The Fed Shutdown Poll and Megathread

[KRonn]

In this link there's a short video with two of Obama's debt commission members, Irskin Bowles and Alan Simpson (Dem and Repub). They explain some of their reasoning behind their commission's ideas, especially Social Security and some of Medicare and Medicaid.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/06/news/economy/budget_crisis_congress/index.htm?hpt=T2

Government shutdown: How it came to this

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The fiscal year is 189 days old, and the federal government is still operating without a long-term spending bill. And now, if lawmakers can't cut a deal, the government will shut down.

Usually, lawmakers make some effort to pass a real, 365-day budget. Not this year.

Instead, lawmakers have passed six short-term spending bills. With their Friday deadline bearing down, the two parties remain billions of dollars apart on spending cuts.

"This is just an eyeball-to-eyeball moment where Republicans want to exercise their power," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. "And Obama is trying to defend his reputation with Democrats."

As even school children know, Congress has the responsibility to appropriate funds for the government to spend. It's right there in Article 1 of the Constitution. But this year -- and let's not mince words -- lawmakers have fallen down on the job.

Of course, short-term spending bills are nothing new. Congress has enacted at least one every year for all but three of the past 30. But six in one year? How did it come to this?

President Obama first proposed a budget for fiscal year 2011 on Feb. 1, 2010. That was 431 days ago.

If the process worked as designed, Congress would have taken a look at the president's suggestions. Lawmakers on the budget committees would have set target spending levels, and appropriations committees would have hammered out spending plans to fit.

The result was supposed to be 12 separate appropriations bills. Congress would have voted on each, and moved them to the president's desk. That's all supposed to happen by Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year.
Lots of talk, no action

Here's what Congress did manage to do: The House produced two of 12 appropriations bills. The Senate has not voted on a single one. Lawmakers couldn't even agree on their own legislative budget.
0:00 /07:43How to cure U.S. budget 'stupidity'

And those two House votes? They happened way back in July, when Democrats had huge majorities in the House and Senate, with Obama in the White House.

Why Democrats failed to take more action when they had the chance remains somewhat of a mystery. Remember, this is the same Congress that moved heaven and earth to enact landmark health care and Wall Street reform laws.

In the absence of a full-year budget, lawmakers have instead passed six short-term spending bills called "continuing resolutions." Designed to bridge short-term gaps in appropriations, Congress has approved one after another to keep the government running. Average length: 31 days.

The budget punt has implications for effective governance.
Will spending cuts hurt the economy?

Continuing resolutions, with the exception of the two most recent efforts by Congress, freeze spending at the prior year's levels.

That forces federal agencies into a head snapping game of stop-and-go. Hiring is delayed, work is repeated, and agencies struggle to implement new legislation. Uncertainty is king, with agencies left to guess what their funding level for the year might be.

Just ask the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is trying to implement the new Wall Street oversight law with last year's staffing.

Add in the threat of imminent government shutdown coming around, on average, once a month, and it's easy to see why agencies are praying the budget Merry-Go-Round stops soon.
Battle lines being drawn

As if to call attention to their own failure, both Republicans and Democrats have spent months issuing high-profile calls for a return to responsible budgeting.

Yet they have made no progress.

The latest stalemate has lawmakers about to plunge into the precipice as they argue over a few billion dollars and a set of contentious political issues -- like abortion -- that have been inserted into the debate.

On Wednesday, lawmakers from both parties met at the White House in the hopes of reaching an agreement. They did not.

What happens next is largely unclear. One scenario is that lawmakers will pass another short-term bill before Friday. There also might be a minor miracle in the form of a six-month spending deal that would cover the rest of the fiscal year.

Or, the government might close its doors. To top of page

[MadImmortalMan]

The debt commission's plan did a much better job than Paul Ryan's at reducing the deficit.

[Fate]

Obama threatens to veto GOP budget extension plan

Does it actually have a chance of getting 60 votes in the Senate? I doubt it...

[KRonn]

The debt commission's plan did a much better job than Paul Ryan's at reducing the deficit.

The commission had some good ideas. But too few legislators seem to want to act for fear of political fall out. Same with the President. As for Ryan, at least he put out a plan, which probably opens the door to real debate on the budget. I have to laugh at all the angst over cutting 3.5 billion or 30 billion or 60 billion from the budget as the Dems and Repubs have proposed, but still bash each other, in a multi-trillion dollar budget!

[DGuller]

The debt commission's plan did a much better job than Paul Ryan's at reducing the deficit.

