I am very, very glad that those federal employees living paycheck-to-paycheck aren’t going to be scrambling (next week) to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. I’m glad that Paul Krugman has been cheated of a(nother) chance to point out that the Austrians are not just idiots but malign idiots, when the nascent ‘recovery’ collapsed. (I believe Professor Krugman is just as happy to give this one up, which is another difference between decent people and believers in the Straussian economic cult.) I’m… well, it’s nice that President Obama can look on the bright side:
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) announced the deal just before 11 p.m. The agreement came together in a few frantic hours at the near-deserted Capitol, with a midnight deadline looming…
__
Shortly after, President Obama read a statement from the White House, pointing out that the Washington Monument, seen lit up over his shoulder, would be open as usual on Saturday.
__
“Today, Americans of different beliefs came together,” Obama said. He said the cuts would be painful but necessary to maintain the country’s fiscal health. “We protected the investments we need to win the future.”
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To keep the government running through Friday, lawmakers approved a short-term spending measure overnight — the Senate at 12:20 a.m. and the House at 12:40 a.m. — and said the final agreement should be approved next week.
Good use of the campaign meme, Mr. President. The 2012 election is already in play, after all.
Apart from those not inconsiderable gains, I’m afraid it looks to me like Dave Weigel at Slate may be right about “The No-Shutdown Wrap: Boehner Wins, Austerity Wins, and the Social Conservatives Go Home With A ‘Participant’ Trophy“:
Am I about to engage in that hideous Washington parlor game of declaring “winners and losers,” as if billions of dollars that would affect real lives were just Monopoly papers being moved across a board? I hope not. What I mean is that most economists agree – sorry, Austrians, you’re still outnumbered – that when a country is pulling out of a recession, it’s not a good idea to slash spending. It didn’t work in 1937, it’s not working too well in the UK. It was a few short weeks ago when Mark Zandi was suggesting that $61 billion of cuts could cost 700,000 jobs by 2012, and Ben Bernanke suggested they could knock a little bit off of our GDP.
__
And yet. For the second time in five months, the White House has faced a political crisis, looked at an opposition that completely disagreed with liberal economics, and blinked. Five months ago, automatic tax increases were stopped, and the GOP got a validation of supply-side economics. Tonight, in a battle over a much smaller amount of money, the Democrats signed on to austerity economics. They didn’t have much of a choice, but they didn’t challenge the premise, either. We’re a long way from the “Sputnik moment.”…
__
So there will be things social conservatives like in this continuing resolution, but some of what they wanted was bargained away. That benefited Democrats, but it benefited economic conservatives even more. On the floor of the House yesterday, Rep. Steny Hoyer tried to score points on Republicans by paraphrasing Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a possible 2012 presidential candidate who’s been saying that there should be a “social truce” until the economy and the debt are righted. The implication of what Hoyer said is that Democrats, too, want to tackle the debt, and think the era of stimulus spending is over.
__
Let’s go back to the raw politics. Can we say that Republicans got the better of the no-shutdown deal? Yes, because if there had been a shutdown, Republicans would have been blamed for it. The record was all cued up. Democrats spent months predicting that Boehner would have trouble controlling his new Tea Party members. They spent this week saying he had to put the Tea Party “horse back in the barn,” as Dick Durbin said. Well, there’s a deal – the implication is that he put the horse back in the barn. If the Republicans would have been blamed for a shutdown, it follows that they get credit for a shutdown being avoided.
You are all more than welcome (as if you needed my permission) to explain to me why this deal is better than I have yet been able to perceive.
stuckinred
Could it be that it’s all bullshit?
OBAMABOTHAHAHA
The deal isn’t better then you perceive. Its a fucking disaster. And That piece of shit Obama announced it with a big smile on his face. Because it was BIPARTISAN.
stuckinred
Everything is a disaster, Obama is worse that Bush and the fucking sky is falling. Tell me something new.
Baud
Well it depends on what you choose to compare it to. A shutdown would also have harmed the economy. What if Obama gave away Planned Parenthood and NPR for, say, an extra $5 billion in spending? Would that have been a better deal?
