I think this explain a lot about what’s going on with the debt ceiling negotiations:
Breakdown: 81% of of Democrats and 69% of independents favor a compromise to avoid default, but Republicans are more divided: 53% favor a compromise, while 38% say lawmakers should stand by their principles even if it leads to a default.
The Democratic base overwhelmingly supports a compromise to avoid default, so Democrats are conceding a lot (some, like me, would say too much) to get a deal done. The Republican base doesn’t want compromise/fear default as much, so Republicans will concede nothing. In fact, I’d bet that the 38% who prefer default to compromise are disproportionately politically involved, i.e. the kind of people who support primary challengers.
It’s not Washington that’s broken, it’s the Republican base.
Reality Check
Too bad they don’t have any votes in the House of Representatives, huh?
Real, deep, serious spending cuts to entitlements and wasteful spending will be passed by the House, Senate, and signed by the President. And you’re just going to have to suck on it.
shortstop
Yep. And disproportionately innumerate, disproportionally hypocritical, disproportionately belligerent, disproportionately entitled, disproportionately divorced, disproportionately blog trollers, disproportionately prone to spend time in court, and disproportionately loners and losers at the game of life.
Turgidson
I agree with you, but these two things are not mutually exclusive. Seems like the former is a consequence of the insanity and intransigence of the latter.
C.J.
See, polls like that are why I understand Obama’s efforts. It’s a winning cause to compromise, and Republicans refusing to do so only helps his 2012 effort. Am I upset he doesn’t get anything he wanted in the deal? Yes. But he’s winning, and I care about that the most.
Chuck Butcher
Nobody has conceded anything yet, it is all guesses. After this shakes out we’ll know. If you want a guess – it’ll be a GOPer solution lacking any Democratic essence.
freelancer
Carl Sagan is my homeboy.
Roger Moore
It’s both. Yes, the Republican base is broken, but Washington is broken because such a small minority of the electorate can hold the rest of us hostage.
Han's Big Snark Solo
It was much easier when earmarks weren’t banned.
Republicans have always been a tad psychotic, but their mental problems were easily overwhelmed by their massive greed.
ML
To paraphrase Harry Truman, DJ, your ears are full of grasshoppers.
Lit3Bolt
The Republican base is confused. Someone needs to tell them that “default≠rapture.”
BGinCHI
Time for re-education camps. Our experiment in democracy is just not working.
slag
@Roger Moore:
Exactly. It’s a systems problem. And the systemic failures that were painfully apparent during the reign of GW have not gone away at all.
If anyone was truly pinning their hopes on Peak Wingnut, then they haven’t been paying attention.
arguingwithsignposts
THat’s way over the line, BOB, even by your low standards.
Amir_Khalid
Why does this remind me of the story of Solomon and the two women, both claiming the same baby? I can only hope this story ends in much the same way.
cat48
@Reality Check:
Have the Dixiecrats Coburn & Corker forced that Balanced thing thru yet? That’s What Grover Wants. That Changes the Constitution but I don’t know what. I guess there’s no way to Stop this or we all get killed???
Their robbing us! Nothing we can do? Call Dennis G & Ask Him! Grover, probably Standard Poor Bond Raters too.
They’re Just Playing Kick the Negro & Make him look like a Fool! I knew we were’nt ready for a Black president!
DazedandConfused
They will not back down. They will force Obama to show the spine needed to exceed the debt limit.
They have rebelled against Boehners plan, and IMO, they will not approve anything that doesn’t implicate the Dems in the dismantling of Medicare and SS like they themselves have been, by their supporting Ryans plan.
Brace yourselves, because unless Obama surrenders, we are in a world of shit. World of shit either way, I guess.
Kathy in St. Louis
If, as I remember the number from about a year back, around 35% of voters in this country consider themselves Republican and only 38% of those think that “lawmakers should stand by their principles” and take the economy down, that sounds like about 11 percent of American voters. I say majority rules and these folks, to the dismay of Reality Check, the right winger at the top of this thread, are just going to have to suck it, as he so tastefully puts it.
Bender
Naaaah, it’s just that Republicans are smart enough not to believe the Democrats’ scare tactics regarding default. “DON’T CALL MY BLUFF!” Thanks, President Wile E. Coyote, Genius.
yeahyeahwhatevs (Studly Pantload, once upon a time)
When I picture Reality Impaired posting, I imagine his face is comically screwed up the way a baby’s is when they start to realize that big dump they just took that felt so good doesn’t feel quite so good now that it’s lodged in his diaper.
