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Who Were the Debt Ceiling Limit Deal’s Winners and Losers?
So who were the debt ceiling limit deal’s winners and losers (realizing it could still be derailed)? The Washington Post’s astute Chris Cillizza offers this well-reasoned list. This list isn’t your typical list done by an ideological blogger but a stand back and analyze piece. You may not agree with it, but it is analysis, not political bile or high fivesmanship.
20 Responses to “Who Were the Debt Ceiling Limit Deal’s Winners and Losers?”
No revenue increases??? How pathetic. Conrats to rightwing extremists on their successful blackmailing of America. Expect to see more of it now that it’s clear how easily dems will cave at crunch time. Precious little leadership from Obama, just more pretty words.
A few more winners:
Anyone who has enough money to be insulated from the possibility of ever becoming poor, even if they are are unfortunate enough to become sick, or when they inevitably become old.
A few more losers:
Er… Everyone else.
That’s it.
A little humor please. (mixed with reality) you’re invited to joy this clip from Monty Python’s Holy Grail.
The “Black Knight” is a perfect allegory of how 68 to 75 percent of America views the republicans and their impotent and inept floundering in the 112th Congress.
PS – For the SD’s and DLS’s out there the republicans are the dude in black… The guy in white is everybody else AND Jason/Logan isn’t even there.
Tax increases (not “revenue increases” or other evasions because of the unpalatability of the truth) never were essential, and should have been avoided unless essential (they weren’t here), though I thought the Dems might have demanded it, anyway. They were more grown-up than I thought they would be. Gonna make those “progressives” awfully mad on the far-left radio this coming week, and on MSNBC (tomorrow night’s gonna be sizzlin’ on it!).
The most important thing needed for budget and fiscal reform is spending reform, and truly essential, of course, is entitlement reform. It is avoided in this budget deal. (Republicans wanting re-election appear once more to agree to this as long as they can postpone reform.) There is a reference to “Medicare cuts” but it is limited to reductions in payments to providers (reduces access!).
The big score the Demmies made, particularly Obama is to get a rise in the debt ceiling that pushes the next need beyond 2012.
They had no right in the real world to expect any substantial or class-warfare-gimmicky tax increases.
Obama apparently gets a stupid Pell Grant wish granted. (???)
That’s despite intentions to reduce discretionary spending. (!)
What does the White House say about the deal? It includes this about entitlement reform, below. (Entire statement is at the link.)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheet-victory-bipartisan-compromise-economy-american-people
It’ll be good to see the actual details of the agreement, if the public ever gets to see them.
I rest my case.
[dust hands]
The rich were the winners and the poor the losers. As is the usual in America, home of the selfish.
DLS, everybody but you seems to be well aware that revenue and taxes mean the same thing. There is no nefarious attempt to redefine words here. That has in modern tradition been more the province of republicans.
[sigh] Wrong again, Spence. Sometimes it would pay to think first.
Republican voters should pay for the Iraq invasion, and also Medicare Part D. The bill for those decisions should not be passed onto democrats.
The Democrats are the huge winners in this deal. For all of the promises, commissions, and cuts, all the Democrats agreed to from now until January 2013 are a small amount of cuts and two trillion dollars of additional borrowing.
Any part of the deal past Dec 2012 will be reneged on in the future. If Pelosi or Hoyer are Speaker in January 2013, all of the cuts will be put back into the budget and taxes will go up.
The only question now is how soon does the U.S. get to $20 trillion in debt and then $30 trillion in debt.
The long run effect is that more of the private sector will move out of the U.S. leaving thie rheadquarters in NYC so that the elites can live an elite lifestyle but everything else will be done somewhere else where the elected leaders are not so incompetent.
These “small cuts” will hamper the economy, which is great for republicans.
Not to mention the semiotics of republicans spending years with retardation like tax cuts, invasions and Medicare part D as well as years of poor growth and job creation, only to force EVERYONE ELSE to deal with the repercussions.
superdestroyer, stop whining.
Well, with any luck, the fiscally irresponsible and damaging Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire.
“Well, with any luck, the fiscally irresponsible and damaging Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire.”
TP’ers and GOP rightwing extremists would kick and scream to high heaven if any such sane and reasonable event were to occur.
