Politics - what I see and what I do not understand

Friday, July 22, 2011

Boehner pulls out of White House debt talks

A frustrated president calls leaders back to the negotiating table Saturday

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner abruptly broke off talks with President Barack Obama Friday night on a deal to cut federal spending and avert a threatened government default, sending compromise efforts into an instant crisis.

Within minutes, an obviously peeved Obama virtually ordered congressional leaders to the White House for a Saturday meeting on raising the nation's debt limit. "We've got to get it done. It is not an option not to do it," he declared.
"I expect them to have an answer in terms of how they intend to get this thing done in the course of the next week. The American people expect action," Obama said.

President Obama addresses the current state of US debt talks by announcing that House Speaker John Boehner has withdrawn from the negotiations. During the statement, Obama makes a strong challenge to Boehner to come up with a solution to avoid US defaults on owed debts.

"This was an extraordinary fair deal," said the president. "If it was unbalanced, it was unbalanced in the direction of not enough revenue."
He said Republicans need to ask themselves, "Can they say 'yes' to anything?"
"We have now run out of time," said Obama. "What we're not going to do is continue to play games and string this along," said the president. "I've been left at the altar now a couple of times."
He added, "I cannot believe that Congress would be that irresponsible that they would not pass a package to avoid a self inflicted wound."
Boehner, called his own news conference to respond to the president and accused Obama of "moving the goal posts" by demanding $400 billion in tax increases on top of about $800 billion in revenues that would have been reaped through a comprehensive rewrite of the tax code.
"It's time to get serious ... if the White House won't get serious, we will," said Boehner.
"We've put plan after plan on the table ... never once did the president come to the table with a plan," said Boehner. "We were always pushing."
In a letter circulated to the House Republican rank and file, the speaker said he had withdrawn from the talks with Obama because "in the end, we couldn't connect." He said he would turn instead to negotiations with leaders of the Senate, which is controlled by majority Democrats.

House Speaker John Boehner addresses the current state of the US debt talks and responds to criticism voiced by President Obama.
The disconnect in the talks with the White House, Boehner said, was "not because of different personalities, but because of different visions for our country.
Following Friday evening's dualing news conferences, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement, "Speaker Boehner's adult moment is long overdue."
The talks had veered uncertainly for weeks, generating reports as late as Thursday that the two sides were possibly closing in on an agreement to cut $3 trillion in spending and add as much as $1 trillion in possible revenue while increasing the government's borrowing authority of $2.4 trillion.
That triggered a revolt among Democrats who expressed fears the president was giving away too much in terms of cuts to benefit programs for the elderly while getting too little by way of additional revenues.
Obama for the first time declined to offer assurances, when asked, that default would be avoided. He said he was consulting with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner about what the consequences would be for Social Security recipients and others "if we default."
Later, he said he was confident the debt limit would be raised and default would be avoided.
For his part, Boehner said, "I'm confident that Congress can act next week."

As the Aug. 2 debt deadline approaches, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are trying to revive an ambitious $4 trillion “grand bargain” deal that would include spending cuts, plus entitlement changes and increased tax revenues. NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell and Mike Viqueira report, and U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., shares his insight.

How bad would default be for U.S. creditworthiness?

By Louis Jacobson
Published on Saturday, July 16th, 2011 at 6:00 a.m.

During a July 13, 2011, press conference with fellow Republican lawmakers, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. -- a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination -- played down the potential impact of a failure to raise the debt ceiling.

President Barack Obama and Congress are engaged in intense discussions about raising the debt ceiling -- the legal limit on how much money the government can borrow. After hitting the debt ceiling earlier this year, the U.S. Treasury Department juggled accounts to buy time for further negotiations. But officials now expect the debt limit to be reached on Aug. 2, 2011.

Bachmann appeared at a press conference with fellow Republican Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas and Steve King of Iowa to present adraft bill that would direct the Treasury to prioritize paying interest on the national debt and continue paying members of the military in the event that a deal could not be reached to raise the debt ceiling.

