giving Republicans control of the House in 2010. Or for the President to have honored the findings of his own Bowles-Simpson deficit commission by using it as a basis for negotiation. Instead, he ignored them.

The abiding reality of American politics is that substantial change in Washington is impossible without Presidential leadership. And Mr. Obama does not want to lead on reforming entitlements or reducing the deficit. He is making clear he is running for re-election on a platform of consolidating the expansion of government of his first two years and raising taxes to finance it.

Thus it's no surprise that he did more than anyone to poison the well of the super committee with his October remarks promising a veto unless the deal included $1 trillion in tax increases. Mr. Obama knew that Republicans couldn't agree to this a year after winning election on a promise not to raise taxes. But $1 trillion became the marker that Democrats on the super committee insisted was the price of admission for all but token spending cuts. This is after Mr. Obama also insisted that ObamaCare and its tax increases (that start in 2013) couldn't be touched.

As for the alleged tyranny of Grover, Republicans on the committee explicitly risked his wrath by putting tax revenue increases on the table. Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey offered $500 billion in revenues—$300 billion in the statically scored tax increases that Democrats demanded—by cutting deductions mainly for the wealthy. Democrats rejected the offer because it wasn't $1 trillion and because in return Mr. Toomey also wanted to lock in lower tax rates. Never mind that nearly all economists agree that lower rates and a more efficient tax code would increase economic growth and lead to more revenues over time.

The entitlement reforms being considered were hardly worth the effort in any case. As everyone knows and the nearby chart shows, federal health-care spending is the real driver of future deficits. On its current trajectory, Medicare is expected to grow to 6.7% of GDP in 20 years from 3.7% today. But the reforms that Democrats would contemplate would have cut that merely to 6.2%.

The Paul Ryan-Alice Rivlin premium-support reform for Medicare—the only reform that won't require harsh government price controls or care restrictions—was deemed unacceptable. Democrats say they favor spending cuts, but they have yet to put a serious cut on the table, or even to pass a Senate budget in three years.

In the end Republicans had to choose between a $1 trillion tax hike that would hurt a sputtering economy while splintering the GOP less than a year before a huge election, or let an automatic spending cut of $1.2 trillion over 10 years begin in 2013. The sequester is the better option.

Defense would be hurt disproportionately, as Mr. Obama's Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has been saying. But in the interim perhaps House Republicans can work with Senate Democrats and Mr. Panetta to restore some of that defense spending. Mr. Obama said late yesterday he'd veto any such bill, but Republicans should still press the issue as part of the election campaign. As for the 7.8% across-the-board sequester in domestic programs, this may be the only way to begin cutting a government that has grown by $600 billion in three years.

Much of the world, and especially the press corps, will look at this failure and wail about the "dysfunction" in Washington. And it is pathetic that Congress couldn't agree to cut even a single dime from the projected $45 trillion in spending over 10 years. But this is the product of divided government and a clash of political visions. Unlike Bill Clinton in 1996, President Obama is unbowed by his party's defeat in 2010 and is determined to reclaim his mandate to expand government next year.

Democrats are confident they can blame Republicans for the failure and ride their president's class war campaign to victory. Republicans have to counter with a message of economic growth and sensible reforms of our government institutions so the U.S. doesn't end up like Europe.

This is for voters to decide. Let's have it out.
[/LEFT]

The spending issue aside, the lack of a budget isn't getting nearly enough press. How can you get your fiscal house in order when you won't even agree to a budget? It's recklessly irresponsible. No budget, let's take money from this account, let's print (steal money) here, let's mislead/distort/hide that expense with accounting tricks - all stuff that lands a CEO in jail.

The budget will never truly be cut until we default on our debt. The American people are royally screwed, Congress is pathetic and the great Orator doesn't have the stones to do the right thing. The budget increases around 7% each year, so 3.7 this year, over 5 Trillion by 2016. No way in hell revenues, even with increased taxes on the rich, will come anywhere close to keeping up with the budget increases. Almost guaranteed we default in 10-15 years.

Default will effectively be a flat tax on the savings accounts of all Americans. This seems to be the direction of socialism globally - racking up huge deficits on a monstrously inefficient transfer of wealth to the bottom quartile. The goal of socialism increasingly appears to be to make marginal improvements in the quality of living for the bottom quartile at the expense of almost everyone else Basically just a huge, deferred tax liability that will devastate pretty much everyone in the 35% to 98%.

When I hear Bill Maher ask why 99% of people don't vote for the Dems, my response is why do more than 30% of people vote for Dems in the first place?

Why does anyone vote for a Democrat or a Republican is the real question.

I Wear Pants;984629 wrote:Why does anyone vote for a Democrat or a Republican is the real question.

While it is true that both parties are equally guilty of creating the financial mess we're in, I've said it before and I'll say it again, until this nation ultimately defaults on our financial obligations, it's a simple matter of choosing the lesser of two evils.

Right now it's not a matter of if we implode financially, but when.

Personally I'd rather go over the financial cliff with the Amerikan sheeple a little slower than some.

I loved the exchange at the debate last night. Romney is crying about cuts to military spending. Ron Paul says they aren't cutting anything out of anything. Romney whines that Obama is spending us into bankruptcy, but he is doing it foolishly, where apparently he would spend us into bankruptcy wisely.

http://mailview.custombriefings.com/mailview.aspx?m=2011112201nam&r=4433865-6c96#S1

And on cue, obama blames the republicans. Has he ever not blamed someone else for his leadership failures? He is the most pathetic 'leader' we have ever had; he is making Jimmy Carter look like George Washington.

I'd blame anyone just to keep the focus off me. I hope the Republicans retaliate by only giving Obama bills that fund a balanced budget. Let the Stalemate cripple his re-election campaign.

Cleveland Buck;984814 wrote:Romney whines that Obama is spending us into bankruptcy, but he is doing it foolishly, where apparently he would spend us into bankruptcy wisely.

lol Yeah I caught that too. Romney is just Obama-lite.

Another DC failure is not shocking at all.

sleeper;984977 wrote:I'd blame anyone just to keep the focus off me. I hope the Republicans retaliate by only giving Obama bills that fund a balanced budget. Let the Stalemate cripple his re-election campaign.

LMAO....They'd have to pass a budget and force him to sign it first.

believer;985408 wrote:lol Yeah I caught that too. Romney is just Obama-lite.

My hope is he can still be an upgrade. The spending issues aside, Obama has also tripped all over himself on a variety of other business/economic fronts. Fix the budget and fix the economy - a shot at 1 out of 2 is 50% better than we get with Obama.

gut;989524 wrote:My hope is he can still be an upgrade. The spending issues aside, Obama has also tripped all over himself on a variety of other business/economic fronts. Fix the budget and fix the economy - a shot at 1 out of 2 is 50% better than we get with Obama.

I said Obama-lite. That in and of itself will be a step in the right direction.