And the DC clown show continues:
The White House’s proposed deficit talks with Congress appear to be unraveling before they’ve even begun.
House and Senate Republican leaders announced Tuesday that their sole appointees to the May 5th meeting would be House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)–neither of whom are budget leaders and both of whom function largely as political mouthpieces for their party. GOP leaders also each opted to send only one appointee, instead of the requested four, to the meeting.
“I remain skeptical that the administration will take this effort seriously, especially after it all but ignored its previous debt commission and President Obama had to be dragged kicking and screaming to consider minimal spending cuts for the rest of this fiscal year,” Cantor said in a statement.
And since he’s skeptical the admin. won’t take the effort seriously, he will match them by proving the Republicans aren’t taking the talks seriously, sending only himself and John “Not intended to be a factual statement” Kyl.
At the same time, some Democratic sources said their own party’s picks for the meeting aren’t as credible as they could be. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) only named a total of four appointees instead of eight: Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), House Budget ranking member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Assistant Democratic House Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.). But it’s not the numbers that are the problem.
Pelosi’s picks for the talks make the meeting “look silly” because Van Hollen and Clyburn “are just going to do what Pelosi wants, and she’s not interested in compromise,” said a senior Democratic aide. “The picks for this task force all reflect a lack of seriousness.”
Your liberal media. Quotes from Republicans trashing the Democrats, quotes from anonymous blue dog Democrats trashing Democrats.
BALANCE!
TooManyJens
Perfect. John Kyl will of course start off the budget talks by claiming that we need to cut funding for foreign aid, because that’s 90% of what the government does.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Funny how Pelosi gets bashed for choosing folks who will ‘do what she wants’, and yet the GOP is sending unabashedly non-serious, non-budget, utterly political folks. Funny that. Oh wait, it’s not funny, it’s fucking stupidity from yet another Blue Dog. Seriously, what did Pelosi do to shit in your cheerios, ‘anonymous Senior Democratic aide’?
david mizner
Good. Gridlock is good.
Gridlock all the way through the next election. It’s the best possible outcome.
TooManyJens
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
I’m to the point where I’m just assuming quotes from anonymous aides are made up from whole cloth until proven otherwise.
No Fortunate Son
It’s a Huffington Post piece. I think it is a stretch to call them “liberal”, or “media” for that matter.
What purpose this hit piece served is beyond me.
But perhaps it should be viewed in light of the fact that Her Majesty, Queen Arianna, after a brief but thankful hiatus, has returned to offering her unwelcome opinion to political matters of the day.
And surprise she suffers acute Beltway butthurt over the President’s deficit speech, speaking out of both sides of her mouth to claim that the President is unserious about the deficit.
JohnR
Ah, picking the top Democratic budget and Finance people for this little tea party (you should excuse the term) indicates a lack of Seriousnessosity. Doesn’t anyone here know how to play this game?
David Fud
@david mizner: Agree wholeheartedly here. Let the Bush tax cuts end, and no negotiation with ourselves is required. Plus, no more tail (the House) wagging the dog (the rest of the government). As a bonus, we get do-nothingism for the teabaggers.
Full of win!
Ash Can
I wonder if this “anonymous Senior Democratic aide” is Heath Shuler’s office manager, reading from scraps of paper he’s handing him/her.
different church-lady
Pacing, Cole… pacing…
Mark S.
Why send people who will do what you want? You send people who will do the opposite of what you want. Geez, people, Leadership 101.
Sentient Puddle
@JohnR: That and I’d think Max Baucus has to count for something too…
david mizner
@David Fud:
Right, and Dems can step back and let Wall Street and the Chamber of Horrors instruct the GOP to raise the ceiling.
cbear
Feral cats seldom shit where they eat or cannibalize their young.
Joe Beese
I know – because the lefty blogs were screaming it all day yesterday – that S&P are lying liars who lie…
But when they say the US credit rating is going to take a hit because Washington is incapable of addressing the deficit, are they actually wrong?
Maude
Cantor has to be wrong about Obama being dragged kicking and acreaming to cut anything. The far left knows that Obama is going to gut Social Security and Medicare.