Here’s a portion of what Bachmann said:

"This is a misnomer that I believe that the president and the Treasury Secretary have been trying to pass off on the American people, and it is this -- that if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion, that somehow the United States will go into default and we will lose the full faith and credit of the United States. That is simply not true.

"It is important to recognize that revenues continue to come in to the United States Treasury. It is merely the president's obligation, and the Congress's, to make sure that the interest is paid on the debt. We are grateful that revenues are sufficient to be able to pay the interest on the debt."

The argument underlying this position is that the government, in the event the debt ceiling is not increased, can choose to prioritize certain payments over certain others. (We investigated whether the government does have the power to do this here.) By prioritizing payments to bondholders, the argument goes, the government would be able to preserve its good credit rating.

But the assumption here is that the markets would be satisfied as long as the interest on bonds was paid, even if doing so meant delaying payments to any number of other creditors to the federal government, from Social Security beneficiaries to federal workers to Pentagon contractors. So we began by asking experts in the field two questions:

First, would the United States "go into default" if the debt ceiling isn’t raised?

And second, would the U.S. lose its "full faith and credit?"

On the first question, our experts largely agreed that -- contrary to Bachmann’s implication -- a failure to pay any of its bills, not just interest to bondholders, would be classified as a default.

Lawrence J. White, an economist at New York University's Stern School of Business, said that "if the federal government delays payment to anyone, then certainly in a common-sense sense, the government has defaulted on its obligations."

Neil H. Buchanan, a George Washington University law professor who specializes in economics, agreed.

"If the government fails to pay any obligation on schedule, that is a default in both the common-sense meaning and in the legal sense," Buchanan said. "The person to whom money is owed has not been repaid. That's a default."

(And if defaults happen, then get ready for the lawyers, said Dean Baker, an economist at the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. "Everyone who has a check coming to them under the law has a claim against the government," Baker said. "This means that they can go to court and sue for this money.)

What about the second claim from Bachmann, that the U.S. wouldn’t lose its "full faith and credit" in the event the debt ceiling isn’t raised? We struggled somewhat with Bachmann’s use of the phrase "full faith and credit" -- would she be half right if the U.S. only lost half its faith and credit? -- but in the end we decided that most people would interpret her language to mean that there would be no significant harm to the nation’s creditworthiness.

While several experts we contacted pointed out that market players are not monolithic in their views, we found strong evidence that Bachmann was wrong -- even before two significant news developments on July 14.

"I believe that the financial markets would not be copacetic" if bondholders were repaid but other creditors weren’t, White of NYU said. "They would realize that the government was stiffing one set of claimants who are creditors, and the markets would worry that they might be next."

Buchanan of GWU agreed with White’s point, and added another.

"Foreign holders of Treasuries will understand that it is politically untenable to pay foreigners but not Americans," he said. "Can you imagine the firestorm if Americans were told that we cannot afford to pay Social Security recipients, because we have to pay foreign banks and governments first? The argument that we must do so to protect our credit rating will sound an awful lot like ‘too big to fail’ -- the same argument that said that banks in 2008-09 had to be bailed out, while homeowners and unemployed workers were thrown to the wolves. No matter how strong the argument that doing so is necessary to protect our credit rating, the bottom line is that the government would be favoring foreigners over Americans. Any foreign investor would know that this is not politically sustainable. They would have every reason to dump our bonds, or at least to require much higher rates of return."

Then, after we began researching this item, on July 13 and 14, two developments helped clarify the issue.

Two major ratings agencies -- Moody’s and Standard & Poors -- publicly announced that they were reassessing whether U.S. Treasury Bonds merited the top possible credit rating. These ratings, issued by agencies that are independent of the government, provide guidance to investors about how secure bond investments are.

