Ravin's Ramblings

Republicans are calling for President Obama to jump into the deficit-reduction talks gripping Washington, reflecting the widespread view that the congressional supercommittee is now headed for a failure.

Lawmakers and congressional aides familiar with the deliberations say the talks have reached a hard impasse, with Republicans locked in an internal struggle over whether to agree to higher tax hikes to cut a deal.

“It’s hard to see us getting a deal unless he comes in at the last minute,” Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) said of Obama, who is on a nine-day trip to the Pacific and not scheduled to return to Washington until Sunday.
“We’re in the two-minute drill and closing in on a ‘Hail Mary’ and the quarterback is on the sidelines.”

First of all, President Obama is reachable by telephone. It’s the future! Secondly, he is not a member of the Joint Select Committee of Failing at Every Dumb Thing You Try, because it’s a made up of members of Congress, and the President of the United States is not a member of Congress. He is not a quarterback. The quarterbacks here are the two chairs of the Joint Select Committee on Punching Itself In the Groin, who are members of Congress, put in charge of this particular congressional endeavor.

And even though the Republicans are only pulling this “we need Obama’s help!” schtick now because they know a deal’s not likely to go through and they want to force Obama to assume public responsibility for the failure, so that he can then be blamed for triggered defense cuts and hating the military, the “WHERE’S OBAMA TO FIX THIS!” line, as usual, finds plenty of traction among the comatose anti-thinkers who comprise CNN’s Best Political Team on Television. David Gergen, for example, tweeted yesterday, “With #supercommittee near failure, where are men who want to be President? Where are GOP candidates? Where’s Obama? All AWOL.” Well David Gergen, Obama is not AWOL. He’s talking to world leaders, like presidents do, while he waits for Congress to finish its congressional plan on debt reduction that Congress is supposed to turn in. And this isn’t the job of Republican presidential candidates to fix, because they are not members of the Joint Select Committee on Punching Yourself in the Face either. Did you know that David Gergen is a professor at Harvard? Of government and public policy!

Are members of Congress aware of how miserable they sound when they resort to begging Daddy to finish their fourth grade diorama projects for them, the night before they’re due?

Honest question: why have Congress? Let’s just have a fascist system. These guys know that the public thinks that the President is personally responsible for all lawmaking. Even the media thinks that way. So fuck it, right? Give the president the powers that the public wants him to have.

(Source: jasencomstock, via sexartandpolitics)

nerdbadge:

thenewrepublic:

Who holds the debt, and who accumulated it? The answer may surprise you… or it may not.

pantslessprogressive:

How the Debt Accumulated

So, as you can see, the debt is mostly money we owe to ourselves and a giant chunk of it was accumulated during the G.W. Bush administration…

(via nerdbadge-deactivated20120414)

there is a growing, and real, possibility that a second “one-time tax holiday” will be approved for corporations as part of whatever sordid deal emerges from the debt-ceiling negotiations.

…

Here’s how it works: the tax laws say that companies can avoid paying taxes as long as they keep their profits overseas. Whenever that money comes back to the U.S., the companies have to pay taxes on it.

Think of it as a gigantic global IRA. Companies that put their profits in the offshore IRA can leave them there indefinitely with no tax consequence. Then, when they cash out, they pay the tax.

…

Could you imagine what the Tea Party would be saying right now if there was a law on the books that allowed immigrants to indefinitely avoid taxes on income sent back to family members in the old country, in Mexico and Venezuela and India?

Imagine the uproar if Barack Obama, in the middle of this historic revenue crunch and “We’re so broke the world is going to end tomorrow!” debt-ceiling hystgeria, decided to declare a second “one-time tax holiday” for, say, unwed single mothers, or recipients of public assistance?

thedailywhat:

Infographic of the Day: James Fallows writes: “The Chart That Should Accompany All Discussions of the Debt Ceiling: It’s this one, from yesterday’s New York Times…It’s based on data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its significance is not partisan (who’s “to blame” for the deficit) but intellectual. It demonstrates the utter incoherence of being very concerned about a structural federal deficit but ruling out of consideration the policy that was largest single contributor to that deficit, namely the Bush-era tax cuts.”

It’s also worth noting that the debt ceiling was raised by $4 trillion under Bush without incident, and Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell approved each of the five increases.

[atlantic / thinkprogress.]

(via shadesofheavenlydeath)

(via nerdbadge-deactivated20120414)