And then I haz a grins.
slag
@Bender: Don’t you find it interesting that you are joining Al Qaeda in wanting to see America bankrupt?:
Because I find that interesting.
Bubblegum Tate
One wingnut, after complaining that Obama wasn’t doing enough to work with Boehner & Co., had this to say:
Yeah, those folks are pretty fucked up.
cat48
They’ve got 51 votes for CCB & they were trying to roll Reid. Oh, they’re Amending the Constitution so House can Control Senate & President’s Budget. I wonder what else it will allow the House to do??
Bill Murray
How was the question worded? I certainly support compromise over default, but I also support everything else over the current compromise discussions — clean debt ceiling rise, 14th amendment, coin seignorage all are better than the currently discussed compromises
Bender
Is anyone actually surprised that the party of “Obama’s gonna put gas in my car and pay for my mortgage!” is sweating a (fake) default more than the Don’t Tread On Me tea-partiers?
Trollenschlongen
I don’t see how it makes any sense to on one hand say that the Teabagger Republicans are insane/treacherous/vicious/amoral (all of with which I agree) and on the other hand say the Dems should compromise with them.
You don’t compromise with insane people. You loudly proclaim them for what they are, and take what bold steps are necessary to deal with insane legislators who deal in bad faith, in this case, namely the 14th Ammendment.
Which is why Obama talking out both sides of his mouth–they are crazy and I will negotiate with them!–has never passed the smell test.
cat48
I know! Repeal Obamacare thru Amendment!
Bender
Please. Your false choices don’t work on me. Go try to panic a fool.
eemom
shorter 38%: I’m either a poor fucking idiot who is too stupid to know when I’m being fucked in the ass, or a rich fucking asshole who can afford not to care if the country goes to hell.
John O
Here’s a reality check for you: Teabaggers don’t have the numbers to survive Presidential year election demographics. So this time they can primary all they want.
A rump is a rump when enough people bother to fvcking vote.
arguingwithsignposts
Did the Brick Oven One get banned again?
ETA: I guess he did. I just tried to type his name in a comment, and it disappeared. Probably for the best. That comment was pure racism on display.
slag
@Bender: And yet:
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/25/bloomberg1376-LOX0WL1A74E901-3ABR2ET85E6LV2NM2GTV05D9HU.DTL#ixzz1TFjJAk8q
boss bitch
The (real) Democratic base likes compromise in general.
Davis X. Machina
@slag:
My son leaves in a month to study in Switzerland for a year. All his expenses are in Swiss francs. All his support is in dollars.
Thank you, Orange Julius.
slag
@Davis X. Machina:
And Bender! Don’t forget Bender.
Roger Moore
@slag:
Sure, but what are you going to buy, Euros? They’re not looking very secure right now, either. There just isn’t enough currency in the world for people to move into if they can’t trust Dollars or Euros. I guess it’s time to buy commodities.
slag
@Roger Moore: I don’t know. Maybe you should be buying Swiss francs. If you can still afford them, that is.
Joel
We’re rolling up an about ~25% troll:post ratio right now.
Bender
@ slag:
What the market is far more concerned about than the phony Aug. 2 deadline (which they all know is phony, too) is the obvious fact that our debt is out of control and Obama, Reid, and to some extent, Boehner are not serious about reducing it. $2-3T in deficit reduction over 10 years is a drop in the fucking bucket, and serious people (people who are not trying got buy votes) know that.
Agency after agency has written that the US needs to get its debt under control quickly. The first agency to downgrade didn’t even mention the ceiling debate. S&P and other agencies issues statements this week decrying the massive debt, not the ceiling. They said that, even assuming a ceiling deal is done by next week, they’ll likely still downgrade in the fall.
Bender
And corporate jets!
BGinCHI
Bender, the debt came from the Bush years, esp the Bush tax cuts.
See the graph at the bottom of this link, if you’re not too scared:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/the_drivers_of_our_debt_1031102.php
And then you can go fuck yourself.
mk387
This is equally why grifters with nothing but $$ in their eyes like Jane Hamsher and Arriana Huffington are so dangerous.
If 50 Firebaggers win 50 Teabagger seats in the House next year, we’ll suffer through the exact same deadlock but it will be the Left who is not willing to allow their pet elected politicans to compromise.
Yes, Dems want compromise. Their Progressive base DOES NOT.
les
@slag:
Ah, Bender. Bringin’ the quality stoopid since baggin’ came alive.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
I love the smell of troll desperation in the mor- er- evening.
