Obama, Congress Reach a Debt Deal

reply to post by watcher3339


WE NEED CHANGE!!!

No literally, does anybody have any coins on them? We're kinda low on money...
-US government

Hey guys? I found Boehners' spine.

reply to post by beezzer


now now beez you'll make him cry

I just remembered that the Federal Reserve Charter runs out on 12/31/2011 or did they already extend it? I thought i saw that somewhere but cannot locate any info on it. If this is the case i think when they start talking about the ceiling next year, the Federal Reserve may be a huge topic of discussion. Wasn't there some report about Kucinich talking along these lines?

Or am I just creating a scenario that I can live with?

Not enough in cuts.......it really won't do enough to trim our bloated budget and it sure doesn't help with our deficit. Just like Politicians, they underdelivered and kicked the hard choice can down the the road. Course, everyone will celebrate such a "Great Deal for the American People". I had hoped for real "change" to happen with the Tea Party, guess they can't fight both parties leadership.

I foresee hard times ahead.

At this point, I would suggest someone hit the 'reset' button. What is the point delaying, when it's eventually gonna
default anyway.

A sheer attempt at delaying the inevitable, if you ask me...shame on you, Obama...

If the U. S. economy was a monopoly game, I would tip over the board

Ok, now that I have read over some other news sources, this whole thing smells like BS to me.

Congressional leaders reached a bipartisan agreement to raise the debt ceiling by at least $2.1 trillion, sufficient to serve the nation’s needs into 2013. They are preparing to sell to members the deal to cut $917 billion in spending over a decade, raising the debt limit initially by $900 billion, and to charge a special committee with finding another $1.5 trillion in deficit savings by the year’s end. They confront an Aug. 2 deadline for approval of the agreement.

Source

So they are really only cutting $917 billion? Who are they kidding? A special committee is going to find the rest? WTF? Why don't they just find it now and include it in the bill? I am sure it's not that hard! This is a total farce, and the joke is on the American people.

reply to post by InnerPeace2012


Wouldn't it be silly for the president to cut programs that benefit his parties voting base?

"Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you."

And it is delaying the inevitable. I think we can all agree on that. So, if you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you are going to look pretty stupid when they finally take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.

Another snow job passing. Republicans backed down when Obama wanted to cut spending on the military. I would think this would've forced the government to bring our troops home. Obama said that the domestic spending was the lowest since Ike? I want to see this debt deal. The federal spending has doubled since Bush took office. Obama doesn't want to talk about that.

reply to post by METACOMET



Remember when President Obama was Senator Obama and he repeatedly promised to protect Social Security benefits.....many of his fellow politicians are reminding him of those promises.

Next year is the campaign trail...so I think they are going to work something out...that will at least take us through to 2013...after that who knows what will happen? There are a lot of senior citizens in this country and they vote.

Full text of the president's remarks
www.politico.com...

Crude Climbs After Obama Says Congressional Leaders Agree Debt-Limit Deal
www.bloomberg.com...

Nikkei surges above 10,000 after US debt deal
uk.reuters.com...

HSBC to sell 195 NY bank branches for $1 billion
www.businessweek.com...

U.S. lawmakers reach into the past on budget deal
www.reuters.com...

Stocks likely to open sharply higher on debt deal
money.msn.com...

Asian Stocks Rise as Obama Says U.S. Lawmakers Agree to Break Debt Impasse
www.bloomberg.com...

Maybe we should watch this a little closer
South Korea Inflation Accelerates to 4-Month High
www.bloomberg.com...

according to the US debt clock, we were at 5 trillion in 2000

after 8 years of bush, we were then up to 10 trillion

after 1 term with obama, we rose up to 14 trillion now

and we need 10 years to go down 2.4 trillion? when it took them 10 years together to raise us up roughly 9 trillion in debt?

im gonna start banging my head into the wall if someone doesnt rationally explain to me what the hell is going on

Originally posted by caladonea

There are a lot of senior citizens in this country and they vote.

I hope for all our sakes that there is a realization that all the money we have paid all our working lives into "social security" has already been spent. The money isn't there, it's deposited into a congressional slush fund that has been spent away. It is kept barely afloat for the time being using pyramid scheme tactics.

We have 114 trillion dollars in SS, Medicare and prescription drug liabilities. It is not possible for everyone who paid in to collect. Thems the facts. How are we going to deal with that reality is the real question here.

The answer, for the time being, is to kick that can down the road some. There has been no solution. There may not be a solution.

reply to post by citizen6511

but it cost 1 million dollars a year to keep a soldier in Afganistan.

This is not really true.

Defense spending is a nightmare to track. You can try to average expenses - but it really is an exercise in futility. You have your entire logistics chain that goes into supporting not just soldiers in Afghanistan, but also in Iraq. There are frequent mobilizations of reservists to Kuwait to process military into and out of those countries (serving as customs - mostly to ensure people aren't bringing back flash-bangs, ammunition, drugs, and other things that need not travel back to the U.S. in their luggage).

Do you count the FTS personnel supporting those reserve commands in the costs of putting a soldier in Afghanistan? Surely - their time is related - part of their function is to ensure that the paperwork for those supporting the logistics of the war get their orders, paperwork, etc straightened out. But they would be there whether we were fighting a war or not. Their pay would also be the same.

