“I used to think it would take a great financial crisis to get both parties to the table, but we just had one,” said G. William Hoagland, a former adviser to the Senate Republican leadership on fiscal policy.
“These days, I wonder if this country is even governable.”
Quoted in The New York Times’ lead story, “Party Gridlock Feeds New Fear of a Debt Crisis,” Hoagland nailed it.
America faces a crisis of democracy.
At its heart is a fiscal crisis. After the 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion, we are running a 2010 deficit of $1.6 trillion. Trillion-dollar deficits are projected through the Obama years, be they four or eight.
Long before 2016, however, holders of U.S. public debt will stop buying Treasury bills or start demanding higher interest rates to cover the growing risk of a default.
This week, a smoke detector went off. China, in December, had unloaded $45 billion of its $790 billion in T-bills. Is Beijing is bailing out?
To assure the world we are not Greece writ large, the United States must soon adopt a visible plan for slashing the deficit.
There are three ways to do it. One is through growth that increases the tax revenue flowing into the Treasury and reduces the outflow for safety net programs like unemployment insurance.
But growth only comes slowly and can take us only so far.
Needed is a combination of big budget cuts and tax hikes. But the only place one can get budget cuts of the magnitude required is from the big entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And the only place to get revenue of that magnitude is by raising taxes on the American middle class.
And here is where Barack Obama hits the wall.
Republicans are not going to give him a single vote for a tax increase. Not only would this violate a commitment most made to the people who elected them, it would be politically suicidal. For behind the GOP today, and its best hope of recapturing Congress in 2010, are the Tea Party irregulars.
And Tea Partiers now play the role of Red Army commissars who sat at machine guns behind their own troops to shoot down any soldier who retreated or ran. Republicans who sign on to tax hikes cannot go home again.
Consider: Arlen Specter voted for the Obama stimulus and faced an immediate primary challenge from Pat Toomey, who took a 20-point lead, forcing Specter to quit the party to survive. Popular Gov. Charlie Crist embraced Obama on a Florida visit and got an immediate primary challenge from Marco Rubio, who now looks to be the next senator from Florida.
The Tea Party folks are not into the Gerald Ford politics of compromise and consensus. They have seen what it produces: the inexorable growth of Government.
Ex-Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican and co-chair of Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, has challenged the patriotism of conservatives who plant their feet in concrete.
“There isn’t a single sitting member of Congress — not one — that doesn’t know exactly where we’re headed. … And to use the politics of fear and hate and division on each other — we’re at a point right now where it doesn’t make a damn whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, if you’ve forgotten you’re an American.”
Simpson is right in his assertion that anti-tax Republicans went along with George W. Bush’s spending spree — for two wars, prescription drug benefits under Medicare and No Child Left Behind.
Where he is mistaken is in suggesting “fear and hate” are behind the opposition to tax hikes. History, principle and honest politics explain much of that hostility.
Ronald Reagan, who consented to tax hikes in the 1982 TEFRA bill, told this writer he was swindled. Promised three dollars in spending cuts for each dollar in tax increases, he got the reverse.
George H.W. Bush won election by pledging: “Read my lips! No new taxes!” He broke his pledge, leaving many of the faithful with egg all over their faces. That may have cost him the presidency.
Principled conservatives are resisting tax hikes because they believe government has grown too huge for the good of the country. And if that means putting the beast on a starvation diet — no new tax revenue to batten on — so be it. Cold turkey time.
Anticipating gains in November, Republicans will not give Obama any new taxes before then. After November, their ranks swollen by Tea Party support, they will be even more intractable.
Where does that leave Obama — and us?
Later this year or early next, to avoid a debt crisis, Obama will ask Congress to raise taxes and pare back entitlement programs.
Republicans will fight the taxes to the last ditch. Democrats, having lost dozens of colleagues in the November massacre, will rebel against the cuts in social spending.
And a paralyzed government will drift closer toward the maelstrom.
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James, once and for all, are you Jewish, regardless of what you call the various bloodlines thereof? Answer straight out. No political evasions. Another pot said you were routed through a server in Israel.
Why have several people already accused you of being a Jew?
Is this website a trap?
