Rants & Raves

I’m jotting this down quickly before I get to work, so apologies for the lack of links. If I get a fact wrong, please let me know.

Once again, President Obama has jumped in at the last minute and saved the day by compromising with Speaker Boehner. This time our debt ceiling will get raised. And once again, it seems like Obama gave it up faster than a virgin on prom night.

Let’s review, shall we? When this whole “crisis” started (reach of arbitrary debt limit = crisis; climate change & vast poverty in the US and the world = meh) everyone but a vocal minority (cough, Tea Party, cough) wanted to raise the debt ceiling. Republicans wanted to cut spending drastically and pass a “balanced budget” amendment, where it was law that the US always balanced its budget. Forget that this Congress was pretty much the same Congress that kept giving Dubya a blank check to fight unnecessary wars, but I digress. Democrats wanted to have a mixture of spending cuts and eliminating the tax cuts on the rich (again, another great idea from the team that gave us “Mission Accomplished” 8 years (and counting) too soon.)

This morning I hear that we’re cutting $1T from the budget, with a “super committee” of 6 Dems and 6 Reps to determine future cuts. Democrats don’t get any revenue raisers right now, but they got the debt ceiling to be raised. Wait, wasn’t that supposed to be a given? Except for that damned minority (hack, Teabaggers, hack) everybody wanted that. That wasn’t supposed to be up for debate!

Republicans get their spending cuts (oh, it wasn’t as high as that minority wanted, pobrecitos) but they didn’t get their amendment, which wasn’t really a huge deal-breaker in the first place, or there would have been a bigger stink about it.

This committee is supposed to have the power to raise taxes as well as cut spending. Let’s hope they do that. If they can’t come to a conclusion, then there are automatic cuts across the board. Once again, the Democrats are sliding further to the right, and we all lose.