The commission had some good ideas. But too few legislators seem to want to act for fear of political fall out. Same with the President. As for Ryan, at least he put out a plan, which probably opens the door to real debate on the budget. I have to laugh at all the angst over cutting 3.5 billion or 30 billion or 60 billion from the budget as the Dems and Repubs have proposed, but still bash each other, in a multi-trillion dollar budget!

How does an ideological plan based on pure fantasy open the door to the real debate?

[DGuller]

In other news, the groupthink tank that Ryan used tried to quietly change the details of the plan, 1984-style.  They removed mention of the fact that unemployment plan would be assumed to be 2.8% under Ryan's budget.  You have to give credit to Republicans, they're not that stupid, they know that the Ryan plan is utter bullshit.

[KRonn]

The debt commission's plan did a much better job than Paul Ryan's at reducing the deficit.

The commission had some good ideas. But too few legislators seem to want to act for fear of political fall out. Same with the President. As for Ryan, at least he put out a plan, which probably opens the door to real debate on the budget. I have to laugh at all the angst over cutting 3.5 billion or 30 billion or 60 billion from the budget as the Dems and Repubs have proposed, but still bash each other, in a multi-trillion dollar budget!

How does an ideological plan based on pure fantasy open the door to the real debate?

Is it really all that, just ideological? Or is that the Democrat Caucus talking points? Nothing good or useful in it? Nothing the Dems can debate? Have the Dems put a plan on the table at all??

[DGuller]

Is it really all that, just ideological? Or is that the Democrat Caucus talking points? Nothing good or useful in it? Nothing the Dems can debate? Have the Dems put a plan on the table at all??

It assumed 2.8% unemployment rate sometime in the future.  It also assumes that we'll cut non-entitlement spending from 12% of GDP to 3.5% of GDP, without explaining how such a feat could be accomplished.  I would laugh, if I wasn't severely depressed from watching this utter joke taken seriously.

[Razgovory]

Hey, looks like they are may have to delay Siegy's paycheck.

[Admiral Yi]

How does an ideological plan based on pure fantasy open the door to the real debate?

An ideological plan based on pure fantasy opens the door to real debate because the natural follow up question to the statement that this plan is an ideological plan based on pure fantasy is OK, how do you think we should do it then?

[Razgovory]

How does an ideological plan based on pure fantasy open the door to the real debate?

An ideological plan based on pure fantasy opens the door to real debate because the natural follow up question to the statement that this plan is an ideological plan based on pure fantasy is OK, how do you think we should do it then?

So it opens the door to debate by saying, "I'm totally irrational!  Can you come up with something better?".  Perhaps Obama should counter with a plan based on the seizure of dragon hoards and see if the GOP can do better.

[Caliga]

 

I think what Yi is probably trying to say is that it's akin to a strawman proposal.

[Hansmeister]

OK, my post wasn't very clear.

Apparently "the Tea Party wing" of the Republican party is blocking the compromise bill in the House; I think it's for 32 billion in cuts, with the Democrats allowed to choose what gets cut.  Now my understanding is that "the Tea Party wing" isn't that many Congressmen.  20? 40?  So it seems like one of two things must be true: either the Tea Party wing is virtually every Republican except Boehner, or there are few to no Democrats voting for the compromise.

The problem is that your post in nonsense. The House has passed a bill, the Senate has utterly failed to do anything other than take two vacations. The problem is not a lack of the House "tea party wing" compromise, but the inability of Harry Reid to act with even a minimum level of competence. Indeed, the House bill got more votes in the Senate than the Democrats bill (44 vs 42) when it was brought up for a vote. The ball is in the Senate's court.

Due to rule changes adopted in the House at the beginning of the session requiring that a final bill has to be posted 72 hours prior to the vote (to prevent another "you have to pass the bill to see what is in it") the deadline for a bill to be voted on Friday to be finalized was Tuesday - the first day the White House got involved in the process.

The only way to keep the gov't open at this stage is to pass the one-week extension, which Obama promised to veto today over $12 billion of cuts, as well as a policy rider on prohibiting funding of abortion in DC identical to the one that was in the 2009 budget signed by Obama and voted on by the entire democratic leadership.

The deems obviously hope there will be enough useful idiots parroting their BS to swing the public their way, just as in 1995 when Clinton shut down the gov't.

[Razgovory]

I hope you don't get paid this month.

[Razgovory]

I think what Yi is probably trying to say is that it's akin to a strawman proposal.

If you want to think of them as simply intellectually dishonest, that's fine too.