In Moody’s case, the company said that it was putting the rating under review due to "the rising possibility" that Obama and lawmakers won’t come to a deal to raise the debt ceiling. "Moody's considers the probability of a default on interest payments to be low but no longer to be" minimal, the agency said in a statement.

Standard & Poors sounded a similar note:

"Standard & Poor's still anticipates that lawmakers will raise the debt ceiling by the end of July, … However, if the government is forced to undergo a sudden, unplanned fiscal contraction -- as a result of Treasury efforts to conserve cash and avoid default absent an agreement to raise the debt ceiling -- we think that the effect on consumer sentiment, market confidence, and, thus, economic growth will likely be detrimental and long-lasting. If the government misses a scheduled debt payment, we believe the effect would be even more significant and, under our criteria, would result in Standard & Poor's lowering the long-term and short-term ratings on the U.S. … until the payment default was cured."

S&P managing director John Chambers used even more stringent language in an interview with the Washington Post. Chambers told the newspaper that even if the parties agreed to raise the debt ceiling, but enacted a less-aggressive deficit-reduction plan as part of the package, it may not be enough to avert a downgrade.

"Chambers said the country must implement a plan to reduce the annual budget deficit by roughly $4 trillion over 10 years, which makes the debt manageable over the long term," the Post reported. "The White House and Congress have discussed a plan that big, but negotiations have more recently centered on a smaller deal, at $2 trillion or less."

In other words, even a breakthrough on the debt ceiling "could still lead to a downgrade" by S&P, Chambers told the Post.

So where does this leave us? Were it not for the unusual timeline of developments, we would likely have rated Bachmann’s claims False. But since the most important piece of evidence -- the statements by the ratings agencies -- came after Bachmann made her comment, we decided it wasn’t fair to her to rate the statement on the Truth-O-Meter after new evidence emerged.

Obama faces angry Dems as debt talks hit crunch

Leading Democrat expresses concern that the Tea Party faction has convinced president to 'go along with a deal that basically gives them everything they want'

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As the clock keeps ticking away toward the August 2 debt ceiling deadline, there are reports of progress, but no specific plan in the works. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

updated 2 hours 24 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — As efforts to avoid an unprecedented U.S. default entered crunch time Friday, President Obama faced growing tensions with senior congressional Democrats, who are angry at White House concessions to Republicans and at being left out of the talks.
Other political news of note

First Read: Here are a few thoughts on our government and politics as we head into the end game on debt talks.
Obama faces angry Dems as debt talks hit crunch
NYT: Debt ceiling uncertainty puts states at risk
First Read: Huntsman campaign manager quits
Reid calls House 'untoward' for taking weekend off

With the clock ticking toward an Aug. 2 deadline to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, Obama and the senior Republican in Congress, House Speaker John Boehner, worked toward a plan that could include up to $3 trillion in spending cuts but might leave tax reform for later, congressional aides said.

Friday is essentially the start of crunch time. The White House initially set a July 22 target for a deal that would leave enough time to get it through the legislative process. But it has backed off that timeframe in recent days with both sides still far apart on the issues.

If Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling in time, the United States would default on its obligations, possibly plunging the country back into recession and sparking a crisis in financial markets worldwide.Story: Debt ceiling uncertainty puts states at risk

The main obstacle remained the issue of tax increases that Obama's Democrats demand and Republicans vehemently oppose.

There were conflicting accounts of how and when higher revenue might kick in, and the White House vowed there would be no deal without this.

Negotiations have seesawed between competing and even conflicting options, and leaders on both sides face resistance within their own ranks to some ideas now gaining traction.

But alarm was expressed most loudly Thursday by Democrats, who have complained about what they see as Obama's willingness to make concessions on social spending cuts. Democrats will also be unhappy if the president agrees to no immediate tax increases.

'Heated' party lunch
Privately, top Democrats expressed their frustrations at White House budget director Jacob J. Lew during a "heated" party lunch, The New York Times reported.

