Memo to Congress: What is so hard about reducing spending, raising revenue from those who can afford to pay, protecting the weakest among us and increasing the debt ceiling. Stop the pandering at the microphones. Stop letting the left and right fringes set the agenda. Leaders compromise for the good of all. Get this done — and do it once.
There are five factions on the field: real Democrats, real Republicans, the Tea Party, the “whatever fanatical leftists call themselves — and “real people.” Real people are fed up to their eyeballs with the Tea Party and WFLCT. They are appalled that these stomping their feet, terrible twos, tantrum-throwing toddlers are in positions to derail the saner, two-party compromise system that is the hallmark of the world’s greatest form of government.
The Tea Party and the WFLCT have their cause(s) and they’re not about to give up their toys and play nice in the sandbox. They sure aren’t going to share and they don’t give a fig for what happens as long as they get what they want. Sounds like bullies to me.
It’s up to Congress to get this done right. There have been good compromises on the table from the men and women who sincerely are doing their best. That most assuredly includes the big four, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid. Toss in supporting cast like Dick Durbin and we see statesmanship at work. (Don Manzullo is not included; I’m with Sweeny.)
So, here we sit. Good people trying to do good things and being derailed at every turn by a bunch of bullies. A pox on them all.
And, the “real people”? The ones who are fed up to their ears with the polarizing, left and right fringe? We better get off our duffs and tell our Congress that we’re done with the extremists. If we don’t, we’re going to wonder what the heck happened.
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Like your editorial on this one. Enough foolishness is enough and it’s more than past time to get down to the real business of America with a proper Statesmenlike compromise.
how does increasing the debt ceiling help “the weakest among us”?
it just means piling more debt on our children and grandchildren….
The Washington, D.C. people are so far out of touch with their constituents. It is a political game to them. They don’t understand or care they are affecting people’s lives. People don’t like waking up and wondering what D.C. hasn’t done to fix this mess. They have had the time to appropriately fix the problems in this country and they wait until the last week to come up with a solution. Maybe if they spent more time on their jobs and less time writing books they would be worth the money we pay for their salaries.
It is always crisis management in Washington.
This points out additional failures of our educatonal system. The lack of the ability to reason, lack lack of the ability to understand situations from various viewpoints, and the inability to learn to work together or compromise. People seem to have one narrow adgenda. So with the freshmen in congress, the wealthy continue to do better and better while the middle class receives more of the burden. I cannot understand why people do not support the weathly paying their fair share of the tax burden. The limits paid into social security need to be ended. The new no tax people still are still bringing pork back to their consituents. And people who belong to the Tea party and such groups are leading themselves, the middle class and the country into destruction.
Someone is going to say ” you liberal left thinker.” You are wrong. I am very conservative, but I do not believe in self-destruction.
How can anyone believe that creating more debt will solve the debt problem?
concerned citizen seems not to understand that raising the debt ceiling merely authorizes the government to make good on the financial obligations it already has incurred. It does not allow the Obama administration to spend even one penny that has not been appropriated by the Congress — a Congress, by the way, in which the House, where spending bills emanate, is controlled by Republicans.
Failure to raise the debt ceiling would mean “piling more debt” (to use concerned citizen’s phrase) on all of us through higher interest rates.
Good catch, Pat. You’re right! Those dastardly Republicans have controlled the House for, what? Six months? News Flash, Rip-Van-Cunningham, DEMOCRATS controlled the house for the FOUR YEARS prior.
Now answer me this, why is it you left-wing loonies still blame G.W. for everything wrong under the sun, but so quickly forget that it was your party that for the last fours years spent us into oblivion???? A little selective memory, perhaps?
You lefties are all alike, blinders and rose-colored glasses!
You make a good point, John: the Democrats are clearly the ones to be held accountable for allowing Bush to persuade them to approve his invasion of Iraq. The next time a president asks for congressional authorization of an invasion based on dubious “facts,” Congress will have a great precedent for turning him or her down on the ground that spending that kind of money could easily bankrupt us. Stupid Democrats, what *were* you thinking when you said yes to Bush?
John: My point is that even if the debt ceiling is raised, Obama cannot initiate any new spending schemes that don’t emanate from the House, where Republicans are in control.
You, too, seem not to understand that raising the debt ceiling merely authorizes making good on the financial obligations the government already has incurred. It does NOT authorize incurring any more such obligations.
Raising the debt ceiling, without a SIGNIFICANT cut in government spending, will not keep Standard & Poor’s from dropping the Country’s bond ratings below AAA. They expect billions in cuts to be made, in a serious effort to move towards fiscal sanity. This means actual cuts, not reductions in the increases in spending.
Not raising the debt ceiling on the other hand is likely to cause Moody’s to put its Aaa rating of US bonds on review, according to http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110729-720833.html . Moody’s concern is that, absent a debt ceiling rise, the US might default mid-month on a $31 billion coupon interest payment. This could lead Moody’s to lower their Aaa bond credit rating of the US to Aa1, equivalent to S&P dropping from AAA to AA+. If S&P followed suit that would put the US below Automatic Data Processing, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and ExxonMobil, S&P’s four prime (AAA) companies.
As to “Compromise”, why is that such a noble and desired position? Some things cannot, and should not, be compromised. Do you compromise with a thief, or a murderer? Would you compromise on the issue of slavery?, So why would you want to compromise with those who would seek to destroy this Country, economically?
Our children, and their children, are going to be no more than economic slaves, with thousands of dollars in tax debt on their backs, as they exit the womb. And the only ones fighting to end this fiscal insanity, the TEA party, are decried as “terrorists”, by an administration, and their media sycophants, that refuse to use that description on Islamic extremists, who indiscriminately kill and terrorize people around the world.