That wasn’t an inevitable law of nature. The Republicans would have been blamed, in this instance, the majority of the public saw the Democrats as the ones who were willing to compromise.
Keith G
What will Democrats fight for?
If Obama and Congressional Democrats ever eventually find an issue worth fighting for, will there be anyone left around (by that time) who cares?
Could it be that Team Obama cares more about re-election than about any set of issues?
Could it be that the GOP insiders see that all of the above is true and will relentlessly (yet selectively) use it to shred the progressive agenda?
cat48
@Keith G:
cat48
I’ll just leave you guys to curse Obama, although Bill Daley, Biden, & Jack Lew hashed out most of this deal. They’ve been negotiating with Boner since late Feb. They also did the Tax cut deal, too.
CNN says part of the cuts are coming out of Defense; I can’t find out how much yet.
Baud
@cat48: I read somewhere $3 billion from defense.
"Serious" Superluminar
Two points:
1) That Weigel stuff about taxes is bullshit. The Austrian approach would be that they should increase to help pay off the deficit. The Keynesian argument (Krugman et al) is that taxes should not increase during a recession/ unsteady recovery as they would have a negative effect on demand.
You can certainly argue that in terms of framing the budget question, Obama/ The Dems should have let the cuts expire, but in terms of short-term economics, it wouldn’t have been a good idea.
2) Instead of the headline figure for these cuts ($38.5bn), I’d like to see a breakdown of what’s being cut. I understand that some billions are going from defense for example, something everyone on this blog would agree needs to be cut so really, we’re not against some of these cuts. This exercise would bring the total of cuts we object to down some, making them less bad/ “sellout” than the headline $39bn might suggest.
R. Johnston
This “deal” is even worse than you’ve been able to perceive. By claiming it as a “victory” the Democrats, and Obama in particular, will own its failure. Obama just gave whoever becomes the Republican nominee for President next year hope of victory where there was essentially no hope before.
Why Democrats don’t understand that taking credit for the failures of government is a political and policy loser is beyond me.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
But the song that got the most play on the airwaves would have been “Waaah! We wanted to save America but the Democrats wouldn’t let us and now everything is ruined!”
Does anyone really believe the Repubs weren’t ready to hit every talk show to whimper about the unreasonable money wasting radical liberals and that ANYONE would call them on it? Really?
"Serious" Superluminar
@cat48
agree with other stuff you wrote, but this:
I believe they all work for Obama. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hold the President responsible for their actions.
"Serious" Superluminar
@ R Johnston
sorry dude, but you lost me. You don’t explain how this deal is actually a failure. What would sucess look like?
Blue Neponset
Keeping the gov’t running is a good thing. Obama should get some credit for that, but….it is pretty clear to me that 90% of elected Democrats won’t fight for Keynesian economics. That ship sailed during the stimulus debate, probably a decade or two earlier. The stimulus bill got watered down by a bunch of tax cuts.
I’d like to blame the Democrats for this but unfortunately we share the country with a bunch of people who thought voting for George Bush twice was a good idea, and a Republican Party that excels at messaging. I don’t see things swinging back our way any time soon.
Obama & Co. had a chance to use the great recession to re-frame the economic debate, but Fox & Co. made it about the teabaggers. This, IMO, will be Obama’s biggest failure.
JPL
Thursday the media started discussing the social issues that were blocking a budget deal. It was no longer a discussion on how to create jobs or decrease the deficit. The conversation was about women’s health and sane republicans realized they could not win this fight.
Keith G
I do hope the the rosie senario that have been typed here, and in previous threads, plays out. I am gun shy.
I am curious. In future debates over school lunches or Ryan White funds, does the GOP get bigger cuts by head-faking on a social issue or two?
Is that the lesson learned?
JMG
As far as I can tell, this was a play for time on Obama’s part. The House Republicans are still too new to demonize with the general public, or to be more accurate, to hammer the facts about the Republicans into the unwilling-to-pay-attention heads of said public. I could understand the thought “let them vote to abolish Medicare and then fight on THAT budget.”
