A post by Pat
The freakish carnival of insanity coming out of Washington continues. The Democrats are going to increase the debt ceiling by a whopping $1.8 trillion dollars now so they won’t have to increase it again closer to the 2010 elections. They’re worried about a backlash. Steny Hoyer in a breathtaking display of lunacy explains the need to raise the debt ceiling in this way:
“We’ve incurred this debt. We have to pay our bills.”
So increasing the fictitious and ignored debt ceiling is paying our bills? I’m going to max out my credit card and then ask the credit card company to increase my limit in order to mark the bill paid. A sane person might ask what is the purpose of a debt ceiling if it is constantly raised after another spending binge. That’s our problem with Washington, no sane people.
All this talk about trillions in debt and thinking about elections is making a few in Congress uncomfortable. Hey, maybe we should do something about the deficit. Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad calls it “a defining moment”. This is how the moment is defined:
As introduced Wednesday, the legislation sets no specific targets for deficit reduction, but its 18-member task force — 16 of whom would come from Congress — is promised immense leverage to force change if they can first come together behind a plan.
The American people are forming a plan. The roof is coming down on your heads in 2010.
Dems to lift debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion, fear 2010 backlash
In a bold but risky year-end strategy, Democrats are preparing to raise the federal debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion before New Year’s rather than have to face the issue again prior to the 2010 elections.
“We’ve incurred this debt. We have to pay our bills,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told POLITICO Wednesday. And the Maryland Democrat confirmed that the anticipated increase could be as high as $1.8 trillion — nearly twice what had been assumed in last spring’s budget resolution for the 2010 fiscal year.
The leadership is betting that it’s better for the party to take its lumps now rather than risk further votes over the coming year. But the enormity of the number could create its own dynamic, much as another debt ceiling fight in 1985 gave rise to the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction act mandating across-the-board spending cuts nearly 25 years ago.
The cowards will sneak the debt ceiling increase into a military spending bill, a “must-pass” bill. They must be so proud of their cleverness.
Leadership staff stressed that nothing was yet final in what has become a year-end negotiation between top Democrats in the House and Senate. But the Senate appears to have been the first to put the $1.8 trillion number on the table. And Hoyer’s comments are the clearest yet on the scale of the increase and the expectation that it will be part of a larger year-end legislative train pulled along by the must-pass military bill.
Though Treasury can buy itself time by moving assets around, it is already coming close to the current debt ceiling of $12.1 trillion. Last spring, the Democratic-backed budget proposed to raise this to about $13 trillion, but given the current pace of borrowing, no one now expects that will be sufficient to get through 2010.
Typical of addicts, they’ll stop tomorrow.
The White House has vowed to be more deficit conscious in its forthcoming 2011 budget due out in February.
November, 2010 can’t get here fast enough.
There must be some misunderstanding. These people promised to create the most transparent government in history. Swizzling dates so as to deceive voters on such a massive scale would be seriously inconsistent with their most fundamental commitment to America.
But seriously…seems to me that Washington isn’t even pretending to be sane anymore. It’s becoming like that Twilight Zone “Good Life” episode. Washington does whatever crazy thing suits its childish ego. And everyone had better declare it good, or we end up in the cornfield with all the other slave-holding swastika-carrying etc etc etc.
Actually it’s “TRILLION” not “BILLION”
Thanks for spotting that. — pat
Steny Hoyer got it exactly backwards and no one will call him on it, not the liberal media or the stupid Republican leadership. If you are going to pay your bills, you don’t increase your debt limit, you pay down your debt-no change to limit needed.
Tammy, can you speak to the 2-party v 3rd party issue as it relates to closed primaries? One of my fears regarding the 3rd party route is for those states w/closed primaries many people who are registered as R’s wouldn’t be able to vote outside of the R for Sarah if she ran as an Ind. The timing is critical for her to declare because in the last election I couldn’t vote in the primary. I’d switched to an Ind because I was disgusted with the Rs; but then when there was no Ind candidate, I switched back but it was too late since you have to declare a certain # of days prior to the election. I was BUMMED. All I could vote for were local officials. Voters need to be aware of this quirk for each of their states. Thanks, if you could spend a few on the topic…
This spending insanity is, well, just plain insane! Americans are cutting spending, doing without, paying down debt all the while Washington prints more money and keeps spending. For the love of gawd, would someone please take the credit cards and check books away from the democrats!