According to The Washington Post, Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.), Barbara A. Mikulski (Md.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.) and others demanded that Lew explain what the president was doing in his talks with Boehner.

Following the tense 45-minute meeting, Mikulski turned to her colleagues and said, "I haven’t seen a meeting like this in my 35 years in Congress," the Post reported.

"The president always talked about balance: There had to be some fairness in this, this can’t be all cuts," The New York Times quoted Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, as saying as he left the meeting with Lew. "The caucus agrees with that. I hope the president agrees with that, and I’m confident he will." Video: Ryan: No one wants to see the US default (on this page)

The budget talks dispute has brought long-simmering tensions between the White House and Capitol Hill Democrats to the surface.

“It would concern me greatly if these folks — the Tea Party group — have been able to convince the president to go along with a deal that basically gives them everything they want but yet still takes away from those who are our most vulnerable," Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told The Washington Post.Awaiting health care details from 'Gang of Six'

"The people that I’m talking about, when you’re talking about Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security — and I’m sure they're all mixed up in there in this $3 trillion — those are people, a lot of whom are in my district, who have no alternatives," he told the Post. "They’re not the guys who own the planes; they’re not the ones who fly off to Paris for vacation."

The focus is on what congressional sources say is shaping up as a wide-ranging package of deficit cuts over 10 years, something many in Washington hope will help save America's triple-A credit rating.

Rating agencies have threatened a U.S. bond downgrade without a comprehensive deficit-cutting deal.

But confusion has grown amid a patchwork of proposals aimed at finding what a senior Democratic aide called the "magic formula" for resolving the crisis, which has dominated Washington's agenda for weeks.

"Frankly, we've looked at a half a dozen fallback plans, none of which are all that appetizing," Boehner — struggling with Tea Party lawmakers largely opposed to any compromise with Obama — told conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

General fears defense cuts
Meanwhile, Obama's nominee for Army chief of staff, Gen. Raymond Odierno, cautioned lawmakers Thursday against slashing defense spending too deeply.

Odierno told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States has a history of shrinking its military too quickly after conflicts, only to have to rebuild later.

"We must avoid our historical pattern of drawing down too fast and getting too small," said Odierno, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. "As we make difficult resource decisions, we must be thoughtful in understanding the risk we incur to our nation's future security."

Committee members expressed anxiety over the coming cutbacks, but generally agreed there was no avoiding them.

"We're the Armed Services Committee, so I suppose we understandably feel a special protectiveness of the military budget," Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn. told Odierno and other nominees for key military posts. But he added, "Everybody has to give in this crisis."

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) unveiled a deficit reduction plan earlier this week that included $1 trillion in defense cuts, much of it through changes to the military's healthcare system, reducing the nuclear weapons force structure and canceling or delaying arms programs.

Another package of proposed cuts, by the so-called Gang of Six senators, came under fire from the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Buck McKeon. The California Republican warned that it included $886 billion in national security cuts and said he opposed it.

Despite the gulf between the two sides, reports that negotiators were starting to
close in a debt deal helped fuel a rally in U.S. and world stocks on Thursday.

"There will be plenty of haggling over the details of all these plans in the days ahead," Obama said in an appeal for compromise in a USA Today opinion piece. "But right now, we have the opportunity to do something big and meaningful."

But crucial to the success of any deal will be Obama's ability to retain the loyalty of his own party.

Asked by The Washington Post on Thursday whether she felt the White House was "working off the same page" as her, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., responded simply: "No."

Sharpton Appears to Win Anchor Spot on MSNBC

By BRIAN STELTER

Published: July 20, 2011

After giving a nearly six-month tryout for the Internet talk show host Cenk Uygur, the cable news channel MSNBC is preparing to instead hand its 6 p.m. time slot to the Rev. Al Sharpton.

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Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The Rev. Al Sharpton, above, and Cenk Uygur vied for the 6 p.m. slot in MSNBC's lineup.