I of course don’t know if that’s what the Obama people were thinking, or if they think at all. But it’s how I might have approached these negotiations.
One last point. It is not easy being the general of an army of which a significant percentage of soldiers seeks to run away or desert during every battle.
c u n d gulag
It sucks.
Way to put up a fight, Dem!!! (unfunny snark)
The Democrats caved again.
I can see why Conservatives were/are so afraid of stem cell research – they’re afraid someone will be able to implant spines into Democrats.
"Serious" Superluminar
@ Blue Neponset
yeah, this. I think the main thing history will note about Obama is that he clearly wasn’t well-versed in economics, and relied to too great an extent on a bunch of Dem advisors in this area who were fixated on what will turn out to be a rather silly dogma. I do blame him for this, as he should have realised some time before his inauguration that the economy was going to dominate at the very least his first term in office (and maybe a second), and brushed up accordingly. Getting Krugman and/or Steiglitz in the admin would have been much more sensible than Summers/Rubin. Oh well.
Ija
Uhh, your very first sentence?
But since you only put that as a rhetorical device to prove you are not heartless, that is obviously not a winning argument for you.
All these talk about how a shutdown would be blamed on the Republicans and how this is such a missed chance. I thought Republicans are supposed to be the people who only care about winning and not the effect on real people. I guess that’s not true anymore.
me
Did I read CNN correctly? Did the Dems in the Senate cave even more than I thought?
CNN:
“Sources told CNN, however, that leaders of the Democratic-controlled Senate agreed to hold separate votes on both measures, as well as on an initiative to repeal Obama’s health care overhaul.”
Has this been confirmed?
Baud
@JMG:
This.
Cermet
One good aspect of this agreement that most have not noticed – John Boehner can make deals with democrats and drop the insane teabagger demands that would be a poison pill – at least this guy realized the stupidity of the teabagger’s and the importance of compromise. Leading the one percenter’s is bad, but at least this guy can be worked with.
By the way, does he suddenly look less orange?
Cermet
@me: So?! A vote the re-pug-a-thugs will lose. Let them have their fake vote that highlights the thug’s dangerous ideas.
Baud
@me: I don’t see how that’s a cave. They will take a vote to repeal, and it will fail. If it somehow passes, Obama will veto it.
PaulW
Shutdown averted. Republicans still assholes. Film at eleven.
JPL
@me: The house won because of the economy.. The more votes they take on social issues highlights their incompetency.
Anya
Okay, Obama sucks. He’s the worst president EVER. Even worse than GWB. Now, explain it to me like I am a five year old, what was the alternative? What would a better deal look like? Government shutdown?
Also, too, according to the media and the liberal blogosphere, the Republicans always win, and Obama always caves.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@PaulW: Media stumped for what to cover next – This just in! Media will discuss what WOULD have happened had there been a shut down. Later, Donald Trump still isn’t sure Obama is eligible to be President.
Stay Tuned.
WereBear
As someone with half the household income being a government check; I’m glad we won’t have to sell the kitties for scientific experiments.*
Because we have no savings and at the end of the month there ain’t nothing but the franks and beans to keep us ’till the 1st. We try to save, but something always comes up, and then we go, great, glad we saved…
And I have yet to have explained to me how the President is supposed to stem the relentless tide of a MSM that is deeply in the tank for the opposition. For crying out loud, Bill Cosby was given a hard time for saying Trump was a ridiculous candidate.
And there’s nothing complicated about that.
*Monty Python reference. We would never do that!
Lee Hartmann
DDay pointed out that this was all set up by the Obama/Dem cave on the Bush tax cuts. This made the deficit “suddenly jump” up from 1.1 T$ to 1.5T$. Then they “had” to cut stuff, weakening the recovery and not incidentally harming a lot of poor people, we’ll find when the dust settles.
