Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) tells the Republicans to stop acting like children because otherwise real people are going to get hurt:
“The possibility that seniors could be denied Social Security benefits is frightening,” Murray said. “Rather than accuse the President of scare tactics, my Republican colleagues should tell the extreme voices in their own party that it is time to act responsibly.”
[…]“Senate Republicans have put us in this position by walking away from every attempt at finding a long-term solution to our national debt….They continue to deny that their irresponsible actions will have real consequences for the American people. This is not about bumper sticker politics. This is about real people, who could be hurt if Republicans fail to act reasonably and responsibly.”
In the mean time, presidential wannabe Michele Bachmann says both stupid and crazy things:
“This is a misnomer, that I think the President and the Treasury Secretary have been trying to pass off to the American people, and it’s this: that if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion that somehow the United States will default and we will lose the full faith and credit of the United States…”
“That is simply not true. Revenue will continue to come in to the United States Treasury. It’s merely the President’s obligation and the Congress’s to make sure that the interest is paid on the debt. We’re grateful that revenues are sufficient to be able to pay interest on the debt.”
This is stupid, on one level, because of Ms. “J.D. from Oral Roberts University” mistaken use of “misnomer”. A “misnomer” is an error in naming something, whereas I suspect she wanted to use the word “misunderstanding.”
But it is stupid on another level by the fact that she is misinformed. Since mid-May the U.S. Treasury has been tapping its fiscal buffers—shifting money around between its bank accounts and delaying pension contributions—all this so that the government’s bills get paid.
In August, the buffer runs out. The government will have to borrow money in order to pay all of its bills, because revenues will fall substantially short of the bills owed. And there are no more buffers.
Sure…we can pay military families, pay service on the debt, and a few other things. But about 1/2 of the Government’s bills will go unpaid as of Aug 2. The LA Times runs down the numbers:
In August, the government is expected to collect about $172 billion in revenue and will face about $307 billion in bills, according to an analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank. So, in theory, the government would have the money to pay a little more than 55% of its bills during the month. But which bills to pay? Interest on existing debt comes to just under $30 billion, Social Security checks are $50 billion, Medicare is another $50 billion, payments to military contractors for weapons, fuel and other costs comes to $32 billion and salaries for active-duty military personnel come to about $3 billion. Add in unemployment benefits ($13 billion for the month), and the government would already have run out of money without paying a single civilian employee or running any of its domestic programs, including courts, disaster relief, national parks, veterans benefits or welfare programs.
However you slice it up, some bills will not get paid, and a lot of people will be hurt in the process.
A second, and perhaps the worst, effect will be the long-term impact on bond interest rates:
The federal government has been able to borrow money at very low interest rates because investors around the world look at U.S. government securities as a very safe place to put their money. If the government’s ability to pay its bills came into question, the people who buy bonds almost certainly would demand a higher interest rate. That would ripple quickly through the economy. In a letter to Congress and the president Tuesday, the Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce and other business leaders warned: “Treasury securities influence the cost of financing not just for companies but more importantly for mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and student debt. A default would risk both disarray in those markets and a host of unintended consequences.”
Bachmann’s error is believing that a failure to pay your bills on time doesn’t affect your credit rating.
That belief is ignorant. And that ignorance poses a clear danger to our country.
Congress appropriated the money for all spending, either as part of the budget resolution or as individual appropriations. Now some idiots like Bachman are arguing that the President can decide for himself which of those appropriations would be paid, and which ones would not – in effect, a “line-item veto”, which cannot be found anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. Quite simply, the President doesn’t have that authority.
So it’s patently ridiculous for the right wing, which claims to be experts on the Constitutional limits of government, to just dismiss this in such a cavalier fashion.
@1: Patently ridiculous is the standard operating procedure for the wingnutty right.
Bachmann is ignorant; anyone who votes for her is stupid. Btw, I have to send in my quarterly tax payment of $1,000 this week; will that help?
RR @ 3: “Bachmann is ignorant; anyone who votes for her is stupid…..”
By the way, I’m still trying to figure out how someone this idiotic managed to graduate from college.
I can understand the B.A. from Winona State University, it’s a minor college and I expect that the graduation standards wouldn’t be that high. Pay your money, show up for class, get at least half right on the final exams, and pick up your degree.
And I kind of understand the J.D. from Oral Roberts University. They probably taught the faith-based approach to legal research. It appears she started in 1979, with the first class there, and graduated almost seven years later in 1986, with the final graduating class from ORU (apparantly the assets were transfered to Regent University). Now, six or seven years is at lest TWICE the time a person normally takes to complete law school, which is normally a three-year program. But I’ll give her a little slack there, because I’m assuming that she was going to school part-time.