DonkeyKong
“It started as rioting. But right from the beginning you knew this was different. Because it was happening in small villages, market towns. And then it wasn’t on the TV any more. It was in the street outside. It was coming in through your windows. It was a virus. An infection. You didn’t need a doctor to tell you that. It was the blood. It was something in the blood.”
slag
@Bender: Clearly, your non-union teachers never taught you to show your work. Too bad.
jwb
Bender: And who is responsible for by far the largest portion of that debt? Asshole Republicans, of course.
dollared
@Trollenshagen: No, Obama must compromise, and he must cut Medicare and Social Security because he is weak and the media won’t get his back and all white people are racist.
Ask General Stuck.
jwb
Joel: “We’re rolling up an about ~25% troll:post ratio right now.” And they are all so dreadfully boring.
Bender
Well, of course, they came more from Bush’s 8 years than Obama’s 2. Wait’ll Obama’s 4th (hopefully, last) year, and he’ll match Bush’s 8. That’s a very trivial point, though, having nothing to do with what we need to do now to avoid a downgrade.
By the way, Obama wants most of those tax cuts to continue. The ones he wants to stop are worth about $70B/year — certainly not the cause of the deficit, and certainly not the solution for it.
Oooo, aren’t you so butch!
opal
@Bender:
Well, you are trolling more than usual.
How many of your relatives are on Medicaid that usually vote republican, if not you personally?
Roger Moore
@slag:
Bubble. Two points:
1) There aren’t enough Swiss Francs to go around if everyone decides they’re the safe place to park their money. If people try anyway, they’ll just blow up the Swiss Franc the way they blew up the Icelandic Krone.
2) The Swiss economy won’t be worth shit if the rest of Europe tanks.
slag
@Roger Moore: I know. I was kind of kidding. Badly, it seems.
But I was serious about not knowing where to invest. You might as well spin the Wheel o’ Sociopaths and put your money wherever that tells you. Since sociopathy is pretty much the only guaranteed winner these days.
JC
At least people here are bagging on Bender. He’s clearly got the glitchy software up there in that head of his. Bender popped his gaskets, I’m sure there is a good Futurama episode I could point to…
At any rate –
The centrist-liberal press, and the markets clearly, think there will be a deal, where there is a Reid-boehner merge plan.
That would count as getting rolled, and a Rethug victory, even if a lot of the cuts are vapor. You don’t cut for a fake crisis, like this debt ceiling is.
The Rethugs would have validated their ‘Obama will cave’ bet. And i said on another thread, lots of gloating, lots of backslapping, and Boehner gets to say he went ‘mano a mano’ with the President, and won.
Not a good result.
However, since nothing was really achieved by the Monday Obama ‘let’s compromise’ and Boehner – ‘do it my way, liar!’, I’m thinking Obama pretty much had given up on the deal, and was prepping for the fallout.
I still hope for the clean voice vote, and putting all this blustering by the Rethugs as sound and fury signifying nothing, but my hopes are dimming.
We’ll see soon.
lllphd
yeah, that segment of the republican base is definitely broken, and it’s ever so easy to see who broke it.
the murdoch scandal is lagging just a bit behind the need to turn the public against the monster who is most responsible for the extreme fix we’re in right now. true, of course, the gop pushed these numbers and spent the money and are the ones openly resisting a realistic solution. but let there be no mistake: the reason they are able to (1) keep this base pretty well cranked for whatever propaganda is fed them, and (2) require that the entire media maintain this insane pseudo-balanced egalitarian stance (which is then applied absolutely NOwhere else), is completely courtesy of faux news.
plain and simple.
Bender
Again, I’ve been here since the beginning. I was here before you, before Doug, before anyone here except Cole. To me, you are the trolls.
My commenting frequency is usually proportional to the utter fact-free nonsense posted by the front-pagers, so yes, it might’ve been a bit more lately.
TenguPhule
Three People can compromise when the Republican one is dead.
Bender
Not very compellingly, they’re not. Ignorance rules at Balloon Juice these days, sadly. Back in the good old days of TallDave and Sincerely Rick, you clueless ham-n-eggers would’ve been sent running home crying to your mommies’ basements every visit. I’m just gentler than they were.
Citizen_X
Well, aren’t you fucking special?
JC
Bender,
You assert, you never bring facts. It’s actually rather fun to keep correcting you, though it does get tiring. After all, ‘someone is wrong on the internet’ is a truth extending to infinity.
Roger Moore
@slag:
I’m thinking that the traditional ammunition and agricultural supplies might not be a bad place to put some of your nest egg.