David Stockman predicted that Obama “will fold like a lawn chair”. Looks like that to me.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@c u n d gulag:
first i lol’d
but then i serious’d
i don’t have faith that the ever illusive middle would have stuck this to the gop. i think to the extent it did, would be with their nuts, who would think its a good thing, and ours who don’t really need any more proof, do we?
in fact, if anything, the only victory in this is that the gop had to put on grown up pants for a minute and actually stop playing red meat politics. that is, they weren’t willing to do the shut down that would have probably gotten them some donor money in the short term. that they aren’t stupid enough to press the red button and key in the launch codes shouldn’t really be seen as a victory, but in reality it is something.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Right, so I’m confused.
The agreement cuts $33 billion in spending now, $500 billion over the next 10 years, and… what? I don’t even know where the cuts are coming, though I have heard the Defense sacred cow is taking a hit. Planned Parenthood is safe, NPR/PBS is safe, Medicaid/Medicare is safe, the middle got their compromise, and $33 billion is a bloody drop in the bucket. I can’t see much reason to get outraged.
Van Buren
From up in Heaven, David Broder smiles down at all the happy bipartisanship…
bkny
i think it was fineman who made th epoint that mr hopey changey was making a play for the independents. the polling shows them wanting compromise in all things political, so that’s what obama does — compromise and compromise and compromise. until he’s proven he has absolutely no baseline values he’s willing to support. other than his own re-election.
bkny
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: the pentagon won’t take a hit from these fuckers. that $78 billion that keeps getting tossed out there is what gates has offered up — over five years and it’s thru reduction of troops presumably due to the end of afghan/iraq commitments. gimmicks.
gnomedad
Random speculation: Obama decided to give them a base on balls, figuring if they try again he’ll be able to say look, I compromised with you bozos once for the good of the country. We shall see.
doofus
So it appears that the government won’t get shut down over the 2011 budget? Well, there is always the debt ceiling votes coming up soon. We’ll also have the 2012 budget battles to start talking about later this year. This game ain’t over yet.
Hal
Ok, I’m confused. You people wanted a Government shutdown? Because that was the only alternative, and as far as I can tell, it seems many out there felt if the shutdown happened, it would just blow the Republican party to bits as the public completely turned on them, and Obama was automatically declared President for life by an enthusiastic nation.
Wait. The other alternative would have been no shutdown, and no compromise. But what are the chances that would have ever happened?
Anya
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Did you see his call in to Morning Joe, with tough guys Donny deutsch and former Governor Ed Randell? They couldn’t bring themselves to say to Trump, that Obama was born in Hawaii, and he was full of shit. He kept saying dumb things and they looked like indulgent parents. Can someone explain to me, why do people humor this vulgarian?
Suffern ACE
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Well there’s the so too and the whatsit. And the fact that Congress is on recess. Get with the program.
kdaug
@gnomedad: Kinda of where I see it to. Coast through to re-election, then turn it up to 11. After that, mid-50s, two-termer, he can do whatever he wants.
c u n d gulag
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
I think the Oligarchs told Boner to reign in his clowns and herd them into the clown car NOW, or else they’d lose money in the shutdown, and after the shutdown, because they’re making a nice chunk on the “recovery,’ which is a recovery only for them, and not for us.
They know they can count on the Democrats to always, always, capitulate. After all, that’s what they pay them for.
The Oligarch’s are the only reason I don’t see the debt ceiling NOT being raised.
But, I think the Teafelchers are a concern not just to the Republicans, but to the Oligarchs. And that, I think, is one reason Beck had to go bye-bye. With him out of the picture as a major, in-your-face player, they think the insane clown posse of voters may be easier to infulence.
Suffern ACE
@me: Imagine the votes Nancy Pelosi would have gotten out of Harry Reid and his lazy Senate if only she would have had the opportunity to shut down the government every few months.
4tehlulz
@Anya: Same reason Meredith Viera didn’t challenge him. He has a show on NBC.
I would be amused if he wasn’t making birtherism mainstream. Now, not so much.
agrippa
Elections have consequences.