But the LLM from William and Mary? Granted, tax law is a specialized field into which one can throw themselves without dealing with the broader aspects of law, business, justice, etc. But somewhere along the way W&M lost the chance to weed out those who had severe gaps in their factual education and cognitive reasoning capabilities.
Between her and Orly Taiz, the dentist who passed the California Bar apparantly based on a legal correspondence course, the various law schools and bar associations need to take a hard look at their requirements.
The big misunderstanding is that raising the debt ceiling is the ONLY WAY to pay our bills on time.
4
LLM programs in law school are not generally as rigorous as you might expect. And, frankly, getting an LLM does not do all that much to advance your legal career. In evaluating job candidates, most legal employers are going to look more at how a candidate did in law school than at the candidate’s having obtained an LLM.
@5 There are only three options for paying the federal government’s bills:
1) Taxes
2) Borrowing
3) A combination of taxes and borrowing
Chimpface inherited a balanced budget and then drastically boosted spending and slashed taxes at the same time. Is it any surprise this immediately caused large deficits?
Despite clear empirical evidence that cutting taxes reduces revenues, countless Republicans still believe the supply-side propaganda that cutting taxes increases revenues. You can’t reason with people like that.
No, you don’t have to raise the debt ceiling. You can cut spending or raise taxes instead. If spending, what spending will you cut? If taxes, whose taxes will you raise?
To me, some things seem obvious. Federal revenues as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest level since 1950, so there’s room to raise taxes. But before any general tax increase I’d like to see them close loopholes that, for example, allow millionaires to offshore their income so they don’t have to pay any taxes at all for the privilege of living and doing business in this country. As for spending, Bush boosted Pentagon spending 80% in eight years; I think there’s room to cut the Pentagon budget. If an entitlement has to go, I’d repeal Bush’s prescription drug program, which is of more benefit to drug companies than seniors. Ethanol subsidies should go — they’re counterproductive. Isn’t it time to cut farm subsidies? Screw those Republican farmers; they’re getting rich even without my tax dollars — and food prices do nothing but go up, up, up, with or without farm subsidies. There are lots of other perks and porks that can be cut if you put your mind to it. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world; maybe we could pare back on throwing people in federal prison for smoking a joint?
7
We really do need to quit incarcerating so many people. We pay for them while imprisoned, then they have major barriers to employment when they get out, so we pay, in some form, again. The drug laws reflect insanity. Closing prisons is an easy budgetary savings.
Think the US Chamber of Commerce is having buyer’s remorse?
The Senator should introduce legislation to bring all the troops home. Stop these asinine wars as a first step and then reduce our forces worldwide.
9
Those old boys are sitting around right now saying, “WTF did we do?” Now, normally, that image would please me. But, for once, they’re right, even though they’re responsible for their own pain. How could we have a House full of idiots at this point in our history? Maybe the Creationists are correct. There is no evolution. There certainly isn’t any proof of it when you look at Republicans.
In the mean time, presidential wannabe Michele Bachmann says both stupid and crazy things:
“This is a misnomer, that I think the President and the Treasury Secretary have been trying to pass off to the American people, and it’s this: that if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion that somehow the United States will default and we will lose the full faith and credit of the United States…”
“That is simply not true. Revenue will continue to come in to the United States Treasury. It’s merely the President’s obligation and the Congress’s to make sure that the interest is paid on the debt. We’re grateful that revenues are sufficient to be able to pay interest on the debt.”
This is stupid, on one level, because of Ms. “J.D. from Oral Roberts University” mistaken use of “misnomer”. A “misnomer” is an error in naming something, whereas I suspect she wanted to use the word “misunderstanding.”
————————————–
What is stupid is leaving out what she said previously so we can determine what “this” refers to.
But it is stupid on another level by the fact that she is misinformed. Since mid-May the U.S. Treasury has been tapping its fiscal buffers—shifting money around between its bank accounts and delaying pension contributions—all this so that the government’s bills get paid.
In August, the buffer runs out. The government will have to borrow money in order to pay all of its bills, because revenues will fall substantially short of the bills owed. And there are no more buffers.
—————————————–
You have no effing idea when the buffer runs out; you naively accept Obama admin propaganda.
We still have paper and ink and unless the Obama admin is even more stupid than I think, there is sufficient buffer to pay all obligations until the Fed has time to create more money, and that is what they will do if it comes down to it.
