“I would say … that symbolically, that agreement is moving us to the point where we are having the final interment of John Maynard Keynes,” he said, referring to the British economist. “He normally died in 1946 but it appears we are going to put him to his final rest with this agreement.” – Huffington Post
Some quote, isn’t it? Sen. Durbin said it just before his entertaining colloquy with Sen. McCain, which I saw on C-SPAN and tweeted this afternoon.
Speaker Boehner’s talking points, a few are below:
We’ve got a congressional Committee with powers beyond what any hand picked pack of legislative jackals should have.
Oh, and while cuts are found, Republicans get to play new games to prove Democrats don’t stand for much. Tea Party politics is crazy awful, but they stand for something and can go back to their district with proof.
…and Mitch McConnell, he’s looking awfully smart tonight. So, remember the people who hailed Pres. Obama when Mitch came forward with his devious little idea? We’ll be visiting it a lot between now and 2012.
Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.
Let me save the Obots some trouble…
Hillary would be exactly the same as Obama.
McCain would be much, much worse. Why, if we’d had a president McCain, we’d be involved in more wars, the enablers of torture wouldn’t have been held to account, the USA PATRIOT Act would not have been reformed, the Bush tax cuts would not have been allowed to expire and cherished New Deal and Great Society programs like Social Security and Medicare would be on the chopping block. Boy, I sure am glad we dodged THAT bullet!
(BTW, doesn’t President Obama look distinguished these days? Greatest president EVAH! And when I remember that shirtless vacation pic with those abs? Swoon!)
/sarcasm
Does that about do it?
Oh. Oh! I appreciated that… heh-heh…
Taking your sarcasm further, I predicted that cheating Hillary out of the Democratic nomination and handing it to BO would be one of the country’s biggest mistakes but I was wrong.
lololol…oh, my sides hurt. Good one, Romberry. I didn’t vote for Obama in 08 and so far, he has done nothing convince me that I should vote for him 2012. In fact, to the contrary. He has governed exactly as Taylor and others predicted.
I don’t know who I am going to vote for in 2012, but it won’t be for a Democrat, Republican or a Tea Bagger. I want to fire EVERYBODY, except for Bernie Sanders and the others who didn’t go along with this whole farce.
Love the sarcasm! Makes getting screwed a little easier – so much for fairness, shared responsibility, etc. Huge win for republicans…..
JoeSudbay RT @HunterDK WH statement: a “victory for bipartisan compromise”. I do not think they know what three of those words mean
Let’s get ready to rumble…
http://youtu.be/_4NkkAQllfo?t=12s
I’ll bet they give Obama the Nobel for economics …
Stop whining and help start a new movement: http://newprogs.org
The Democrats are dead, it’s time to bury them.
rep cleaver- chair cbc: “this bill is a sugar coated devil sandwhich.”
While Rome burns, the extremist Tea Party and extremist progressives are fiddling with the US and the world economy.. Have you even read what the Medicare cuts are supposed to be if the Super Committee cannot agree on the second round of cuts. No Medicare benefits will be cut, the cuts are to Medicare providers, you know the wealthy who are not supossed to participate in ‘shared sacrifice’..,
This is the same stale argument by the extremist left and right with respect to ‘Obamacare’. ‘Obamacare’ is cuttimg Medicare benefits! False. ‘Obamacare’ actually increased Medicare benefits with the closing of the donut hole and the elimination of co-pays for wellness visits. The Medicare ‘cuts’ are the reduction in taxpayer subsidies to private health insurance companies that offer Medicare Complete, Medicare Advantage and prescription drug plans programs which Medicare is prohibeted from offering.
You can’t really be this ignorant, rajensen.
To actually believe that Medicare benefits is all that matters reveals just how stupid your average Obama loyalist is.
THE ENTIRE ECONOMY, JOBS AND GROWTH ARE THE ISSUE. Austerity inspires none of these; meanwhile, Obama’s horrific lack of leadership character enables Republicans to hold us hostage again and again.
God, just when I think I’ve finished reading the dumbest thing by Obama loyalists someone ups the ante. You all don’t know squat about economics.
Oh, but that’s right, YOU’RE REPUBLICANS, so it’s to be expected.
