Republican Party Favorability Sinks To Record Low

[KnightofChrist]

I don't know if Al agrees with my current position, not saying he does btw, but he makes excellent points in the post below that were made in another thread. But it does pertain much to the current topic here as well.

the power of the purse strings is supposed to be a bargaining chip for the house, in terms of funding programs AND in terms of raising the debt ceiling. the Senate and the Executive are supposed to have to treat it seriously, they're not supposed to assume that Congress will raise the debt ceiling every time. which is why 2006 Senator Barack Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling for George W. Bush.

one of the most irresponsible things that's been coming out of the government lately is Barack Obama actually referring to not raising the debt ceiling as a certain "default". It does not have to be a default... and the only person who could ensure that it would be a default would be Barack Obama himself. if Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling, the executive should prioritize and pay the interest on the debt no matter what... by Obama suggesting that he would default on the debt, he's threatening the idea of completely destroying the full faith and credit of the US government. he should take that off the table, say that no matter what the debt will get paid, and instead use as his political leverage the fact that agencies could fail and checks won't go out on time, from social security to medicare or whatever, that's a big enough problem with not raising the debt ceiling but stop threatening default for God's sake! default means tearing down the global financial markets, and he wouldn't have to do that at all if Congress didn't raise the debt ceiling, because there's way more than enough money coming in to pay the obligations on the debt so that people will t-bills will continue turning them over.

the fact is a president should have to negotiate with the house in order to get legislation funded. the problem is that we've re-arranged everything so that congress can never exercise its power of the purse strings without the idea that it'd be a total disaster, so they should just always give the other branches funding all the time, which makes the power of the purse strings a pointless power. honestly, the House should've pulled the funding on the Iraq war to get George W Bush's attention if they were really serious about opposing it. whether it really makes sense this time around, I won't make much of a decision on that, but in general, to restore the house's ability to have the power of the purse strings, they should ALWAYS pass individual appropriations bills instead of bundled ones (so that stopping one appropriations bill doesn't defund the whole government) and the Senate should pass the Full Faith and Credit act so that we can guarantee that no matter what the debate ever is in congress, the US government is never in danger of defaulting, because by law the executive will have to pay the obligations on the debt first.

[Isidore_of_Seville]

So, the problem is that if the debt ceiling isn't raised we will quickly run out of money to pay our current debts. You can prioritize things as high as you want, but if you don't have money it really doesn't matter.

 

I definitely agree about preferring individual appropriations bills over bundles in order to avoid nonsense like the shutdown.

[Isidore_of_Seville]

Just because you feel the law is unjust doesn't mean it so. The majority of Americans have decided that keeping people healthy is a priority and that participation in this priority is not optional. Just like many states require car insurance in order to protect themselves and others, now people are required to have health insurance to protect themselves and others.

 

While I agree that individual liberties are to be respected, absolutely, the problem here is that one's decision not to have health insurance doesn't just affect him, it affects everyone. Just like how not getting vaccinated is bad for everyone living around you, and how not having car insurance is bad for everyone driving around you.

 

When your actions impact other people in any way shape or form your individual liberties don't enter into the equation.

Edited October 14, 2013 by Isidore_of_Seville

[God the Father]

So, the problem is that if the debt ceiling isn't raised we will quickly run out of money to pay our current debts. You can prioritize things as high as you want, but if you don't have money it really doesn't matter.

 

I definitely agree about preferring individual appropriations bills over bundles in order to avoid nonsense like the shutdown.

 

Raising the debt "ceiling" doesn't automatically generate money with which to pay our current debts. It allows us to continue to pay those debts with future-money that does not exist, instead of coming clean, with upturned hands, to our creditors immediately. The money does not exist, and agreeing to keep spending non-money will not make the money exist, therefore "it really doesn't matter" either way. Meanwhile Bernanke's (soon to be Yellen's) "accomodative" (redistributive) QE policy provides the White House with the paper it needs while continuing to erode the currency and assets of the middle-class--to the enrichment of banksters, politicians, and corporate insiders.

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-12/inflation-too-low-are-you-kidding-us-bernanke

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

[Isidore_of_Seville]

That's an old argument that was proved to be incorrect about 2 years ago.