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Michael Young

Cenk Uygur said MSNBC's management decided that they did not care for his aggressive style.

Mr. Sharpton’s imminent hiring, which was acknowledged by three people at the channel on condition of anonymity because the contract had not been signed, is significant in part because MSNBC and other news channels have been criticized for a paucity of minority hosts in prominent time slots. Mr. Sharpton, who is black and is a well-known civil rights activist and radio host, has been guest hosting in the 6 p.m. time slot for the last three weeks.

There had been uncertainty about the 6 p.m. slot ever since the channel’s marquee anchor, Keith Olbermann, departed in January, prompting Ed Schultz to be moved to 10 p.m. from 6. Suddenly Mr. Uygur, who had been made a paid contributor to MSNBC months earlier, was handed 6 p.m., a big coup given that he had earlier campaigned to have his progressive Web show “The Young Turks” picked up by MSNBC.

He earned solid but not stand-out ratings; in late June the channel’s president, Phil Griffin, decided to try out Mr. Sharpton, and offered Mr. Uygur a new contract that included a weekend show, but not a higher-profile weekday show.

Mr. Uygur, who by most accounts was well liked within MSNBC, said in an interview that he turned down the new contract because he felt Mr. Griffin had been the recipient of political pressure. In April, he said, Mr. Griffin “called me into his office and said that he’d been talking to people in Washington, and that they did not like my tone.” He said he guessed Mr. Griffin was referring to White House officials, though he had no evidence for the assertion. He also said that Mr. Griffin said the channel was part of the “establishment,” and “that you need to act like it.”

MSNBC is home to many hosts who criticize President Obama and other Democrats from a progressive point of view, but at times Mr. Uygur could be especially harsh.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Griffin denied Mr. Uygur’s accusations and sounded disappointed that he had decided not to accept the weekend position. “We never told Cenk what to say or what not to say,” Mr. Griffin said.

The “people in Washington,” he said, were MSNBC producers who were responsible for booking guests for the 6 p.m. hour, and some of them had said that Mr. Uygur’s aggressive body language and overall demeanor were making it harder to book guests. “The conversation was, ‘Hey, look, here’s how we can make it better’ — about physical things on the show,” Mr. Griffin said.

Mr. Uygur’s audience on “The Young Turks” Webcast, which is separate from MSNBC, is younger than the audience on cable television, Mr. Griffin added, suggesting that the two demographics require different manners of speaking. Mr. Uygur stood by his account, saying in an e-mail, “That conversation on that day was not about body language.”

Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said in an e-mail Wednesday that his staff did not raise any concerns about the show “with Phil Griffin or anyone else.”

“I didn’t agree with everything said on the show, but certainly didn’t have any problem with it,” Mr. Pfeiffer added

The Gang of Six Play

JULY 21, 2011

A conceptual breakthrough that has too few details.

Grand bipartisan budget deals are one of the great come-ons of Washington politics. They rarely work out, and when they do they usually benefit only the political class. The latest offer from the so-called Gang of Six Senators might be an exception, if—and this is a big if—its inviting generalities can be matched by useful details.

The budget outline—that's all it is so far—promises some $3.7 trillion in deficit reduction that includes rewriting the tax code, reforming entitlements, stabilizing the national debt, freezing domestic spending and rewriting federal budget rules—all in a handy seven pages of talking points. Senate committee chairmen would have wide latitude to write the new laws as they see fit. Anyone up for Max Baucus rewriting the tax code?

***

That said, the outline from the three Republicans (including Oklahoma conservative Tom Coburn) and three Democrats is different from most other such offers because it combines spending cuts with reform that would lower tax rates. Most Beltway budget deals combine immediate tax increases with the promise of future spending cuts that somehow never occur. They enhance Washington's claim on the nation's private resources. This deal has promise because it would reduce that claim.

