Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Boehner’s plan has 900 billion in cuts

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On July 29, 2011

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Obama’s has 4 trillion.

Boehner’s plan also calls for a committee to find another 1.8 billion.  Even with that, we’re talking 2.7 billion of cuts, still less than Obama’s plan

That is all.

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14 Comments

  1. Ghostwheel

    And the rabbit hole actually goes down further than even our greatest cynics had suspected….

    Well, it’s all utterly absurd anyway.

    Hey, Congress! Hey, Obama! How about a 20% tax on food and water? Raise a lot of money for the death machine, wouldn’t it?

    I see no reason why this proposal is any more absurd than what Obama and Boehner want.

  2. Z

    obama wanted $3T in spending cuts and $1T in tax revenue. boehner wants $2.7T all in cuts.

    By the way, Ian, sorry to get all pedantic on you, but you accidentally wrote boehner wants $2.7 BILLION in cuts.

    Z

  3. Ghostwheel

    I’ll say this about Boehner: he’s played a brilliant game of high-stakes political poker. Republicans obviously don’t care about deficits; they never would have debt-ceilinged Bush Jr. On the other hand, Obama has given Boehner the very rope with which to hang him.

    At every turn, Obama has chosen Wall Street over Main Street, the Military-Industrial Complex over domestic prosperity and wefare. It was Obama who ran up a humungous debt by renewing the Bush tax cuts, cutting the SS payroll tax, killing the bill to require Medicare to bargain for lower Part D drug prices, and spending 1.2 trillion a year on war, security, and intelligence.

    And now Boehner is preparing to cut off Obama’s feet for it.

    If Obama had instead chosen Main Street over Wall Street, domestic prosperity over the MIC, he could have balanced the budget and denied the Republicans the opportunity to tar and feather Obama as the penultimate “tax and spend” Democrat.

    What did Obama believe would happen? Did he think that the Republicans would embrace him for acting like a Republican? Did he not know they have to castigate Obama no matter what in order to keep up the two-party charade?

    However things work out, Main Street will get hit hard by this, the depression will be drawn out, and sometime into his second term, Obama will become one of the most reviled presidents of all time. This will be interesting to watch, as the we’ll see what’s under the mask when his fragile ego isn’t propped up by the adulation of the masses.

    Then expect a Republican president in 2016 to make things vastly worse for another four years.

    I want to go home.

    Oh, wait. I already am home….

  4. BDBlue

    Ghostwheel, what did Obama would expect would happen? That he’d raise a billion dollars for 2012, mostly from Wall Street, which he seems on track to do. And, perhaps more importantly, Wall Street and corporate America would not rally around a GOP candidate and would instead back him, which seems likely to me given his donations and given how many “serious” GOP candidates have decided not to enter the race (i.e., Mitch Daniels).

    I’ve come to think of Romney as Bill Clinton. When all the big time Ds in 1992 thought they couldn’t win and stayed out of the race, Clinton saw his prime opportunity for the nomination. Romney probably couldn’t compete with Daniels, so he’s going to give it a go this year when the field is weaker because corporate America is mostly backing Obama.

  5. Notorious P.A.T.

    “And now Boehner is preparing to cut off Obama’s feet for it.”

    Hey, give Obama some credit too! If he loses in 2012 it will be at least as much because he offered to cut Medicare and Social Security, or his escalation of war, totally unforced errors.

    “When all the big time Ds in 1992 thought they couldn’t win and stayed out of the race”

    I remember a Saturday Night Live skit called “the race to see who will lose to Bush.” That’s the same conventional wisdom that tells us a primary or third-party challenge to Obama would be a disaster.

  6. Michael

    “I want to go home.

    Oh, wait. I already am home….”

    I feel your pain man. Jesus this country’s going to hell in a hand basket fast. At this point I think its safe to say that the only thing that could possibly make this administration worse is if that dumbass obama decides to pick a fight with Iran. They’re already starting to layout the justifications, claiming that iran is aiding the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two years ago I would have thought Obama couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to start another war. Today I wouldn’t put anything past this clown.

  7. DPO

    Ian: I think you meant those last two billions to be trillions.

  8. Jonathan Versen

    This[video link] is from the Onion from August 2008.