 

From the Wikipedia article on the Debt Ceiling Crisis on 2013:

 

 

 

Failure to pay obligations has been characterized as a default; however, some have argued that the executive branch can choose to prioritize interest payments on bonds, which would avoid an immediate, direct default on sovereign debt. During the debt ceiling crisis in 2011, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner argued that prioritization of interest payments would not help since government expenditures would have needed to be cut by an unrealistic 40% if the debt ceiling is not raised. Also, a default on non-debt obligations would still undermine American creditworthiness according to at least one rating agency. In 2011, the Treasury suggested that it could not prioritize certain types of expenditures because all expenditures are on equal footing under the law. In this view, when extraordinary measures are exhausted, no payments could be made at all and the United States would be in default on all of its obligations. The CBO notes that prioritization would not avoid the technical definition found in Black's Law Dictionary where default is defined as “the failure to make a payment when due.”

 

[KnightofChrist]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics-live/liveblog/live-updates-the-shutdown-4/?hpid=z2#c1e3ada3-dc00-41d8-92cb-327c5c814d82

Moody's offers different view on debt limit

One of the nation’s top credit-rating agencies says that the U.S. Treasury Department is likely to continue paying interest on the government’s debt even if Congress fails to lift the limit on borrowing next week, preserving the nation’s sterling AAA credit rating.

In a memo being circulated on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Moody’s Investors Service offers “answers to frequently asked questions” about the government shutdown, now in its second week, and the federal debt limit. President Obama has said that, unless Congress acts to raise the $16.7 trillion limit by next Thursday, the nation will be at risk of default.

Not so, Moody’s says in the memo dated Oct. 7.

” We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact,” the memo says. “The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit the government from servicing its debt. There is no direct connection between the debt limit (actually the exhaustion of the Treasury’s extraordinary measures to raise funds) and a default.

The memo offers a starkly different view of the consequences of congressional inaction on the debt limit than is held by the White House, many policymakers and other financial analysts. During a press conference at the White House Tuesday, Obama said missing the Oct. 17 deadline would invite “economic chaos.”

The Moody’s memo goes on to argue that the situation is actually much less serious than in 2011, when the nation last faced a pitched battle over the debt limit.

“The budget deficit was considerably larger in 2011 than it is currently, so the magnitude of the necessary spending cuts needed after 17 October is lower now than it was then,” the memo says.

Treasury Department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

[Isidore_of_Seville]

  Extraordinary measures

The Treasury Department is authorized to issue debt needed to fund government operations (as authorized by each federal budget) up to the debt ceiling, with some small exceptions. When the debt ceiling is reached, Treasury can declare a debt issuance suspension period and utilize "extraordinary measures" to acquire funds to meet federal obligations but which do not require the issue of new debt.

These measures may include suspending investments in the "G-fund" of the individual retirement funds of federal employees, the Thrift Savings Plan. In 2011 these measures were extended to suspending investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund (CSRDF), the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund (Postal Benefits Fund), and the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF). In addition to suspending investments, certain CSRDF investments were also redeemed early.^[17] In 1985, the Treasury had also exchanged Treasury securities for non-Treasury securities held by the Federal Financing Bank.^[18]

However, these amounts are not sufficient to cover government operations. Treasury first used these measures on December 16, 2009, to remain within the debt ceiling, and avoid a government shutdown, and also used it during the debt-ceiling crisis of 2011. However, there are limits to how much can be raised by these measures.

Edited October 14, 2013 by Isidore_of_Seville

[havok579257]

Just because you feel the law is unjust doesn't mean it so. The majority of Americans have decided that keeping people healthy is a priority and that participation in this priority is not optional. Just like many states require car insurance in order to protect themselves and others, now people are required to have health insurance to protect themselves and others.

 

While I agree that individual liberties are to be respected, absolutely, the problem here is that one's decision not to have health insurance doesn't just affect him, it affects everyone. Just like how not getting vaccinated is bad for everyone living around you, and how not having car insurance is bad for everyone driving around you.

 

When your actions impact other people in any way shape or form your individual liberties don't enter into the equation.

 

 

so how is not having car insurance and never getting in an accident bad for everyone else?  please explain that one.

 

how is not having health insurance and never using medical care you cant afford bad for everyone else?  please explain that one also.