Our squadron is the same way - we fly missions in support of a number of different things - but the staff is there and getting paid whether there is work to do or not. There were at least two days this past week that the four of us being paid to man an AE/AT shop had, quite literally, nothing to do but actively find something to do to stay busy - like trying to help the AMs (who don't really want our help, but find ways to make changing a panel last four hours... yeah - if that's all you've got to do that day... but not when you are behind on work and Maintenance Control is pitching a fit). We still get paid whether we are there over-time to fix a gripe or just have to show up and make an appearance with nothing else to do.

In that way - you can often come up with figures where the sum of the parts is far greater than the whole of spending - or vice-versa, depending upon how you are doing your accounting. To be honest - I'd have to discuss the issue with my friend working on his Masters' in accounting (emphasis on auditing) to get a better understanding of how those types of things are commonly handled.

The point is - pulling 500 soldiers out of Afghanistan is not going to eliminate $500M in military spending next fiscal year.

we need police officers, firemen, our local government work force has been decimated.

if we hired these ex soldiers for profesions that our society needs, we could still save a lot of money.

I'm not going to shoot this down immediately - but you do have to consider the relative change. I'm an aviation electronics technician - an E-5 with 5 years of service. My base-pay (not including allowances for housing, food, dependents, etc) is something like $2,200/month.

I'm a reservist - I have a civilian job that replaces military income as a primary source - so I don't really get that kind of money. However, the point I am trying to make is that America has some of the best paid military service people out there. For the most part - I don't think pay in the military is an issue. The engine I was helping to service the other day costs more to replace than the entire squadron gets paid in three years' time. A mistake can cost far more than the people. Sure - I feel a bit odd, coming from a civilian factory environment to a salary position while on ADT, to get paid while there's not a whole heck of a lot going on and the command seems a bit over-staffed....

Anyway - the point is - can you afford to pay that much to firemen - or something that is going to afford me a similar quality of life in that region? I'm coming off active duty - I probably have a family. I know more than a few people on active with two or three kids - and they can afford to raise them in a very good quality of life. Often they are some fairly young couples - both the mother and father attend an institution of higher education or a trade school.

Are similar benefits going to be provided?

Now - I know "we are all going to have to tighten our belt and adjust to the times" - but you're going to find that a lot of communities don't have the means to support civil servants with that kind of additional baggage. Even if the economy were in a much healthier state. Hell - most don't really even have the need. The only place more police are needed is in heavy urban areas - sure, military training would come in handy in those areas where you have higher gang activity - but you don't need a division of marines storming Cabrini Green.

Further... like I said... I'm an electronics technician - what am I going to do for the police? Program their squad-car's Garmin? I say that in jest - but I'd be little better than a rookie officer or fireman - I've had some basic training in firefighting, first aid, and am weapons-qualified - but I'm not going to have nearly as smooth of a transition into that kind of job as, say, a Master-At-Arms or FMF Corpsman is.

at least 10 to 20 state and local positions for the price of sustaining a soldier overseas.

You're forgetting the costs that go along with fire departments and police forces. If you want to bring a techie like me into either - I would be more than happy to go. You're looking at increasing the support for operational personnel as well with such a scheme - which means you're going to be increasing the inventory of and updating equipment. Why shouldn't a small town of 5,000 have a police helicopter, ten fire trucks, and a water-bomber?

I'm exaggerating a little - but your costs are going to change if you are really wanting to employ a "more functional" set of fire/police/etc. You can hire ten more fire fighters - but how are they going to get to the fire or fight it if they don't have more hose and ladder trucks? You can hire a dozen more police officers, but how are they going to respond to emergencies if they don't have a patrol car? Can your armory support that many officers, or do you need to expand? Can your current administrative department handle more officers - or do you need more clerks and investigative personnel? Can your courts currently handle the violations?

the country is broke and needs bridges and to fix at least some pot holes.

isn't time to get out of Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afganistan?

and a hundred other places.

The whole of U.S. Military spending does not exceed 900 billion dollars for the fiscal year. That's including pay and paying retired service members and compensation benefits as well as all operational expenses across all branches.

Medicare/Medicaid is 1.4 Trillion - with plenty of 200 and 50-ish billion dollar separate allotments for "income security" and "quality of life assurance" programs within separate areas of the federal budget.

Just giving you a little bit of perspective, there. Waste in medicare attributed to outright fraud is estimated to be around 200 billion - +/- 50 billion or so. Unnecessary treatment is another heavy hitter that is estimated at about 150 billion. Total waste in medicare/medicaid spending is estimated to be between some 450 billion and 650 billion (working from memory - I'm rounding those figures a lot).

About 1/2 to 2/3 of the military budget is estimated to be outright wasted within the medicare/medicaid budget. And it is the segment of the budget with the most rapid historical and projected growth.

Yeah - the military spending structure can be reworked to save some money... but that medicare/medicaid one is the one that is going to bite us in the ass. We can take on another two wars before we'll match medicare spending - and still not be anywhere near its rate of growth.

i can't believe anyone seriously thought they wouldn't reach some kind of agreement at the last minute. even with all the fear mongering, i was completely bored with it all. i grew up watching nixon shoot himself in the foot too many times to believe any politician has our best interest at heart.