Just wait you guys and argue for as long as you can. You get the “Jews” mixed up with the real jews. Remember that the secret government behind the scenes runs things. The government you see in control just sets everything up. They get whatever they want be it wars, blowing up there own buildings, or sacrificing the american people. If they don’t care about us, I wonder what they think about you and your countries. We have armed forces all over the world and run everything. Have a great tomorrow.
Kira,
There are no real “jews”.
If you studied history, you would know that. Those who call themselves jews today are primarily Khazars and Edomites.
The TRUE Israelites (including Judah) are the White European race. I can prove that, if you’d like.
James the Just,
Got to give it to ya, most people have no clue about that. I guess I should of used my words differently. But your right and there is no use arguing about something we agree on. But tell that to the so-called people that call themselves Jews. Great work James and keep it up. We are getting into one of the most unbelievable times in human history.
My dear sister. I love you with a pure love.
These are indeed incredible times! :-D
YAH Bless!
Nikolai, James and others like him are europeans.
it’s not up to you to decide who belongs to europe and who does not.
Thank you Vlad. And my parents, whose lineage was British, thank you too.
James,I am not English,buddy.
I thought u got it by my nickname :-D
I am a “black transylvanian rat” as a cunt from here called me :-D
http://www.ukcolumn.org/2010/02/02/child-rapists-protected-by-the-state/ :cry:
James,I doubt he’s a jew. he is simply a stupid russian peasant frustraded by some jews in america or elsewhere.
all this shit (Ashkenazies or as u call them “edomites”) come/came from eastern europe. they are not jews for the sake of truth.they established Israhell,started wars etc.
Vladimir Dracula
This Jamesthejust calls everyone here JEW.
“Oh you need us alright.”
Sure we need their primitive culture and their Jewish distructive capitalism shit.
Idiot your America is finished………..
we don’t need your shit in Europe.
This Jamesthejust calls everyone here JEW.
You are like your father the devil. He was a liar from the beginning. I do not call everyone a jew. I called YOU a jew. And guess what; it appears YOU ARE! :oops:
Eat your favorite delicacy; SHIT, and die jewboi. :-D
No one wants to talk about what REALLY needs to be done:
Get rid of the Edomite jew run Federal Reserve Banking System! and replace it with the constitutionally mandated system of government issued money.
Only the damned jews create money out of NOTHING and then charge usury on worthless pieces of paper. It is a Ponzi scheme guaranteed to fail.
The only way the automatic interest assign to this worthless paper can be repaid is through wars and pillaging the wealth of others.
THAT is the Babylonian system of the vile Edomite jew and THAT is the system we are commanded to come out of.
Who gives a shit about Ameirca !
Those fat stinking Americans.
You can all go to hell !!!!
Nikolai the jew is another mamzer trying to drive a wedge in between kinspeople. So be it.
Let’s see, have the stocks in Russia dropped AGAIN. Why yes I think they have. It’s very timely that Putin should grovel and bow to the jew. And what is the impetus for this? None other than speculative markets – an Edomite jew creation from Babylon. No doubt but that those who control the creation of wealth in ALL the nations of the West (and the White nations of the East too) ensure that they always have sufficient capitol to control the speculative markets.
So while Nikolai, the jew, would have people believe that this phenomena is unique to the US; it is in fact an insidious Edomite banking beast which corrupts all the White nations of the world.
I predict that if Putin sucks enough jew-flesh, the oil stocks will miraculously increase in value. And Russians can be “proud” once more.
Anyone who cannot see through you Nikolai, or the rest of the fake “German Warriors” on this site, is to be pitied. But I “SEE” very clearly.
PS: Only an inbred idiot jew would NOT care about what is happening in the most powerful nation in the world.
JamesTheJust
You stupid tricks want work here.
You your father your mother and your kids are JEWSIH
Fuck America, we don’t need this shit place anymore.
You can write your stupid Ideas, but it want help you
America is the Evil force and has ever been.
You stupid tricks want work here.
You can call them tricks, but truth bears me out. Wishful thinking on your part will not make it so.
You your father your mother and your kids are JEWSIH
LOL! What’s a JEWSHI?
Fuck America, we don’t need this shit place anymore.
Oh you need us alright. You WISH you didn’t, but you do.
You live in your own little jew world of wishful thinking.