That's especially true of the tax reform outline, which suggests moving to no more than three income tax rates, with a top rate in a range between 23% and 29%. This would be "paid for" by closing loopholes and tax preferences, but a marginal rate tax reduction of that magnitude would be worth giving up a lot. It could be by far the most pro-growth tax change since the 1980s, and the U.S. needs faster economic growth now above all else.

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Zuma Press

Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.), a member of the ''Gang of Six''

As for spending control, this would come in two stages. The first "down payment" would cut $600 billion over 10 years, mainly from discretionary programs. These cuts would be enforced by annual spending caps through 2015, admittedly from an inflated baseline after the two-year Obama spending blowout. But spending for most federal departments, public broadcasting, mass transit projects and the rest would be essentially frozen.

The caps would be enforced by automatic sequesters requiring supermajorities in Congress to override. Even better, this first stage would repeal the Class Act, a government program to offer long-term care insurance as part of ObamaCare. The program was deliberately designed not to finance itself—but only outside the first 10-year spending window—and is a future budget killer.

The Gang's outline would also change the consumer price index formula slightly to more accurately reflect real inflation in the economy. This could save close to $100 billion over 10 years in spending for entitlements and other programs, while also slightly increasing tax-bracket creep for upper income taxpayers. We think that's justified as more accurate financial measurement and should not count as a violation of any antitax pledge.

Then things get fuzzier. The second phase, to be passed later in this Congress, would include the harder reforms in entitlements, such as ensuring "the 75-year solvency of Social Security," whatever that means. Details to come later. The Medicare and Medicaid reductions look to be mostly more price controls on doctors and hospitals without any of the transformational reforms in Paul Ryan's House budget.

Even trickier is what a tax overhaul would look like in the end. Some of our friends say the outline appears to be a $2 trillion to $3 trillion tax increase, while Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota says it is a $1 trillion tax cut. Who's right?

The real deal on the debt debate

By: Joe Scarborough
July 18, 2011 01:33 PM EDT

The debt ceiling debate rages on, with President Barack Obama daring the GOP to call his bluff and Sen. Mitch McConnell declaring a deal impossible with this White House. These days, it’s hard for most Americans to sort through the red-hot mess that is Washington.
In a gerrymandered America, extremism sells at the polls and in the world of political talk. Fact blurs with fiction and simple math becomes fuzzy.
Here are 10 truths about the debt crisis you won’t hear over the next month from the halls of Congress or the West Wing.
1. Barack Obama doesn’t want a deal.
Political theatrics aside, Obama has no political interest in putting together a grand bargain to resolve the debt ceiling crisis. The president and his team know that after two years of tactical blunders, the White House finally has the GOP on the run.
The mishandling of Paul Ryan’s budget has bled into a long, hot summer of stupid human tricks by Republican leaders. Even taking into account big media’s built-in bias against small government, the GOP has allowed itself to look intransigent, dogmatic and dumb.
That’s a trifecta worth playing for a president who desperately seeks approval from the same independent voters who elected him in 2008 and abandoned him two years later. The White House sees its rivals destroying themselves, so should they interrupt all the fun with a deal that is actually good for America?
2. The Republican Congress doesn’t want a deal.
Speaker John Boehner has lost control of his caucus, a tea party politician is surging past other GOP presidential contenders in the polls, and the Republican establishment is dead as a doornail. The center of Ronald Reagan’s party cannot hold because there is no center to a political organization whose most influential members of late have been Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.
Still, I suspect that GOP stonewalling will pay off politically in the end. Despite gasps and groans coming from the offices of editorial writers and Wall Street CEOs, the dirty truth is that most Republican freshmen will be rewarded politically at home for voting against every debt ceiling deal. Never mind doing what is best for America.
3. Barack Obama has no interest in entitlement reform.
Let’s face it. This president would rather spend this August vacationing in a double-wide with the Young Republican Club of Utah than seriously addressing entitlement reform.
Obama knows that the political battlefield is stacked against Republicans on the all-important issue of entitlement reform. The mishandling of Ryan’s Medicare plan is proving to be bad political medicine for many reasons, and the White House is in no hurry to help save the patient from a mess of their own making. Embittered Democrats also remember GOP candidates demagoguing Medicare in 2010 — and they are ready to return the favor next year.