People voted to have Republicans in office; people voted for divided government.
This is what happens when voters do that.
There is an election in 2012. Keep that in mind.
Napoleon
Foldobama is a worthless piece of shit who is unwilling to stand up for anything. Is there any negotiator on Earth that is worse then him? Just wait until we hit the debt limit with the Republicans knowing how completely spineless he is.
Thlayli
Like I said about healthcare: you make laws with the Congress you have, not the Congress you wish you had.
Suffern ACE
@Napoleon: So what was cut that was worth standing for. Not my fault that PBS and PP dominated the discussions about what was on the chopping block to the extent that the public probably thinks that NPR gets $33 billion a year.
lawguy
@cat48: Well I would guess that it is possible that in the world of economists you read Krugman is the only one who thought continuing the upper level tax cuts was bad. However, if the debt and deficit are important and need to be taken care of then those tax cuts were indeed bad.
As far as the payroll tax, it is part I think, of an attempt to destroy social security and various benefits in the future.
Butler
So very true. And its not just Boner. Last night Harry Reid thanked the “business community” and specifically thanked the head of the Chamber of Commerce, who he said he had worked with all day.
General Stuck
Weigel is full of shit, or gooper concern troll, or acting like one. First whining about these spending cuts hurting the recovery because they are stimulus, then bashing Obama for extending the Bush tax cuts, that if they had expired would have taken a much much larger amount of cash out of the economy and into the US Treasury. Beating both ends of that dead horse, otherwise, this is shaping up to be a record stupid thread. Yawn.
WereBear
We’re only human; we long for a defining event where a passing plane, dangling a skyhook, rips off the Emperor’s non-existent clothes. We WANT to see Lonesome Rhodes descending in that elevator (and guess what? He did! Glenn Beck got fired! Where’s the joy?)
But it don’t work that way; our opposition, not being human, just keeps grinding away. One idiocy is exposed, only to have them seamlessly pivot to another.
We have to stop lopping off heads, which only grow back. We have to figure out where the Achilles heel is.
RSA
I’m not happy with the deal, but I think that the alternative wasn’t a better deal, it was no deal at all.
Democrats and Republicans are basically playing a game of chicken, and one party is saying, “A little head-on crash never hurt nobody.”
General Stuck
@stuckinred:
Ain’t it the truth – the sun is rising now, in the east, again
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@bkny:
the military wouldn’t sustain meaningful cuts until there was real live meaningful desire to do so,like a single issue third party that captures 100 seats or so in the house. and even then it would be a hell of a fight. i had no hope that any austerity shitshow meant the military, they are barely considered part of the government for purposes of negotiation.
@c u n d gulag:
i don’t give beck that much credit. the teaparty is the oligharchs, always will be. folks got too close to the truth about astroturf, the teaparty had to take a dive. lacrimal
mcpumpkinhead needed to look like a leader.
Suffern ACE
@Anya: Imagine this. Those are the guys who would be called upon to win the message war about a government shutdown. The assumption that the dems automatically win anything is nonsense. Scary thought that.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@WereBear:
well we could constitutionally define personhood, and maybe put corporations into a category separate from those who are guaranteed rights.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
And the Democrats are what in either scenario? Cottage cheese? This is Villager nonsense.
lawguy
@Anya: Actually by this point I figure it is kind of like trying to figure out if I should try to get in the starboard or port lifeboats of the Titanic.
General Stuck
What’s funny is, after reading some wingnut blogs this morning, they are screaming epic CAVE from their viewpoint, by Boehner and repubs. Too funny.
aimai
It was a good deal and it was a terrible deal. It was a good deal because it averted a costly government shutdown. It was a bad deal because the Democrats pre-emptively gave away 40 billion dollars worth of cuts and then were forced, inch by inch, by the power of Boehner and the Tea Party’s bad cop/crazy cop routine to give up 38 billion more plus the entire argument for jobs before austerity.