Just Some Fuckhead
As long as prominent – putatively liberal – Democrats are including Social Security in deficit cutting, we can be sure neither side is serious.
It’s all just a show.
Chris
And the Democrats are “not serious”, of course.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
The fight promoters are just leveling the playing field.
No one will pay to see a shut-out.
Zifnab
Nothing says “serious” more than the “I’m just here to tell you that you’ll do what I want or you can go fuck yourself” school of negotiation.
Politicians who have no fear of failing to get reelected are a serious problem in this country.
Bob Loblaw
@david mizner:
Because if there’s anything voters love, it’s hopeless inaction and polarization. Oh well, at least both sides will get to run against Washington again next year.
Negative feedback loops are fun. The voters insist on doing their jobs incorrectly and produce an irreconcilable and divided government, and as such, the people they put in office insist on doing a terrible, incoherent, often criminal job. And on and on down the rabbit hole we go.
Joe Beese
@Maude:
Which is just silly. Obama clearly said that he was going to “strengthen” SS.
Of course, he didn’t say how he planned to do that without increasing the retirement age (which is cutting benefits) or increasing the payroll tax (which is also tantamount to cutting benefits). But a loyal Obot doesn’t trouble itself with such thoughts.
Luthe
@Maude: My snark filter cannot tell if you are serious or not.
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
I know you’re not serious. Or, at least, to be taken seriously.
YoYosarian
Once again, we gettin played.
Imagine, for a moment, that the debt ceiling negotiations, for the short-term, go nowhere.
Wall Street takes notice and sells off (the proverbial little guy, as he is wont to do, sells stock). Hedge funds sell stock.
The market takes a dive> A well-timed dive.
Bernake cites the market downturn as disturbing and possibly an indicator of the economic rebound losing steam.
Bernake asks for and receives QE3, which means the gummit backs up the money truck to Wall Street again and just opens the trucks doors. Wall Street feasts. Could it happen?
david mizner
@Bob Loblaw:
Well, I’m not really fixated on 12, which in any case will hinge not on this deficit debate — as much as the White House would like it too — but on the continuing unemployment-declining wages catastrophe.
But I do think it would be nice if Congress didn’t pass another conservative bill that will make a shitty situaton shittier, and such a bill is the only possible outcome of “negotiations.”
Chyron HR
@Joe Beese:
I forget, are you still pretending to be a progressive?
Joe Beese
@Chyron HR:
Are you still pretending that Obama saying he wants to “strengthen” SS means something different than when Paul Ryan says it?
Napoleon
Someone should point out to Cantor that the commission made no recommendation in part because Ryan voted against it.
Sentient Puddle
@YoYosarian:
No, and here’s where it breaks down:
Everyone would know that the dive wouldn’t be merely the “rebound losing steam,” and even if I thought it were plausible that Bernanke would try (it isn’t plausible), he couldn’t get away with saying as much.
And besides, if that sort of crash happened, nobody would give a shit about any badly-run quantitative easing going on, because Wall Street would be getting little more than green toilet paper.
Shalimar
Because the only way to be serious is to pick people who undermine your authority and do the opposite of what you want. Go Team!
The Moar You Know
@Joe Beese: I don’t normally lower myself to address the shit that dribbles in torrents from your keyboard, but in this case your ignorance raises a point that needs to be repeated, lest someone think that you have a point:
S&P’s threatened downgrade of the US credit rating has nothing to do with the actual creditworthiness of the United States. Our national debt, as a percentage of GDP, is still far below what it was in the 1950s. In short, our credit is good.
This is simply a naked threat, a reminder that if Holder decides to go after S&P or Moody’s for criminal fraud for their ratings of mortgage-backed securities (among other things) then they have the tools to bring the nation to its knees.
An interesting problem. The ratings folks know that if they were to ever actually “drop the bomb” on our credit rating, it would be the end of their business that day. The government knows that if they “drop the bomb”, the ratings people can force a government default that very day.