The president was smart to talk about putting Medicare and Social Security on the table last week because he gambled that most Republicans wouldn’t be shrewd enough to call his bluff.

He was right.

4. Most Republicans have no interest in serious tax reform.

What conservative with any grasp on political reality really believes that lowering tax rates is realistic in 2011? With most public polls showing a majority of Americans supporting higher taxes for millionaires, there is no chance in hell that a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate will lower income tax rates, even if loopholes are closed.

If the Republicans want to reform a tax system that allows a billionaire like Warren Buffett to pay lower tax rates than his secretary, then the trade-off seems pretty obvious. Republicans should close $1 trillion in tax loopholes in exchange for spending cuts totaling $3 trillion.

If the GOP were willing to do that, it could take credit for shaving a cool $4 trillion off America’s debt without surrendering the Bush tax cuts. But Republicans are not interested in that kind of tax reform. So for the foreseeable future, it looks like some of America’s largest corporations will continue to pay absolutely nothing in taxes.

Good luck selling that to independent voters.

5. The Democratic president wants to keep Wall Street happy.

Be assured that a deal will be made to raise the debt ceiling in a way that will not cause heartburn on Wall Street. After all, Obama has raised more money from the financial community than any other politician in U.S. history. So even after all the whining and moaning, Wall Street will always get what it wants from Obama. If you don’t believe me, give Elizabeth Warren a call.

6. Republican leaders want to keep Wall Street happy.

Do I even have to explain? Didn’t think so.
7. Democrats don’t give a damn about debt reduction.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that a party that has championed Big Government for 100 years would be repulsed by the idea of cutting spending in Washington. Occasionally, Democratic presidents like Bill Clinton are forced by Fed chairmen or Republican majorities to behave rationally when it comes to deficit spending. But Obama has yet to show such an inclination.

As I have documented for years, George W. Bush increased the national debt by almost $5 trillion. That is a shameful record but is nothing compared with the spending pace being set by the same man who voted against raising the debt ceiling a few years back.

By the end of his third year, Obama will have signed legislation that added almost $3 trillion more to America’s debt. By his own projections, this administration will add an additional $7 trillion to the debt by the end of the decade — easily making his the biggest spending White House in U.S. history.

Any suggestion that this president cares about deficit reduction insults the intelligence of the intended audience. He does not. Neither do his Democratic allies in the Senate, who refuse to release their own budget. That tactic may keep pressure on Paul Ryan and the Republicans, but it also exposes the Democrats for what they really are.

8. Republicans don’t give a damn about debt reduction.

Who are you going to believe, Republicans or your lying eyes?

GOP candidates have been telling you for decades that they are your only hope for a balanced budget. And for a few years in the ’90s, they were right. But their record over the past decade has been abysmal.

Under George W. Bush, Republicans doubled the national debt and turned a $155 billion surplus into a trillion-dollar deficit. When the GOP asked for control of Congress in 2010, it promised to change its ways. But after taking courageous budget votes in the House and Senate, what is the end result?

Well, we did get a deal to end the government shutdown this spring. John Boehner’s plan was supposed to cut $38 billion from the deficit but ended up doing little to stem a set of policies that have put the United States $7 trillion deeper in debt. And now it looks like the debt ceiling showdown will end up with Mitch McConnell’s Republican Party giving the president unprecedented power to raise the debt ceiling. It all adds up to prove just how little the GOP establishment cares about debt reduction.
9. Both sides are lying about taxes.

Democrats want you to believe that tax hikes will cure the debt crisis. It’s a lie, and they know it. Republicans want you to believe that tax cuts will cure the debt crisis. That’s also a lie, and they know it, too.

