Debt ceiling agreement finally reached

[jayem]

Pres. Biden and House Speaker McCarthy have agreed to a bill that will prevent a government default. Details in the link:

Debt ceiling deal: What's in, what's out of the bill to avert US default

Of course, it's a compromise. Neither side gets everything it wanted. That's as it should be. It will still have to pass both houses of Congress, but it should squeak by. No sane legislator wants the country to default. Of course, SS and Medicare are unchanged. Most all working people still have to pay FICA. So my sincere thanks go to all you guys out there for helping to fund my retirement.

 

[d taylor]

-​

Did you really think i was not. These political jokers play the drama for all it is worth. But one day their litlle game is going to backfire and and all kind of trouble will break out.

 

[essentialsaltes]

GOP lawmaker Nancy Mace: We just got 'outsmarted by a president who can’t find his pants'​

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Seems like we get the worst of all worlds whenever these debt ceiling debacles occur.

Nobody's happy with the results, we don't make any meaningful cuts, trivial pet projects are catered to, and we continue to spend more either way.


Work requirements (while I don't have a problem with them in theory for certain circumstances) are unlikely to change the trajectory in any meaningful way, and we never seem to touch defense spending.

Without the GOP making a concession and agreeing to cut some defense/military spending, we could carve all kinds of stuff out of multiple avenues of entitlement spending and still be moving in the wrong direction.

This is one the areas where I'd side with the progressives quite a bit.

I've yet to hear of a cogent argument for why (despite already having the world's most powerful titan of a military in the world), we need to keep increasing the spending at a rate that outpaces inflation significantly.

Our military budget in 2000 was 320 billion, if it had kept pace with inflation, our military budget today would be about 570 billion...instead, we're spending 800 billion.

We could simply return defense spending back to 2008 levels (still have the most powerful military that nobody could touch) and redirect the recouped funds towards a combination of supplementing certain entitlement programs as well as eliminating the national debt, which would allow for an across-the-board tax cut and not one that just favors the top 10%.

 

[Say it aint so]

GOP Hard-Liner Calls for McCarthy’s Ouster Over Debt-Limit Deal​

​

(Bloomberg) -- Hard-line Republican lawmakers threatened to exact revenge for a deal between the White House and GOP congressional leaders to avert a catastrophic US debt default, with one conservative saying he plans to force a vote on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster.​

Representative Dan Bishop of North Carolina said McCarthy “capitulated” to Democrats and he plans to trigger the formal process to remove the speaker. The “motion to vacate has to be done,” he told reporters.​

​

He declined to answer questions on whether he would seek to mount his challenge before Wednesday’s scheduled debt-limit vote, leaving unclear whether it would upend the House’s plan to act on the deal. “Every course of action is available,” he said.​

​

McCarthy dismissed that threat and told reporters Tuesday he is confident his job is secure. Supporting the debt limit deal is “an easy vote for Republicans,” he said.​

It appears many in the wingnut caucus are unhappy with the amount of ransom compensation their own party negotiated given the threatened hostage crisis.

 

[rambot]

Seems like we get the worst of all worlds whenever these debt ceiling debacles occur.

Nobody's happy with the results, we don't make any meaningful cuts, trivial pet projects are catered to, and we continue to spend more either way.


Work requirements (while I don't have a problem with them in theory for certain circumstances) are unlikely to change the trajectory in any meaningful way, and we never seem to touch defense spending.

Without the GOP making a concession and agreeing to cut some defense/military spending, we could carve all kinds of stuff out of multiple avenues of entitlement spending and still be moving in the wrong direction.

This is one the areas where I'd side with the progressives quite a bit.

I've yet to hear of a cogent argument for why (despite already having the world's most powerful titan of a military in the world), we need to keep increasing the spending at a rate that outpaces inflation significantly.

Our military budget in 2000 was 320 billion, if it had kept pace with inflation, our military budget today would be about 570 billion...instead, we're spending 800 billion.