[...] Who Were the Debt Ceiling Limit Deal’s Winners and Losers? (themoderatevoice.com) [...]
Anyone saying that excessive spending needs to be maintained in order to prevent the economy from hurting is hypocritical to claim that taxes need to be increased at the same time. T.L.H., A.! [tm]
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The credit ratings agencies are going to examine any (final) budget plan before they decide what to do. They have said many times that raising the debt limit on time is not enough; a budget plan must be serious, for reform is needed, long-term reform. They expect $4 trillion in spending cuts, and the plan as is has only $1.2-2.4(?) trillion over ten years(!). Additionally, annual deficits, which accrue more debt, are a concern:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/08/01/sp-moodys-await-debt-plan-details/#ixzz1TnfHVE1J
(best news story so far about the agencies, whose $4 trillion figure has been a staple lately in or on all media)
That’s as important or maybe more important than the many details and lack of entitlement reform (no doubt to be viewed warily if not harshly by the ratings agencies) in the plan.
Zzzzz: Extension of the Bush tax cuts (and the FICA tax cut[s], do not forget!) in correct Keynesian policy a temporary measure to aid the recovery (and prevent the economy from getting worse), just as increased spending is — temporary, for a temporary situation.
In positive, or boom times, to regulate demand the other way, the Keynesian policy is to increase taxes, reduce government spending, and of course run government surpluses. (In the ideal world, the surpluses would go into a fund for the extra spending and deficits by government during bust times, the temporary situation we are in, described above.)
What the fools want to do is to retain or even increase the excessive spending (atop already excessive spending for decades), while increasing taxes at the same time (and say this has to be done while the economy still requires assistance!).
That Liberal Hypocrisy, Again!
Long-term, the Bush tax rates (and FICA taxes) will have to increase because of even reformed (as they should be) entitlements’ growth as the Baby Boomers reach retirement age.
The problem the federal government has is excessive spending, entitlements being the core, and tax increases are not the solution for that, and cannot be given how high they would have to be raised (and all that and more would be misspent, then).
Returning to “normal” from the temporary deep slump (that we’re already getting out of) should lead you to examine those “normal” (pre-slump contemporary, post-60s reckoning and 80s’-onward) times. Comparing them with our temporary situation includes an effective “indictment” of those Bush Tax Cuts (and the FICA cuts, which people seem to ignore, stupidly — they make the entitlements even more unsustainable):
http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/es/11/ES1120.pdf
Note that through 2007, it’s spending, not the Bush tax cuts, that is (and so many of us know it obviously is) the problem. It’s only during the current temporary times that it is part of the problem along with (still) increased spending, which remains the real problem we have — we can’t tax our way out of it: we can’t raise taxes unrealistically and destructively high, and all of it and more would be spent, in the real world. Do some believe that is good?
Zzzzz says:
August 1, 2011 at 9:04 am
Well, with any luck, the fiscally irresponsible and damaging Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire
Well, I give you credit for at least being willing to participate in the solution. Up to now, the only taxes TMV liberals wanted to increase were other people’s.
DLS, if word count was the measure of correctness, you’d be the go-to guy here hands down.
“Up to now, the only taxes TMV liberals wanted to increase were other people’s.” – CO
Assuming that was even true (it isn’t) it kind of reminds me of how the “conservatives” who started that last big war had no true personal investment in it and sent other peoples kids to fight it.
In case you still are unsure, or don’t want to admit it, J.S., “taxes” and “revenues” are not synonymous and so completely interchangeable.
Taxes yield revenues, but revenues are independent of taxes; to reform taxes may result in more or less revenues (depending on the nature of the reform). Tax rates even can be lowered and yield the same or greater revenues as before, depending on the nature of any reform. (It introduces an argument if anything or everything that people do to taxes that causes an increase in revenue constitutes a “tax increase” — that’s a rare semantic and technical attempt to conflate the words “taxes” and “revenue.”
Many currently use “revenue” rather than “taxes” because “taxes” has such a stigma, as with “liberal”; that’s why liberals avoid both and try to be misleading as well as evasive, by using other words.
That’s what we see here, currently: evasion and relative euphemism.
DLS, I’m fine with the word taxes and will be happy to use it in the future. Taxes are simply a tool to be used in a civilized society, there is no automatic stigma – unless one has been conditioned to think so.