Since this particular endgame was foretold at the start there’s really no excuse. Obama and Reid needed to hire an experienced negotiator and games theorist to explain to them what every moron in the street knew: that Boehner would play the unreliable broker who would keep weeping that he didn’t control his caucus and that his caucus would play the intransigent nutcases and that they would break every transitional negotiation in order to keep the dems coming back to the table and offering more and more.
Instead Obama and the Dems should have simply refused to negotiate with Boehner until he could hold the line on any offer for more than 24 hours–for instance they should have demanded boehner offer test votes in which his entire caucus would line up behind him. Or signed letters from his tea partiers. And they should never have offered any more cuts for the NPR and Planned Parenthood hostages. They should simply have refused to allow any policy riders into the negotiations. You just refuse and make them come back to you with their counteroffer. Or they are refusing to come to the table.
By continually allowing the republicans to play them the dems muddied the waters for the viewers about what was at stake, and allowed the republicans to get more in pre-emptive cuts than they should have.
It was massively bad bargaining on the part of the Dems. And it was all predicted and predictable in advance. Now they are “crowing that the averted the government shut down” but they have demonstrated that in the negotiations over the debt ceiling and the Ryan budget that they will accept any amount of bad faith and hostage taking by the Republicans.
aimai
scottinnj
Once again Paul Krugman is shrill, and not a Serious person.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/serious/
Hal
So true.
A former co-worker of mine is livid. He’s a born again, Teabagger, conservative Republican who loves to post on Facebook about how “at least” 100 billion in cuts are needed. In his mind, they are all waste dollars anyway. It’s just all about the numbers with no concern as to where the money will actually come from.
Bulworth
No, it’s all about whether Obama or The Boner wins or loses.
But Very Seriously, I will be happy if there are defense cuts. Otherwise, I think the teabags are just laughing their as$es off. They stuck on that Planned Parenthood rider as a threat and dropped it as soon as they got the $$ figure they wanted. Wouldn’t be surprised to see it come back when the debt ceiling or the eventual promise to allow taxes to rise again emerges.
WereBear
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Me likey.
numbskull
@General Stuck: Yep, there wasn’t much choice about this, and overall, if there is a winner or loser, I’d say the the winner is the electorate of TODAY (possibly not in the near future).
Still, it would be nice if I could be convinced that anyone inside the beltway understood the fundamentals of 1) macroeconomics and 2) how to deal with sociopaths. Maybe there is no solution other than what the French came up with lo those many years ago.
JPL
Cantor is going to be on Fox tomorrow morning and Ryan is going to be on Meet The Press. That pretty much says it all.
Kevin
I don’t understand why people think Obama didn’t get his ass handed to him. This isn’t that hard.
1. He blew it with the tax cuts. He could have vetoed anything that was not a middle cut extension only. The GOP would have blinked, and if they had not, then we would not have had this huge deficit.
2. He refused to engage in a debate about the merits of fucking poor people with these cuts and the words tax increase were never part of his position. And we are now harming the economy and the people who need help the most.
3. He praises cuts. He never said any variation of “We needed to do this to keep the government running, but keep in mind that the GOP voted huge tax cuts for the Lindsey Lohans and investment bankers of the world and decided that children wont get heat this winter or proper food help at school.”
Maybe he was always going to lose on these issues. But he lost very badly by praising the cuts. Now the debt ceiling limit will come with massive cuts to the poor. The 2012 will have serous cuts and the beginign of the end for at least medicaid, and possibly SS and Medicare. Why? Because the bipartisian position, thanks to Obama, is that cutting government is the right thing to do.
Obama started killing the middle class when he refused to go for a big enough stimulus. He made it worse when he agreed to the tax cuts, and he made it even worse when he hoped on the austerity bandwagon. He has not been effective in preventing the GOP’s rush to the new gilded age. He may have been destined to lose in this particular fight, but he didn’t have to surrender. That’s what he did with his praise and his budget.
So, yeah, the GOP are to blame, but Obama gets some fault.
