Tentative debt deal reached

[McBoog]

Let me try and make this easy:

 

We all agree that the debt as a proportion of current GDP is too large.

We all agree that Congress needs to carefully cut spending where it sensibly can and such cuts should include both the immediate and the longer term.

OK, fine, we agree.

 

But here's the problem:

 

Raising the debt limit had nothing whatsoever to do with future spending and everything to do with past spending. The GOP chose to tie spending cuts to the debt ceiling vote in order to leverage the corner into which the nation had painted itself. But let's be clear that the debt limit had to go up because of goods already bought, not goods we haven't yet bought. Not raising the limit would have been the equivalent of welching on a payment.

 

Agreed, and you are one of the few that get that this is NOT a budget that they passed. As a matter of fact, this can ALL be changed, ignored when the next budget has to be discussed next month. The new year for the Federal Government starts Oct 1 and nobody was discussing that. Based on that alone, I think the Democrats, once again, ate the GOP for breakfast on this deal. Yeah, the Tea Party may have "changed the focus" of the discussion, but what did they really get other than a bunch of promises to reduce, years from now?

 

I will differ to the extent that not ALL of the ceiling is for past liabilities. There is still a lot of short term spending the POTUS wants to do/add and that was evident in his speech today. The Government takes in enough money in a month to run the current government for about 20 days of that month. That is Everything. The rest has to be borrowed (and that is scary) They still had about three weeks to get a deal done without welching on anything.

[Ursa Majoris]

Agreed, and you are one of the few that get that this is NOT a budget that they passed. As a matter of fact, this can ALL be changed, ignored when the next budget has to be discussed next month. The new year for the Federal Government starts Oct 1 and nobody was discussing that. Based on that alone, I think the Democrats, once again, ate the GOP for breakfast on this deal. Yeah, the Tea Party may have "changed the focus" of the discussion, but what did they really get other than a bunch of promises to reduce, years from now?

 

I will differ to the extent that not ALL of the ceiling is for past liabilities. There is still a lot of short term spending the POTUS wants to do/add and that was evident in his speech today. The Government takes in enough money in a month to run the current government for about 20 days of that month. That is Everything. The rest has to be borrowed (and that is scary) They still had about three weeks to get a deal done without welching on anything.

That depends on which news source you were reading. I saw a few that said some bills would be unpayable within a day or two, I saw others that said a couple weeks. Whatever, after August 2nd, there wasn't enough money in the checking account to pay all the bills on time every time. In fact, they've been juggling since May.

 

I am not so sure about the short term spending piece. I think the spending is for past and current commitments, as opposed to budget. It's not that much different to racking up a massive credit card bill which is also used to pay month to month bills like utilities - none of it is optional (absent repeal / reform of commitments).

 

It seems crystal clear to me that taxes have to go up in order to get this thing under control or, alternatively, entitlements have to be reformed. It cannot be done even by eliminating discretionary spending completely, which clearly isn't going to happen.

[McBoog]

...

It seems crystal clear to me that taxes have to go up in order to get this thing under control or, alternatively, entitlements have to be reformed. It cannot be done even by eliminating discretionary spending completely, which clearly isn't going to happen.

 

This, both.

 

I think that some form of "National Sales Tax" (coupled with major tax reform across the board) is needed.

 

The sales tax would start to tap into the underground economies of cash labour (illegals) and profits from Illegal activity (drugs, human trafficking, blackmarket, IPR violations, etc.). None of this money is touched as it stands right now (at a Federal level).

 

Everyone that gets money, even if public assistance, should be on the hook for something every year that they have to "pay into the system" so they know that the money just doesn't appear out of nowhere.