Oh no another idiot Bot!!! While Rome burns you’re defending this sorry excuse for a Democratic President. Obamacare is the lamest excuse for a health care plan too. Same as RomneyCare, maybe we’ll get Romney in 2012, won’t be any worse than the O. Change You Can Believe In!!! Oh ya!!
It’s official, President Obama had a Ballectomy preformed by the teabaggers who were tired of those things hanging around. Come on Obamazoids, come tell us how he’s the GREATEST President EVER. Hey, at least I’ll GET my Social Security and Medicare…can’t say the same for the rest of you suckers.
I’ve been told by a military brat guy I work with who’s maybe a Conservative Dem at best, that Obama is the best President ever because he’s intelligent, eloquent and attractive. How far the bar has lowered since Bush. Too bad, history judges Presidents by what they actually accomplish.
Pure and simple(minded). The prez and the Congress have defaulted on the American people big-time.
The worst blow is to accountability to the citizenry with the creation of the so-called “Super Congress.” We the people now have all three branches of government aligned against us. Even with a new movement, and thanks to fangio for the link to the New Progressive Alliance, it is hard to envision the people taking back what should be their government.
@RAJensen: I believe you have the truth of this. I’ve not commented on any of your posts before, but I thank you for continuing to point out the perils of kowtowing to a bunch of ideological extremists. And I’m not just talking about the Tea Party.
I’m an optimistic (and obstinate) fellow, so I will continue to point out facts that are — or should be — beyond dispute. In the faint hope that, just maybe, some of this stuff will sink in. Previously, I have pointed out that, as bad as the $14 million deficit is, the true picture is even worse. To realize this, all you have to do is read – the Medicare and SS Trustees Reports, that is. Not op-eds, not blogs, but the actual reports. The stuff that can’t be spun. Just taking Medicare, the report concludes that, as of TODAY, the Medicare hole is $38 Trillion.
Let that number roll around in your head for a minute. And that’s just Medicare. When you do the same projection for all entitlement programs, the real hole – the “fiscal gap” – is actually north of $200 trillion: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/why-the-debt-crisis-is-even-worse-than-you-think-07272011.html
Which is why Secular’s “neener neener” comment is so apt. He will certainly get HIS benefits. The rest of us almost certainly won’t. (Not that I intend to rely on SS and Medicare. But that’s another matter.)
Both the math and the trajectory are inexorable. If we had a government that was worth the trust the citizens have reposed in it, this would be priority number 1, or 1(a), right after jobs. But because we don’t, it isn’t. Republicans refuse any and all taxes, even though they know we can’t get to a sustainable path without revenue. Democrats insist on not changing entitlements, even though they know the associating spending chokes off everything else.
As for Obama, his sin is one of omission. He knows all of this. But he has not led on this as he ought to have. Well before the Tea Party used the debt limit as leverage for their outrageous demands, he had the Simpson-Bowles report. The time to act was then, with a prime time address and exhortations to the American people to demand that their elected representatives set aside petty politics and set about redressing the problem. The prime-time address and request to call Congress eventually came, but they were too late — the Tea Partiers had already framed the terms of the debate.
So now we are left with a Super-Committee. Not exactly a paragon of representative democracy, to be sure. But it sure beats either alternative: Obama taking unilateral action, or letting the Tea Party and Hard Left folks set the agenda. As this debacle has unfolded, it has confirmed for me (anew) the genius of the Founding Fathers. It was this very threat — that of faction and the negative impact of same on our polity – that led the Founders to adopt a model of indirect, rather than direct, representation in government. Despite their best efforts, however, the inmates are still running the asylum. So a Super Committee it must be.
One final word about this whole 14th Amendment sideshow. Every lawyer and law student is aware of the Youngstown case – it’s a seminal case in Constitutional law. In general, I agree with WJC’s “better to be strong and wrong” argument. But not as it applies to the Constitution. Harry Truman was wrong then, as FDR was wrong with his court-packing plan. And Obama would have been wrong to follow in their footsteps. Just read Justice Jackson’s concurring opinion – his reasoning is just as relevant today. The whole thing is pretty powerful, but this is the nub of it:
“When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter. Courts can sustain exclusive presidential control in such a case only by disabling the Congress from acting upon the subject. Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system.“