@7. Roger Rabbit spews:
@5 There are only three options for paying the federal government’s bills:
1) Taxes
2) Borrowing
3) A combination of taxes and borrowing
—————————————
Have you already forgotten QE; try 4, create money.
Despite clear empirical evidence that cutting taxes reduces revenues, countless Republicans still believe the supply-side propaganda that cutting taxes increases revenues. You can’t reason with people like that.
——————–
Apparently the “clear empirical evidence that cutting taxes reduces revenues,”is a little too obscure for you to provide a source. In fact revenue increased after the Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton (though he fought it at first) and Bush tax cuts.
@9 No. They’re incorrigible.
@9 (continued) Listen, Republicans LOVE losing money! They’re so arrogant they figure they can always make more. I have a lot of Republican friends, and whenever I go out with them, they won’t LET me pay for my lunch! They always insist on picking up the tab!! REPUBLICANS HATE THEIR MONEY!!! (I suspect they hate their wives, and their wives hate them, too; but that’s a separate issue.) Republicans hate their money so much they MUST have a financial crash every 4 years so they can unload all the money they don’t want! It’s been 4 years since 2007, so it’s time for another crash, and this time they’re going to force a TREASURY DEFAULT so the STOCK MARKET takes a NOSEDIVE so I can buy Republican-owned stocks for 40 cents on the dollar. Gawd I love stealing from Republicans! And they don’t mind at all, they LIKE me taking their money from them!! And I WANT their money and I WANT cheap housing prices so I can live in one of he mansions THEY used to own! They can have my fucking hole in the ground in a fucking public psrk, it gets cold down here in winter, but that’s what Mother Nature gave me fur for, huh? Give it a few more generations and rabbits won’t have fur anymore because we’ll all be living in 5,000-square-foot palaces with in-floor heating.
“And that ignorance poses a clear danger to our country.”
No it doesn’t. It just lowers the federal government’s credit rating and raises interest rates, which means senior citizens can earn more on their savings, which is good for Baby Boomers. We’ve been eating shit on savings interests far too long.
Republicans are about to do more for senior citizens than George W. Bush ever did.
The GOP obviously is out to get the senior citizen vote. Their stealth tactics are brilliant. Crash the economy and make interest rates skyrocket, if you’re over 62 ya gotta love it!!!
@10 “Stop these asinine wars as a first step and then reduce our forces worldwide.”
Oh, God, no! Some wars are just and necessary. Clinton was right to stop Milosevicz (may he rot in Hell) from murdering hundreds of thousands of people simply because they prayed to Allah instead of Jesus; and Obama is right to help stop Gadhafi, who murdered hundreds of innocent American plane passengers, from murdering tens of thousands of unarmed Libyan civilians who simply want a different government than the asshole dictator they have.
Republicans were AGAINST stopping the genocide in Bosnia. Republicans are AGAINST toppling the murderous Gadhafi regime. Republicans sold oil to Hitler. What the fuck is wrong with Republicans? They must have all been delivered by an incompetent obstetrician who dropped them on their heads intead of spanking them to start their breathing.
@11 “There is no evolution. There certainly isn’t any proof of it when you look at Republicans.”
This is an interesting question. Stephen Hawking, a propagandist for pop science, recently renounced his belief in God. Apparently this was prompted by cogitating on the apparent fact that quantum particles seemingly appear out of nowhere and then disappear again, which when you think about it refutes Einstein’s dictum that matter can be neither created nor destroyed.
Einstein seems to have been wrong about a lot of things. If I may expand on this for a moment, if matter can be neither created nor destroyed, how is it possible that eating a 3-ounce doughnut makes you gain 3 pounds? The guy obviously didn’t know what he was talking about. He had no practical experience in the world. If you look at pictures of him, even in old age, he didn’t have a belly bulge. It’s rumored that he didn’t know how to tie his shoelaces; apparently, he never learned how to eat, either, so he didn’t get fat like the rest of us.
Getting back to the main topic, physicists tell us there are these crazy particles that — POOF! — appear out of nowhere and then — POOF! — vanish whence they came. Should this be verified, it opens all sorts of fascinating possibilities. Such as, the universe could have created itself, simply by — POOF! — making some hydrogen atoms appear out of nowhere, without any ihtellgent design whatsoever, and if even a tiny number of them stuck around instead of poofing themselves back to whence they came, it follows that over an unimaginably vast stretch of time, enough hydrogen atoms populated the universe to create the matter that formed stars and galaxy.