Democratic calls to hike tax rates on millionaires and billionaires may whip the base into a frenzy, but it will do very little to pay down America’s $55 trillion in obligations over the next generation. Democrats know better but won’t admit that to voters anytime soon.

As for Republicans who claim that more tax cuts will magically grow America out of a debt crisis, please explain to America why almost a decade of Bush tax rates have coincided with the worst economy since the Depression and the biggest spike in deficits in U.S. history?

10. Both sides are afraid to tell you how bad things really are.

I’m a small government conservative by trade. I voted against raising the debt ceiling when Congress wanted to take it to a measly $5 trillion. I worked with a handful of Republicans to run Newt Gingrich out of town because he wanted to spend too much money. In his last floor speech, he attacked us for being members of the “Perfectionist Caucus.”

I consistently ranked as one of the most fiscally conservative members of Congress over my four terms and never voted for a tax increase. And I wouldn’t vote for one today.

But I learned through the years that politics is the art of the possible. America is $14 trillion is debt. We have over $50 trillion in bills coming due over the next generation. A mild bump in interest rates could cripple our economy for years to come. Greece is in flames. The European Union’s financial system is teetering on the brink of collapse. China is expanding exponentially. And America can’t compete with a rebuilt economic machine until we first fix its foundation.

Considering the challenges facing America this century, any Republican who squanders the chance to cut $4 trillion from our debt in exchange for $1 trillion in tax loopholes is no conservative in my book.

It’s time to tell Americans the truth. And the first party to do that will own the future.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Yukari Mihamae, 61-Year-Old Colorado Woman, Accused Of Groping TSA Agent In Arizona (UPDATE)

I do not travel by air, I personally detest being groped even by so called trained TSA agents. I find the process inhuman, demoralizing, tactless, and sexually horrifying. Especially with young children and the elderly. There has to be a way of doing these check points and not being used as 'feel' that is so .........

Yukari Mihamae, 61, is seen in this undated booking photo in Phoenix provided by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. Authorities say the Colorado woman who allegedly groped a female Transportation Security Administration agent at Phoenix's international airport on Thursday, July 14, 2011 is facing a felony count of sexual abuse. (AP Photo/Maricopa County Sheriff's Office)

First Posted: 7/17/11 11:04 AM ET Updated: 7/18/11 05:23 PM ET

PHOENIX -- Authorities say a Colorado woman who allegedly groped a female Transportation Security Administration agent at Phoenix's international airport is facing a felony count of sexual abuse.
Phoenix police say 61-year-old Yukari Mihamae is accused of grabbing the left breast of the unidentified TSA agent Thursday afternoon at an airport checkpoint.
UPDATE:
Frequent flyers all over the nation are rallying in support of Yukari Mihamae on Facebook. A Facebook Community page called, "Acquit Yukari Mihamae" has popped up over the weekend and it already has nearly 600 fans at the time of publication, but that number is growing steadily.
Many of the Facebook users offer their support for Miahamae, writing "Stay strong!,"I applaud this woman for standing-up...," "LOVE HER!" and "Behind you 100%."
Fans of the page also leave comments hoping that this swelling of public support for Miahamae might change TSA security practices which many consider to be too stringent.
Check out the "Acquit Yukari Mihamae" Facebook page here.

EARLIER:
TSA staff say Mihamae refused to be go through passenger screening and became argumentative before she squeezed and twisted the agent's breast with both hands.
Police were called and say Mihamae admitted grabbing the TSA agent and continued to argue with officers before she was arrested.
Maricopa County jail officials say Mihamae was released from custody Friday. They couldn't immediately provide any information about her case status.
Phoenix TV station KSAZ says Mihamae lives in Longmont, Colo., and is self-employed.

TSA Gets a Taste of Their Own Medicine, Woman Arrested for Groping TSA Agent ..

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