Andy Sullivan — no, not that soon-to-be-paywall-protected Andy Sullivan — wrote up one of those analysis pieces that will make you laugh in a low, painful moan. Here’s the gist:
President Barack Obama starts his second term in office facing unprecedented budget constraints that will challenge his ability to implement his economic vision.
Repeat after me: There is no budget. The Senate refuses to pass one, so we’ve functioned, as it were, these last few years on a series of continuing resolutions, following debt ceiling kabuki fights. If anyone thinks the sequestration will lead to any actual cuts*, they haven’t been paying attention these last four years. Heck, they haven’t been paying attention these last 30 years. That was when President Reagan and Speaker Tip O’Neil agreed to fix the budget by applying tax hikes and spending cuts in a one-to-three ratio. Except the actual ratio was one-to-nothing, since the spending cuts never happened.
George H.W. Bush made a similar deal to raise taxes now in exchange for spending cuts never. Here we are again. In fact, the budget deal signed just last month cut discretionary spending by… raising it a little more.
Nevertheless, Sullivan whines on about all the belt-tightening we’re about to endure:
Because those caps won’t keep pace with inflation and population growth, the government will effectively have 16 percent less to spend in these areas by the time Obama leaves office in 2017, according to White House estimates.
Egads! If I’ve done my math right, an “effective 16 percent cut to vital programs like “education, scientific research, transportation and other areas that he says will help the country retool for heightened global competition and rapid technological change,” will result in shrinking the deficit by a fraction of 1%.
But again, we have to assume these cuts will come, when the GOP has already waved the white flag on spending cuts. Here’s Marc Thiessen to explain:
Unfortunately, House Republicans have already announced that they will violate the principle they established, and pass a three-month debt-limit increase this week without any spending cuts. Instead of cuts, the GOP will insist that the House and Senate pass formal budgets by April, or else forgo their Congressional pay. “The principle is simple: no budget, no pay,” Boehner declared.
Sorry, I thought the principle was “a dollar of spending cuts for a dollar of debt limit increase.”
Principles? The Democrats’ only principle is to keep the gravy train moving “forward.” And the Republican leadership? Now they’re the ones voting “present.” And the media, perfectly encapsulated here by Andy Sullivan, will go on helping the Obama and the Democrats scare us into unending spending increases.
If there’s a way out of this trap — without taking a trip through Athens — I’m all ears.
*Except to Defense, of course. Democrats can cut the heck out of Defense.
Over at Contentions, we have the following:
“It’s dawning on Republicans that it’s impossible for them to govern from the House. Nor are they in any position to extract large concessions from the president.”
When you cannot govern from the House,then we have witnessed the collapse of the Jeffersonian vision for American Experiment, and probably the Experiment as well. If the House is a nullity, then why have a legislature at all? Why not just admit the obvious–we live in a Progressive oligarchy, and will continue to do so until the oligarchy is made to relent.
These republicans are beyond brain dead. The debt ceiling is a farce. The government collects enough taxes every month to pay the yearly debt service and the constitution requires that congress must pay the bond holders. Everything else is optional. Let the democrats propose a budget within those constraints. The moocher class voter is never going to vote for them so they don’t need to appease the. man up already. As for taxes, the republicans should stick to raising taxes on those who currently don’t pay taxes: the world of non-profits and tax exempts. A 35% gross receipts tax on gifts and a 35% tax on their investment incomes would be a good thing.
“Budget constraints limit Obama’s second-term agenda”
Truer words never spoken!
Be-damned the American people and America’s future, the GOP’s far right radicals and the far left dems radicals will make certain they do nothing to fix anything — as they continue to spar over partisan politics and ideologies.
America has been in the same debt to GDP crisis before and overcame it as a UNITED AMERICA. Having come out of that previous crisis, the administrations of Reagan, Papa Bush and GW Bush put us back on the road to the same crisis — THEN, came Obama.
Time for all the special interest intellectuals and their flocks to put aside all the perpetuated division of the American people and begin to unite us if you really want to save America. At this point, I really do question if it is the true motives of the far right to save America or destroy America! The best way to destroy any nation is to divide it!