Let me explain how this works in physical terms. Once you have hydrogen atoms, their distribution through the universe would have to be absolutely even. If there is the slightest variation in density, gravity will make the universe’s hydrogen atoms concentrate at spots where there’s slightly more of them. We’re talking incredibly lengthy time periods here, but the universe has plenty of time on its hands — and unlimited supply of it, kind of like electronic greenbacks issuing from the Federal Reserve.
So, visualize a vast universe filled with hydrogen atoms, with a teeny imbalance in distribution, and somebody invents gravity and all of a sudden — over a period of a few zillion years — the hydrogen atoms start socializing where there’s the most of them, kind of like girls in a Belltown nightclub, and when you get enough of them collecting in one place the heat and pressure build up until you get nuclear ignition and — bam! — you’ve got a star! And this is happening all over the place, soon there’s billions of stars, the gravity pulls them together the same way it pulls singles together in nightclubs, and — bam! — you’ve got galaxies.
So, Hawking now figures all of this — everything Hubble sees up in the sky — could have happened by itself without any God. Therefore, according to his reasoning, since the universe could have created itself without any God, that proves there isn’t a God.
Somehow it seems to me there’s a broken link in that chain of reasoning, but I don’t want to argue (not publicly, at least) with as munificent an eminence as Doctor Hawking. Besides, he’s handicapped, and people look down on you if you abuse the handicapped.
All I’ll say is this same guy, Hawking, claims there are TWO universes, and each one is a huge globe, and they’re not touching but their edges are so close together you couldn’t stick a sheet of paper between them.
And this guy wants us to swallow his theories whole?
I wasn’t quite ready to do that, so I put this question to the Great Mother Rabbit Spirit — who speaks to me in dreams when She feels like it, but don’t get the idea I an dial Her up when I feel like it, because I simply don’t have that kind of pull — and I didn’t get an answer for about six months (apparently She had to think about it) but eventually She told me this in a dream:
That guy, Hawking, is full of shit. Everybody knows the universe was intelligently designed. Sure, hydrogen atoms can pop up out of nowhere; the Intelligent Designer kept that secret as long as possible, but the physicists with the marvelous taxpayer-financed gizmos they have now eventually found Him out, but just ask them this: Where did gravity come from?
I mean, seriously, the universe is run by a set of rules; and even if matter can create itself out of nothing, that doesn’t explain where the rules came from. Somebody had to dream up the rules. Rules don’t create themselves. Any lawyer can tell you that. The only way you can get rules is by creating politicians. And politicians don’t create themselves; just as we’re all made of stardust, literally, because the only place you can turn hydrogen atoms into oxygen and carbon atoms is in the center of stars, likewise the only place you can create politicians is in dysfunctional families. So it follows that dysfunctional families came first, followed by politicians, followed by gravity, and only after all that stuff was in place did you get the first hydrogen atom.
@12 “You have no effing idea when the buffer runs out; you naively accept Obama admin propaganda. We still have paper and ink and unless the Obama admin is even more stupid than I think, there is sufficient buffer to pay all obligations until the Fed has time to create more money, and that is what they will do if it comes down to it.”
I hate to admit it, but you’re onto something. If Lincoln, FDR, and Chimpface could ignore the Constitution, so can Obama.
@12 “Apparently the “clear empirical evidence that cutting taxes reduces revenues,”is a little too obscure for you to provide a source.”
This doesn’t need a source because it’s common knowledge, but in case you’ve been asleep since 1980 (see, e.g., Rip Van Winkle), trying googling a phrase like “historical federal tax revenues by year” or similar. I’m not your fucking research assistant, you lazy ass.
What political blog besides HA gives you an explanation of the origin of the universe by an amateur physicist who’s only 30 inches tall and has long pointy ears?
You can’t get this kind of information from Stefan’s sucky little blog.
Once again we see Cass Sunstein’s favorite Homer Simpson malleable idiot rhp6033@4 making fun of someone whom he has no clue or even cares a whit about…
and then later…
How about Michelle Bachmann struggling to raising 28 children, 5 of her own and 23 foster kids ya moron! Picking on her choice of schools. Maybe she could afford a big time school like you went to eh rhp6033? That’s what scares you leftist pinheads so much about Michelle. She has a compelling story, one which Cigar Man Bill Clinton acknowledged three weeks ago. Wife, mother, foster mother, businesswoman, congresswoman. And she’s a brain, the scariest part for a leftist pinhead man.
I bet you “really struggled” to raise your two children and based on commentary like that above, those children will be a scary addition to society at large some day!
Yes, Keith Ellison thinks Michelle Bachmann is scary too. Scary because she’s accomplished much in her life.
Hmmm… his comments have some interesting undertones which most HA leftist pinheads will not comprehend!