We could simply return defense spending back to 2008 levels (still have the most powerful military that nobody could touch) and redirect the recouped funds towards a combination of supplementing certain entitlement programs as well as eliminating the national debt, which would allow for an across-the-board tax cut and not one that just favors the top 10%.

*Never touch defence spending
*Narry a mention of reversing the tax cuts for the ultrawealthy that Trump put in place. So weeeeeeird!

 

[JustOneWay]

GOP lawmaker Nancy Mace: We just got 'outsmarted by a president who can’t find his pants'​

View attachment 331765

That's funny! Biden found his pants and the republicans lost their shirts.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

*Never touch defence spending
*Narry a mention of reversing the tax cuts for the ultrawealthy that Trump put in place. So weeeeeeird!

Defense contractors are a formidable lobby.

You look at how the industry spends it's money...

They give quite a bit to people on both sides.

I suspect the reason why they end up giving a little more to democrats is because democrats have more of a uphill battle in terms of having to defend their "lack of resistance/pushback" with their voter base, as to where a lot of GOP voters have the default position of "More military spending = good"

Basically paying one side a chunk of money to write the bills, and paying the other side to not fight too hard against it.

 

[wing2000]

Regarding defense spending, here is one place to start:

Each year, lawmakers add somewhere between $15 billion and $60 billion to military budgets the Pentagon did not ask for. The Space Force, for example, received $1.7 billion more in December’s continuing resolution than the Pentagon requested. Featherbedding is so fully entrenched in the annual budget games that 19 Pentagon agencies are required by statute to report to Congress on any “unfunded priorities” they could not get past the Office of Management and Budget on their way to Capitol Hill. Those reports are an invitation for lawmakers to fund them anyway. Over a decade, that unrequested spending could, by itself, top a quarter of a trillion dollars.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/25/pentagon-smarter-budget-debt/

 

[wing2000]

From yesterday (the Rules Committee approved last night and the full House vote is expected today)....curiously the rest of the committee wasn't aware of Rep. Chip Roy's assertion:

But as the committee was about to take up the debt ceiling deal, one of its Freedom Caucus members lodged a remarkable claim about the January agreement: that GOP votes to advance bills on the committee effectively needed to be unanimous.
“A reminder that during Speaker negotiations to build the coalition, that it was explicit both that nothing would pass Rules Committee without AT LEAST 7 GOP votes — AND that the Committee would not allow reporting out rules without unanimous Republican votes,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) claimed Monday on Twitter.
This is a little complicated, but Roy was basically claiming that he, fellow Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and a third non-McCarthy loyalist on the committee, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), each had veto power. So even if something like the debt ceiling deal got a majority of GOP members or the committee as a whole, they would be able to stop it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/30/mccarthy-chip-roy-speaker-deal/

 

[wing2000]

After an agreement passed last night in the House, the Senate Defense hawks are squawking....

The agreement, which was approved overwhelmingly by the House on Wednesday night, would increase Pentagon spending to $388 billion for next year, a 3 percent raise, when many domestic programs were targeted for cuts in the plan. But G.O.P. backers of higher spending for the military argued the package fell far short of what was needed.

“I just have to say that the fact that this is being called a victory by some people on our side of the aisle is absolutely inaccurate,” said Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, who called the funding level “woefully inadequate.”

Mr. Graham and others said that at a minimum, they wanted a commitment that Congress would later move on a supplemental funding bill to beef up the spending, although this would in effect reduce the savings Republicans had hoped to achieve through their debt limit leverage.

“We know that this budget is not adequate to the global threats that we face,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the senior Republican on the full Appropriations Committee. “An emergency supplemental must be coming our way.”

G.O.P. Demands for More Pentagon Money Slow Debt Limit Bill in Senate

Leaders of both parties urged quick action to avoid a default, but some senators wanted to consider changes, including adding more military spending to a package they said did not contain enough.

www.nytimes.com