  9. Celsius 233

    Sunday morning here in LOS (land of smiles) and the drama is at a fever pitch! OMG, OMG, what to do? Burn a fattie? Have a stiff brandy w/coffee? Maybe both?
    Nah, I don’t want to miss a thing; the acting is horrible, the rhetoric laughable, and the logic/common sense totally missing in action.
    The looney bin is in full production mode and without a clue; SNAFU!

  10. Z

    Apparently reid … I hate that scumbag … is prepared to put together a package that will cut $2.8T with no new revenues … of course … with the possibility of an added sweetener of throwing medicare under the bus as well. So, take that boehner! And ring up another W for obama and co. and the rest of the dem corporate hos! GO DEMS!!!!

    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-debt-talks-20110731,0,3658601.story?page=1&utm_medium=feed&track=rss&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20latimes%2Fnews%2Fnationworld%2Fnation%20%28L.A.%20Times%20-%20National%20News%29&utm_source=feedburner

    The deal would cut long-term federal spending in two phases. A first phase would cut about $1.2 trillion over the next decade from federal agency budgets. A second would create a bipartisan panel to propose a further $1.6 trillion in deficit-reduction measures later this year.

    If that committee deadlocked, or if its recommendations were not approved, further automatic cuts would be triggered on long-term spending for both domestic and defense programs. An automatic cut in Medicare spending might also be imposed, the official said. Democrats appear to have given up a quest for a trigger that would impose revenue increases, deferring the tax debate until after the 2012 election.

    Z

  11. Obama's Plan

    Obama had a plan? That is news to me, Obama, and the rest of the free world.

  12. jawbone

    I thought Obama would be bad for the nation, for us non-Uberwealthy, but I never dreamed he would be so bad on so many fronts. So profoundly bad his actions verge on evil.

    I think this legislation will be bad for the nation, for us non-Uberwealthy; I fear it will be worse than I’ve managed to suss out or yet imagine. It will add to Obama’s evil actions. It may also be profoundly bad for the entire world.

    What is out now about the “compromise” Obama, McConnell, and Reid have “agreed” on scares the shit out of me. And it will probably be worse when the details come out.

    We do not have any remotely Democratic leadership, as in reflecting and acting on the traditional principles of the party, in Washington at this time. They’re all bat guano wacko Republicans now.

    If you haven’t de-registered yet, now would be a good time to do so. And make sure your Dem reprs, your local and state party, and the DNC know what you did and why.

    Tell them it means you will not vote along party lines, but only based on known actions of particular candidates. If you have money to donate, make sure they know they’ll never get another dime, that you will direct your donations to only those candidates who have shown through their actions that they will govern to help the people, not just the rich and powerful.

  13. StewartM

    What gets me is how one Daily Kos writer is going full-throttle aghast how 11 Democrats in the House voted against the Reid bill:

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/30/1000805/-Eleven-House-Democrats-vote-against-Reids-debt-ceiling-bill,-including-disgraced-Rep-David-Wu?via=blog_1

    I say “More power to them!” There’s very little difference in Reid’s bill and Boehner’s offering. How can one be good and another awful?

    ABC news is reporting a tentative debt deal:

    http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/07/white-house-republicans-strike-tenative-deal-to-raise-debt-ceiling-.html

    Again, it’s a bad one.

    Paradoxically, I say “More power to the Tea Party!” It’s their intransigence which is our best hope. If they continue to scuttle any draconian “compromise” that’s not pure enough, then it either forces a last-minute clean debt ceiling raise by itself pass over them by the still relatively sane, Obama’s invoking the 14th amendment, or a government shutdown that hurts Wall Street and the banks–so it will be fixed pronto. This other crap, the stuff Obama and the Repugs want, should be flushed.

    Note too that the Progressive Caucus (83 members) has always had the same veto power as the Tea Party caucus (60 members). Unlike the latter, they’ve always been good boys and girls to Obama and triangulating Dems. If they had played nasty in the health care reform bill, we’d have had a better bill. But they never do that.

    StewartM

  14. Bernard

    yes, a default appears better than “success.” lol
    Only in America. Im a Tea Partier now. lol

    the Rabbit hole is far deeper than could have been imagined. but…

    we will get to see how bad these “improvements” get. War is Peace, Hate is Love and all that. Two more years of Obama… Wonder how bad it will get, and i bet we will see just how bad that is.

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