I thought Social Security was in a “trust” or “lockbox” and was self-funding?
Puddy @ 23: If you bothered to check her biography, you will see that she didn’t have any kids until AFTER she graduated from law school. And since this was the last year of that particular law school, and the possiblity of her transferring to another law school was extrememly remote (law school transfers are VERY limited, an Oral Roberts transcript probably would NOT get her in), she probably had to hurry up and get her last credits in so she could at least come out of it with a degree. Otherwise, she might have taken longer to finish.
Oh, and don’t pull that “priviledged elitist” crap on me. My family was middle class, my father died when I was sixteen. I went to state colleges for both my undergraduate and graduate education. Social Security survivor’s benefits helped me with the first three years of my school, but for the last year of undergraduate education – and my entire graduate school education – I worked my way through school, with the assistance of my wife. Oh, and by the way, we supported her disabled mother in the process, she lived with us for about ten years.
# 23: “…Picking on her choice of schools. Maybe she could afford a big time school like you went to eh rhp6033?”
I would wager that she paid substanially more for her education at Oral Roberts University than I did at for my graduate work at a state university. Public colleges are almost always cheaper than private colleges.
Despite working through school and helping to support my wife’s mother, I graduated from graduate school with a whopping $2,500 in student loans. Sure, it was a long time ago, but considering my college education lasted seven years total (undergrad and grad), I think that’s pretty good. We paid off the final payment in 1984, if I remember correctly.
I wonder how many wingnuts never paid their student loans?
@19. Roger Rabbit spews:
Einstein’s dictum that matter can be neither created nor destroyed.
—————————
No, that was Newton, Einstein’s view is that matter and energy are unified, matter may be created from energy and vice versa.
Getting back to the main topic, physicists tell us there are these crazy particles that — POOF! — appear out of nowhere and then — POOF! — vanish whence they came. Should this be verified,
——————-
it has long been verified, look up virtual particles
it opens all sorts of fascinating possibilities. Such as, the universe could have created itself, simply by — POOF! — making some hydrogen atoms appear out of nowhere, without any ihtellgent design whatsoever, and if even a tiny number of them stuck around instead of poofing themselves back to whence they came, it follows that over an unimaginably vast stretch of time, enough hydrogen atoms populated the universe to create the matter that formed stars and galaxy.
—————————
This part happened fairly quickly, after matter and energy decouple is when you get the “unimaginably vast stretch of time.”
So, Hawking now figures all of this — everything Hubble sees up in the sky — could have happened by itself without any God. Therefore, according to his reasoning, since the universe could have created itself without any God, that proves there isn’t a God.
———————
This may or may not be Hawking’s reasoning, but Hawking is generally logical and such reasoning is not. It is a reasonable alternative to Creationism but does not refute the existence of God. There is no theoretical limit on how far intelligence may evolve.
@21. Roger Rabbit spews:
@12 “Apparently the “clear empirical evidence that cutting taxes reduces revenues,”is a little too obscure for you to provide a source.”
This doesn’t need a source because it’s common knowledge, but in case you’ve been asleep since 1980 (see, e.g., Rip Van Winkle), trying googling a phrase like “historical federal tax revenues by year” or similar. I’m not your fucking research assistant, you lazy ass.
———————————
Rodent, you old fart, after an interesting and partly correct piece on physics you are back to posting on things you know even less about. There is no “clear empirical evidence that cutting taxes reduces revenues,” as it is impossible to prove what revenue would have been without the tax cut. For every nitwit leftist claiming lower revenue there is a supply-sider arguing the other way. However there is empirical evidence that the tax cuts were followed by increased employment,
http://www.debatepolitics.com/.....-cuts.html
which supports the supply-side argument. For example;
Bush cut
http://www.heritage.org/resear.....h-tax-cuts
Kennedy & Reagan cut
http://www.heritage.org/resear.....-tax-rates
# 29: America First almost had me there for a moment – his discussion of physics at least had a rational basis. But when it comes to taxes his links are apparantly to the Heritage Foundation (if the URL is any indication).
My past experience is trying to get data from the Heritage Foundation is that the sources don’t support the conclusions, but that they bury it between several layers so it takes a long time to figure it out.
I might take a look one day, but I just don’t have the time right now. Usually, when I check out a Heritage Foundation article, I’m just frustrated at the end at having wasted so much time for so little benefit.
Wow rhp6033, middle class eh?
How about poor class? Not dirt poor but poor enough. I had BIG TIME college loans that I didn’t pay off until after both sons were born 9 years later. Went to night grad school part time after being married and paid my own way because grad degree wasn’t in approved work field.