Bulworth
@scottinnj: The Ryan budget promises to cut money for poor people mooching off government hand outs living in hammocks. That’s all anyone needs to know about what it takes to make our Media Villagers excited about such a Serious budget plan.
kerFuFFler
I’m so glad Planned Parenthood did not lose funding!
I’m expecting Jon Kyl’s “retraction” of his lie on the Senate floor that 90% of Planned Parenthood’s funds were spent on abortion to become one of the rotating taglines here.
(“his remark was not intended to be a factual statement”)
Sounds like the Republicans’ motto.
numbskull
Someone over at the The Great Orange Satan made the observation that now that we have made spending cuts on the backs of the middle class, we can now make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Hey, they’ve been “paid for”!
magurakurin
whatever. It’s just all inside baseball. Nobody won, the US lost to itself. While the US piddles and pricks with its dick lobbing it from side to side whispering “tea party” and “progressive” the rest of the world is grinding on, upgrading infrastructure, building out its broadband networks, developing wind and solar energy, and churning out scientists and engineers. Even the rich will end up falling behind, they already are. India and China are starting to churn out billionaires at an alarming rate.
Seriously, y’all are so fucked over there unless you can some how find a cure for the stupid that infects a solid 100 million Americans of whom 50 some million somehow figure out how to tie their shoes and get to the ballot box and put an X next to the R.
My suggestion would be firing squads, but then again if the world was unfortunate enough to find itself with me in charge…whoa…I’d make Stalin look like a Catholic school girl.
scottinnj
@Bulworth:
But of course we have a moral obligation to maintain spending on Real ‘Murkins, like whites over the age of 65. Good thing density brought George McFly to the Speaker of the House so he can say “Hey you, keep your damm hands off Medicare”.
Rhoda
I’d have hoped that this mini-budget showdown would have made it crystal clear what the last election meant; they have consequences and we’re facing them. The Republican party campaigned on a 100 billion in cuts; and people put them in because they figured hey maybe that’ll work.
Now we’re dealing with the fallout of the loonies holding the purse strings. Boehner has no control over them and they almost blew their wad on this mini-budget battle. Wait for the mess of the debt ceiling; and then the 2012 budget.
This was round one and everyone was seeing what the limits were and possibilities; we’ll see what happens next.
Suffern ACE
@numbskull: You mean those middle class tax cuts? The actual “third rail” of american politics currently?
Woodrowfan
since my wife is a govie and we need BOTH of our salaries, I am relieved. I’m sure all the workers in the DC area who depend on the government employees to patronize their businesses are happy too. The shutdown would have hurt a hell of a lot more people than just the average GS-10 worker bee….
zzyzx
I’m not happy about the deal but I don’t see the better one. The fact is that the Republicans do control the House and they don’t give a shit about the government. It’s not easy to negotiate when one party sees the worst case scenarios as their goal.
lawguy
So I must be some sort of problem since after 40 minutes my previous comments are still awaiting modification?
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Could have been worse. The Dems could have written down a list of health issues — birth control, pap tests, and so on — and for every one they get to keep the GOP gets to defund one. Frankly, I half expected something like this to happen. Still could, though we’ve delayed that magical moment another week or until September.
Nellcote
UPDATE: A Democrat emails the Dem perspective on the wins they secured:
1) $17 BILLION IN CHIMPS — WE SPREAD OUT THE CUTS ACROSS OTHER PARTS OF THE BUDGET. We insisted that meeting in the middle on cuts would require looking beyond domestic discretionary spending—and we prevailed. More than half—or $17 billion—of the final round of spending cuts came from changes in mandatory programs, or CHIMPs. The emphasis on this part of the budget staved off severe cuts to key domestic programs like education, clean energy, and medical research.
2.) $3B IN PENTAGON SAVINGS — WE PROVED DoD WASTE SHOULD NOT BE SPARED. We won the argument that waste at the Pentagon should not be immune from spending cuts. The final agreement eliminates nearly $3 billion in unnecessary Pentagon spending that was contained in H.R. 1. These reductions are supported by Secretary Gates.