El Cid
I thought that a big part of government budget figgerin’ was revenue. Maybe that’s old fashioned. ‘Cause you do both money in and money out.
But last few years fersumreason we took a lot less money in. I guess people are just deciding not to work or something.
‘Cause if your deficit and/or debt go way up, but you’re not spending that much more, it might be time to check and see if less is coming in.
Yep, less is coming in. Must have something to do with it.
slag
@Roger Moore: And by “agricultural supplies”, I assume you mean poppy seeds. Truth be told, I’ve never seen myself as the warlord type, but who knows? I just might end up winning the future after all.
Yevgraf
Anybody interested in looking at the percentage of Nazi deputies in the Reichstag in 1932 and 1933, as good German conservatives decided to play along coz they didn’t care for socialists either?
danimal
I’m afraid they won’t be fixed until they are utterly humiliated in an election. 2012 has some promise, especially if Michele! can wrangle the nomination.
Roger Moore
@slag:
I was thinking more like wheat, beans, livestock, land, etc. You know, the stuff you’ll need after civilization collapses.
Caz
Two things:
1. We still have a spending problem, and we still don’t have a revenue problem.
2. Remember when this debate first started? The R’s agreed to compromise by raising the debt ceiling. In return, they wanted spending cuts. So they have already agreed to compromise by raising the debt ceiling.
However, each time the R’s compromise on something, the D’s move the goalposts, as the saying goes. We all agree that spending cuts are necessary. So what is so bad about the R’s plan which requires spending cuts equal to any raise in the debt ceiling?
Our govt is like a drug addict – they are addicted to spending. They can’t stop spending, and they have maxed out all their credit cards in order to fuel their addiction. We should no enable them by giving them a higher credit limit on those credit cards. And just like most addicts, they are in denial and won’t accept that they have a problem. They also aren’t thinking rationally. They are willing to sacrifice the good of the nation in the long term in order to get their spending fix in the short term.
And all this denial and enabling is just going to cause the problem to persist, and the longer we delay addressing it, the worse the pain will be. Right now, the pain we will incur is a downgrade to AA and not being able to fund all of the programs/items they want to spend on.
If they get a raise in the borrowing limit so they can keep up the spending, they’ll just get their fix and continue their addictive practices, which means we’ll be facing this exact same issue in another year or two. But each time we delay fixing this addiction, the pain becomes worse. At some point, the currency will collapse (when the fed is buying up 100% of the debt). So if we just keep printing money to fuel the addiction without fixing the underlying problem, the pain will be so substantial, that we will have Greece-like riots when the govt is unable to pay pensions, SS, medicare, etc.
And the liberals will be the first ones to take to the street demanding they be paid what they are entitled to.
It isn’t going to end well, but at least we should get it to end soon.
But it’s clear the D’s have no interest in addressing the problem. The House already passed a bill, but Reid tabled it in the Senate, so it didn’t even get debated or voted on. What’s up with that?? Do your job, Reid! Lazy cowards!
Chuck Butcher
@Bender
The duration of your stupidity is not a recommendation…
Butler
So they “compromised” by fufilling their legal obligations and not tanking the economy, something which has been done automatically 100+ times in the past?
No, sorry. You don’t get a gold sticker just for showing up to class.
No. Fail. You don’t get credit for agreeing to allow money that you have already appropriated to be spent. That’s not compromise.
Oh I see. It was the D’s who inserted the repeal of Obamacare at the last minute.
NO WE FUCKING DON’T!!! THEY ARE NOT NECESSARY, ESPECIALLY NOT RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!
Its completely arbitrary, it will hurt the economy, its part of a plan to destroy social security and medicare, it fucks over the states, its tied to an insane demand to pass an insane Amendment to the constitution…
That’s 5 reasons so far, how many do you need?
I wonder where this outrage was when the Senate was killing pretty much every progressive effort from the House in the last term.
Butler
Yes, at some point. Like next week, when we default, you fuckers.