Stalemate. I am genuinely curious to see how this plays out.
Lolis
@david mizner:
I agree. Gridlock is the best we can hope for now. There is now way the House will retain this number of crazy Republicans in 2012 when more Democratic voters show up.
catclub
@The Moar You Know: I do not understand the mechanism by which the ratings agencies force government default. As long as the government owns the printing presses, and the debt is denominated in US dollars, how can they force a default?
Bobosquity
This sounds like the perfect group to consider some serious proposals from the president:
* Raise taxes on the rich
* Stop killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan
* Consult Congress on Libya
* Restore due process and human rights domestically and internationally
* Try the fraudsters and polluters and administer the punishments they deserve
* Protect health and treat sickness
* House the homeless
* Feed the hungry
* Educate the children
I wonder how they would vote.
daveNYC
@catclub: They couldn’t. If they actually downgraded, then they would force us to pay more for debt that we issue, but there would be no default.
Joe Beese
@The Moar You Know:
Yes, BJ-ers are always at pains to point out how unusual and beneath them it is to engage my comments just before they do so. It’s part of their charm.
I’m certainly no economist. But it seems to me that a more pressing number than the debt-to-GDP ratio is the interest payment on the debt-to-GDP ratio. I don’t know how that ratio stands now compared to some previous decade when America still had a manufacturing base and wasn’t busy shipping its jobs overseas as fast as possible. But it appears to be getting worse.
And if a downgrade would be as transparently punitive as you suggest, surely the overseas money chasers would be able to see that too? I wouldn’t expect them to foresake a safe investment just because the agencies got their panties bunched over regulatory pinches.
cleek
@Joe Beese:
SS has had changes before: dozens of them. the advocating of tweaks to the system in order to keep it viable is neither unusual nor a good reason for shitting oneself.
Dennis SGMM
That “Senior Democratic aide” really needs to be shitcanned. He or she is collecting a paycheck under false pretenses. Some of the commenters here get pissed when some of the others diss Obama. I’d say that the idiot aide did more damage than ten thousand “Obama let us down!” comments.
daveNYC
@Joe Beese: Certain buyers of debt have requirements as to the quality of the debt they can hold. So if the US gets downgraded, even if it’s done with a press release saying that they’re just doing it to strike back at some DoJ action, then that will end up decreasing the demand for our debt.
Yutsano
@cleek: I have to admit that this:
made me go “Whaaa…?” especially since the only proposal I’ve seen is increasing or eliminating the salary cap. In fact last I checked SS taxes dropped two percentage points as part of the last budget deal. Which I disagreed with cause we’ll have to make that up later now.
Dennis SGMM
@cleek:
That’s how it’s supposed to work. I had already been paying FICA for a couple of decades when Reagan raised it to cover the retirement of the Baby Boomers. No one died, no one ran screaming into the night, and no one moved to Brazil in protest. If Social Security had remained static it would have already become obsolete.
isildur
Eric Cantor looks like a villain from an 80s action movie. The kind of guy who’s a CIA operative gone rogue, running drugs and guns from Longnameistan to Brownezuela. The kind of guy who says things like ‘You can take that to the bank’ and ‘Around here I am the law’.
OzoneR
@Joe Beese:
then shut up
OzoneR
@Dennis SGMM:
That’s because St. Ronnie did it
TenguPhule
S&P CEO disappears in the night, turns up in Guantanamo Bay.
Some of his fingers turn up on Moody’s CEO’s bed.
Problem solved.
Dennis SGMM
@OzoneR:
That may have been the case for the right. The rest of us thought that the size of our demographic wave would require that we paid in more to keep the system healthy.
cbear
@Dennis SGMM:
Those anonymous “Senior Democratic Aides” seem to be like a neverending supply of turds that village idiot reporters pull out of their asses at will to damage Democrats.
Joseph Nobles
Pelosi sent the ranking member of the House budget committee, but she’s not serious about dealing with the 2012 budget. Reid sends the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and the chairman of the Appropriations committee, but he’s not serious, either.
