McConnell: No deal is possible as long as Obama is president
Just to recap events, Obama led the way in accelerating DC’s overspending to the point that it is rapidly becoming unsustainable. He then, a couple of weeks ago, flatly refused to meet with the Republicans to discuss a debt ceiling deal. His excuse at the time was that he’d already heard the GOP’s arguments and wasn’t interested in hearing them again. Then, apparently seeing his poll position deteriorating while unemployment inched up again, Obama reversed course and demanded meetings with the GOP on the debt ceiling. He then proposed his own budget framework, which had already been rejected by Congress as unserious, as the “compromise.” No one fell for that trick, so meetings have continued and here we are, with the mild-mannered Mitch McConnell saying that as long as Obama is president, it’s not possible to strike a real deal at all.
Mr. McConnell said he had gone into negotiations in good faith over how to formulate a deficit-reduction package to accompany an increase in the statutory borrowing limit. The Treasury has said the limit must be raised by Aug. 2 to avoid the potential of a U.S. default on its debts, while Mr. Obama has said he wants a deal by July 22.
Messrs. McConnell and Boehner said it was the White House’s responsibility to ensure policy makers are able to raise the deadline. “This debt-limit increase is his problem,” Mr. Boehner said. “The President talks a good game, but when it comes time to actually putting these issues on the table, making decisions, they can’t quite pull the trigger,” Mr. Boehner said.
Mr. McConnell said he concluded after the latest negotiations that the administration had “expressed a fundamental unwillingness” to agree to significant spending cuts.
“But after years of discussions and months of negotiations, I have little question that as long as this president is in the Oval Office, a real solution is unattainable,” Mr. McConnell said in a Senate floor speech.
Negotiations resume today. Treasury Sec Tim Geithner is now saying they have to strike a deal in 48 hours, a line he’ll probably move as he has moved the debt ceiling line itself in the past. Among the problems here is that neither Geithner nor Obama have any credibility at all with the GOP (or a majority of the public anymore), Geithner having his tax problems and having presided over the fastest US debt accumulation in our history. And Obama just doesn’t have any idea how to lead without resorting to partisan sniping and insults. He wasn’t the most liberal Senator in the Senate for nothing. He trotted his spokesman, Jay Carney, out to take shots at the GOP yet again today, just like Monday, in advance of today’s meetings. That is just not how you prepare the ground for striking a deal. It is how you keep your own base fired up while you play kabuki, though, and that’s all the president seems to be be doing.
Better to have no deal than a deal worse than just leaving the debt ceiling in place.
Think about it — no deficit immediately, instead of a balanced budget amendment that would rattle around looking for ratification for years…..balanced taxes and spending, whether or not the Congress ever got around to passing a budget at all……the $1.5T in pork and patronage that have been spread around to unproductive corners of society every year since Pelosi-Obama-Reid got their hands on the government checkbook, halted immediately…..Obamacare defunded without even mentioning it by name.
We shouldn’t have to settle for anything less than that no matter who is President.
This is ridiculous. Forget the Dems. Just pass a budget through the House with the debt ceiling raised enough for one year. Make sure to cut a whole bunch of current spending. Do not discuss it in some back room. Put a concrete bill on the Senate desk. HERE is our offer! The American people will get it. The Dems will not be able to demagogue this issue any longer. “We have an offer to raise the debt ceiling. It is included in the budget we passed.” They will have to pass it. Do not waste your breath talking to Democrats.
The Dems are amazing. They are trying to use this crisis they have created to get taxes raised. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
I see on CNN: “President Barack Obama, in a CBS News interview scheduled to air Tuesday night, warned that, absent a deal, he can’t guarantee older Americans will continue to receive their Social Security checks.
“There may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it,” Obama said, according to excerpts released by CBS.”
This is where someone needs to stand up and say, “excellent point. I’m looking around this room and I see 20 staffers who make more than $100,000 per year — each of them would free up 10 Social Security payments if terminated immediately.”
“Last month, Air Force One made five trips for a cost of $XXX,XXX — that could have paid for another YYY Social Security payments. The government gave $500,000 to ACORN in violation of Congress’ mandate — that could have paid for 50 Social Security retirees. We’re borrowing $1.6T dollars a year so that we can ignore these things — and the second we talk about borrowing less, we’re told that the retirees will suffer. Who is responsible for pushing granny off a cliff?”
Great starting list, cthulhu!! Here are a couple starters from me:
Defund Obamacare, starting August 3. Freeze all spending on this disaster in the making until Congress repeals it. If this means that all the directors, managers, new bureaucracies and their staffs have nothing to do, get rid of them, too.
Cut the budget for the Office of the President to the level that was in place under George Bush. Eliminate all the czars and their staffs that have been added since Obama took office. Freeze Obama’s budget untill Congress eliminates the Department of Education and the Department of Energy and prunes the EPA back to an advisory capacity.
This president has repeatedly indicated his preference for a class war. It’s time to let him have one……except, instead of being against the “upper class” of “millionaires and billionaires” who fly around in corporate jets (and, incidentally, employ people in productive ways) — let’s have a class war against the “ruling class” of “politically connected” who fly around in government jets and employ people to harass citizens.
You could not have hit the nail on the head any harder. How much money do we send over seas to countries that are not friendly to us? How much is waisted in excessive workers in federal agencies? How many millions are we spending in Global Warming research? And on goes the list. You mean to tell me that Obama and the Democrats can’t find the money to pay Social Security, or the retirement of our military? If the president with holds those checks, all hell is going to break lose. You think the Tea Party people are angry now, this would send them over the edge. I predict that if he with holds the checks, he has lost the next election, so too the Democrats.
It’s not like we have years to get our spending under control as proven by the bond problems in Europe. The US needs to do a preemptive strike here in order to avoid a currency collapse.
I am not so sure that Obama does not want to see a currency collapse and run away inflation! That would hurt the savers (Rich) much more than the spenders (poor and welfare class) and would fit right in with his redistribution of wealth plans.
What this means is this: The Obama Regime will act to fulfill as many of their dire predictions as possible (even if they wouldn’t have come to pass so readily without massaging), and try to pin it on the GOP.
The bumpy economic road we’re on is about to go unpaved, and we can thank the Dems and their politics for it. =’[.]‘=
Yes Americans. Yes Republicans. Destroy the best country in the world.
You started in 2000 when you let Bush steal the White House. Continue that
road. Please.