JC
Caz,
A few facts for your fantasy free assertions:
a. The majority of the debt was racked up during the Bush years, with the majority leaders voting for it, no complaint, and in a lot of cases, even putting it off the books, or not raising the revenue to fund the initiative (the two wars, as example, or the drug program, or the Bush tax cuts). So the ‘moral outrage’ is not believable from you, when it is so one-sided.
b. the debt ceiling has been raised for 50 years. So this is a political crisis that is artificial, not real.
c. The Republicans won’t agree to any revenue increases, that would come from things like hedge fund profits being taxes at normal rates, or the example always used, tax breaks on buying jets. So how serious are they about reducing the debt?
d. There was a great deal on the table – one that I as a liberal hated – Boehner walked away, twice.
e. This is not ‘maxing out your credit cards’, this is paying for the Visa for stuff you have already bought. The country suffers if you refuse to pay for your credit cards, and your interest rate goes sky high – and thus adds BILLIONS or TRILLIONS MORE to the national debt. If you care so much about debt, you would want the Republicans to RAISE THE DEBT CEILING, because any increase of the borrowing rates for the United States, is going to increase the debt by a whole bunch more, and INCREASE SPENDING!
Unnecessary, wasteful spending on a higher interest rate for the nation.
Let’s SAVE THAT MONEY, shall we?
Why shoot your goal – reducing spending – in the foot, by making it harder for money to be traded on the open market by the U.S.?
Jay B.
Yes, but it’s not a cult, you see. Obama Uber Alles.
Note to the GOPers, you suck worse. I’m psyched you guys are happy that the elderly and the sick are going to get destroyed in the next few days. It really shows the depth of your character. Whiny, greedy assholes who’d just assume grammy die as a millionaire give up another 5%. Truly the scum of the fucking Earth.
JC
That is what is insane about this, by the way. If the U.S. defaults, it INCREASES THE DEFICIT, because suddenly the U.S. goes from getting the best rates ever – say 7-9% on the credit card – to suddenly paying 29.9% on the credit card.
Thus you blow up spending, the one thing you are supposedly trying to avoid.
EDIT: Paying on interest is SPENDING.
Butler
You have it completely fucking backwards. Republicans are willing to destroy this nations present and future in order to secure even more tax relief for the richest 1%. That’s the truth here.
Nowhere in your rambling, stupid ass post do you mention the words tax, revenue or deficit. Because you’ve bought into this (very recent, mind you) Republican lie that the only thing that matters is how much the government spends, when it reality its the deficit which is theoretically the problem, though not in the short term and certainly not enough to destroy the entire safety net. You want to fix the deficit? Raise the fucking marginal tax rate. Put it back where it was when we beat Hitler and were playing golf on the moon, and *poof*, the deficit disappears. Hell, do NOTHING for the next 5 years and the deficit disappears.
Butler
That’s a terrible way to read this poll. They aren’t sharply divide: 53% of Republicans want compromise. Less than 40% want default. A strong majority of even that insane group is pro-compromise, that’s what the poll actually says.
Ash Can
Just watch — if the government defaults and the shit starts to fly at random and our resident trolls, along with everyone else, are hit by it, they’ll start howling that it didn’t have to happen, the money is really there, it’s just that Obama won’t let the government hand it out, he’s trying to starve/bankrupt everybody himself. Take it to the bank.
Butler
Yes they are. You know how you reduce the deficit? You raise taxes on rich people, which is what they want to do.
But let’s back up here. I’m confused. I thought that mighty Saint Reagan taught us that “deficits don’t matter”? Now you say they do matter, after spending a decade racking them up on stupid shit like wars and tax cuts for billionaires.
The proposed Republican solution involves gutting vital programs which haven’t added to the debt and are lifelines for tens of millions of citizens of this country with zero, nada, zilch asked for from those afformentioned billionaires.
Fuck that.
Sly
@freelancer:
The leisurely pursuit of intellectual self-improvement by high-minded patricians became somewhat more difficult after they could no longer force a small legion of black people to do all of life’s heavy lifting for them, while they spent the day in a comfy chair reading books and debating in parlors.
Give me six hundred slaves to attend to my every economic and sexual need over the course of my lifetime, and I’ll be a goddamned renaissance man, too.
danimal
With revenues hovering around a low 15% of GDP, we sure as shit have a revenue problem. God, these trolls are stupid and annoying. Maybe they’ll get bored and play their confidence games somewhere else. In the meantime, I think I need some pie.
Butler
@ Sly
Now now, lets exempt John Adams from that grouping.
And while you make a great point, how do we explain how the Koch brothers grew up to be such ignorant assholes? It can’t be wealth alone which fertilizes great minds.
OzoneR
FIFY
Trollenschlongen
@ bender #55:
Ignore the Bots, Bender. They throw out the Troll accusation to frequently that it’s become a compliment to me. Their definition is “someone whose comments challenge my Obotomania and cause me to doubt my preconceptions, which makes me uncomfortable and so I hate them.”
Glad you’re here.