Sigh.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
Didn’t you know? Any change at all to Social Security — even one that increases its revenues without increasing taxes on people who make less than $100,000 a year — is Buying Into the Republican Narrative.
Sure, the Baby Boomers are getting ready to retire and that huge demographic bubble is going to have to be dealt with. Blah blah facts whatever — by taking any action at all, you’re buying into the Republican narrative, therefore any action is bad.
OzoneR
@cbear:
It’s probably one guy on Joe Lieberman’s staff
Uloborus
@OzoneR:
I stopped listening to them way back in 2009, when I realized that we were getting just amazing numbers of leaks from anonymous White House officials that turned out to be as reliable as the ones that just assured us Obama was going to endorse Simpson-Bowles in his deficit speech.
Beese, Mclaren, and their ilk are getting played so hard they must have to spend an hour every morning scrubbing the rat lipstick prints off.
rickstersherpa
The sad part here is that the administration and the Conservative and Moderate Democrats in the Senate, in their lust after the short-term approval of independents, take all this caterwauling about the deficit seriously. Middle roaders and independents say “deficit” when their anxiety is up about the economy and they are unhappy about gas prices. If the economy picks up and gas prices retreat back, Obama will start looking like a genius on the deficit. Unfortunatey, almost from the start, the President has remained in thrall to the bank centric views of Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Tim Geithner. And since the banks want austerity now (for other people), austerity must be delivered, and no stimulus or talk about the 25 million uneemloyed, underemployed, and discourged workers. (The MSM even had to notice the desperation when hundreds of thousands came out applying for jobs as hamburger flippers at McDonalds yesterday). Obama’s continues to let his fortune be determined by the laissez-faire operations of the market economy, whose biggest players are not sympathic to his agenda with the exception of the bank bail-out. See Steve Benen for more,or ITS THE ECONOMY STUPID, washingtonmonthly.com/
Judas Escargot
@daveNYC:
One thing I don’t understand is this: Most of the US debt is held by US debtors (pensions, funds, etc).
So wouldn’t that imply that, in a debt default, we’d essentially be defaulting on ourselves?
How would that play out?
Caz
So you’re alleging that the “liberal” media isn’t really liberal, but rather caters to the conservative point of view and spews predominantly conservative propaganda??
Wow, ok. Good luck with that!
Marmot
@cbear:
As bad as beltway journalism is, you can’t blame reporters for quoting idiot Dems who take shots at their own side.
Well, you can if these reporters aren’t seeking out Repubs to talk smack about their fellows, but somehow I don’t think they’re in great supply.
Marmot
@Caz: Welcome to Earth.
Gravenstone
@Chyron HR:
Fixxored.
mclaren
As the chicken-driven clown car called “America” veers toward the edge of the cliff with a box of nitroglycerine in the trunk, people continue to proclaim that the big problem is: Which chicken is driving?
If only the right chicken were at the wheel, the pundits tell us, everything would be fine.
(hat tip to a previous BJ commenter whose name I can’t remember, from whom the imagery is stolen)
Just Some Fuckhead
@mclaren:
Imagine it was Super Chicken at the wheel and there was a sidekick lion named Fred to make sure everything turned out okay.
Fax Paladin
@Just Some Fuckhead: You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.
zapster
Of course, S&P called all those AAA derivatives so accuratel..oh wait. Maybe that’s why their opinion on US debt is being met by bond markets with enormous yawns.
Holder should just go for the jugular..it would be the best thing to happen in this crisis yet. Investor confidence is at an all-time low–precisely because it’s become abundantly clear to all of them that they can trust nothing *but* Treasuries.
OTOH, if enough republican economic idiocy gets passed by Congress, they might actually have a point.
pattonbt
@Bobosquity: If they had to pay for them, or “others” benefited from them then most would quickly, happily and smugly vote against all those items. We’re a Christian nation after all whose motto is Fuck You I’ve Got Mine.
Fred
What else do you expect from Huff, Drudge lite, Puff!
Fred
@TooManyJens: And after Faux Noise is done spinning that he will say it was “not intended to be a factual statement”