3) TITLE X PRESERVED — WE FOUGHT OFF ATTACKS ON WOMEN’S HEALTH. We fended off their highest priority among the riders by nixing their proposal to gut Title X funds that provide cancer screenings and other preventative health services for women. The Republicans’ overreach on this rider in the final days dramatically weakened their hand.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/budget-debate-was-fought-entirely-on-the-gops-turf/2011/03/03/AF3HZV7C_blog.html
General Stuck
That’s a lot of CHIMPs. What about the banana subsidy?
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Being an Obot, I see it slightly differently: this was the first time in the past two years that the Republicans yielded on anything. They’ve been able to keep their caucus together and move in lockstep right up until yesterday.
The right wing rank and file is pissed about this. They (correctly) see it as the Republicans giving in to the Democrats. I wish we hadn’t lost so much on the front end, but we have very important information — with the right kind of pressure, the Republicans will fold. Even crazy Michele Bachmann, who’s been screeching about wanting a shutdown for weeks, had to do a 180 and come out in favor of this deal.
This showed that the Republicans will compromise, given enough pressure, and the right kind of pressure. Once you know the hostage taker is reluctant to shoot the hostage after all, you’re in a much better negotiating position.
Kane
It’s a strange country where one political party has to fight the other party to ensure that the public has mercury-free drinking water and isn’t breathing coal-polluted air. Where one party has to bargin so that low income and military families can send their children to Head Start programs. Where one party has to scratch and claw with the other party so that the public has access to healthcare. Where one party has to fight the other party so that predatory banks aren’t ripping off the citizens. Where one party has to offer something in exchange to the other party if they want to provide Pell Grants to promising students. Where one party has to bargin so that women have a right to choice. Where one party has to battle to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure with a party that wants only to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq and Afghanistan. Where one party has to fight to address climate change with a party feigning denial to serve oil conglomerates. Where one party has to battle to save the American auto industry while the other party is content with its demise. Where one party must fight to ensure Medicare for seniors with a party that is bent on dismantling the safety net. Where one party must fight to get the country out of the ditch with a party that in large measure put the country in that ditch. It’s a strange, strange country.
Tehanu
@Van Buren:
If there’s any justice in the universe, heaven is not where David Broder is.
Karen
I have been reading Balloon Juice several times a day ever since Obama was elected. In that time I’ve come to realize that the John Birchers (because let’s face it, they’re the ones controlling the GOP) aren’t just taking hostages, they’re suicide bombers. And they’re suicide bombers in a fragile economy.
Now they have the advantage of not caring who gets hurt. They’re willing to kill their careers so they have that advantage too.
Now let’s say that the government is the whole country because technically, it is. In MD/DC/VA and sometimes WV, the government is the biggest employer in this area. If the government shuts down, all those people don’t work. And if the government workers get no paychecks, that’s not just them that’s affected. They usually work in Washington,DC so if they’re not, the restaurants they’d eat at suffer. The stores they’d shop at during their lunch break suffer. Metro – the transit system they’d take to get into DC suffers and Metro have funding problems as it is.
And I haven’t even counted the suburbs the furloughed workers live in that lose money. One disadvantage of having the US government as the biggest employer.
Is there anyone out there who thinks that making whatever deal that will cause the least collateral damage is not worth it?
Apparently, the wealthy Democrats who can easily talk smack about Obama compromising to save as many people’s jobs as possible.
I care about all people losing their jobs and I’m using the DC metro area as an example because it’s a good way to show the domino effect.
The John Birchers are insane. When they threaten the most vulnerable people they instantly start off with the advantage. The best you can do when dealing with insane psychopathic sociopaths is to get the best deal you possibly can. The fact that Obama managed to get ANYTHING out of this is amazing. Call me an Obot but at least I know he cares more about giving people the best cushion they can get instead of just trying to get everything and ending up with nothing.
The Dems that say he should tell the GOP to go fuck themselves so the government will shut down and GOP will get the blame are suicide bombers themselves…only they’re using other people as their bombs. In that regard they’re every bit as psychopathic and sociopathic as the GOP.