 

how does someone guy who has no insurance and never uses the united states healthcare system bad for everyone else?

[havok579257]

1. So, here is the real story as to why the Senate chose another bill and rewrote it - (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/111/hr3590#summary). There's nothing dubious going on, that's just how it has to work in order for the senate to generate a bill for health care reform.

 

 

2. The reconciliation rule wasn't changed in any way in order for the senate to pass the ACA. It's used to conform bills to budget constraints and that's exactly what it was used for.

 

3. Let's also take a look at the timeline of the bill - 

Introduced Sep 17, 2009

Passed House Oct 08, 2009

Passed Senate with Changes Dec 24,

2009 House Agreed to Changes Mar 21, 2010

Signed by the President Mar 23, 2010

 

All of this happened well before the presidential election of 2012, where Obama ran his campaign on the platform of the ACA and won the electoral and the popular vote. so not only is it law, the majority of Americans want it. 

 

What does all of this mean? 

 

4. It's law. We can fight to repeal it, or just specific parts we don't like (like the HHS mandate), but holding the government hostage with a shutdown isn't a constructive way to go about that.

 

5. And when this is what the representatives who oppose the ACA sound like, it doesn't give the argument much credibility. 

 

 

 

 

honestly this tactic is dumb.  republicans have said many stupid things.  so have democrats, but I guess you ignore them.  I guess its ok that nancy Pelosi said "we have to pass the bill so we can see what is in it".  or how about that fact that in recent memory, the democrats had someone in their party who was a former KKK member.

 

its dumb to paint one party as morally superior and the other as evil.  also I do find it weird that a catholic supports a party that is for free abortion on demand for any reason, for gay marriage, for taking away God from their platform(see last years democratic convention), for pushing to arrest military catholic chaplins, for forcing catholics to pay for and support abortions and contraceptives and steralizations.  just seems weird to me that someone would support a party so opposed to their faith.

[Aloysius]

prioritization is totally possible.  it's not ideal, but it would stave off a much more serious disaster.  the Full Faith and Credit Act would have made it obviously legal, but without that it is still not illegal IMO, because the withholding of payments is only happening as a result of your legal inability to pay everything.  it's only illegal to withhold some payments from some groups if it was possible to pay them all, but there's never any kind of legal obligation to do the impossible, so if the debt ceiling was not raised there would come a point where not everyone would be getting paid, and you have every right to use discretion to pick which ones do and do not get paid.  maybe there'd be a court case after that, but I bet the Supreme Court would decide it was legal, because one cannot be legally obligated to do something that is impossible.

 

still, the Senate should pass the Full Faith and Credit Act.  If it doesn't do it now, it should do so some time after the crisis has passed because it's generally a good idea given the fact that congress has the power of the purse strings so this is something that can come up whenever there's a debt ceiling needing to be raised... I get that the senate doesn't want to do it now because it's afraid that would be some kind of permission given to the house to just not raise the debt ceiling, but how about some time in the future we just get that through so that there is NEVER any kind of threat of 'default'.  the debt ceiling not being raised is a threat to important government agencies functioning and people getting checks they depend on and all that kind of stuff, sure, and that should be enough to politically beat someone over the head to stop them from not raising the debt ceiling when the already approved government programs would require it to be raised for them to be funded... but the debt ceiling is part of the power of the purse strings, so any Congress should be able to oppose it as a means of trying to get something from the executive, whether that's 2006 Senator Barack Obama or the 2013 Republican House of Representatives... if we passed the full faith and credit act, then when these little antics came up, no one would be worried about the US ever possibly defaulting on its debt... they'd be worried about other things, sure, but they wouldn't be worried about the thing that props up the entire world financial system.

 

that's just my take on the tactics, the actual substance of what they're fighting about (the ACA) is an entirely different debate (one I don't personally feel like getting involved in at this time, I have a complicated position on it), but think of that whole discussion on the tactics in the context of if you ever had a Republican President trying to push something through that the Democrats didn't like and a Democratic House wanted to stop him at all costs, it's important that we make it possible for the power of the purse strings to be used, even on something like the debt ceiling, without the threat of financial Armageddon for the full faith and credit of the United States, which is something the entire world economic system relies upon (right or wrong, that's just the way it is for now).