2023 Debt Ceiling & Budget Negotiations

Sigh. Not for the first time, maybe you should read what you're responding to properly before doing so. Seriously. It would be much more productive. I referenced one article, which contained a reference to another (ergo at two removes from my post) that you don't like and that's what you focus on rather than what I actually explicitly posted myself in plain English? Come on.

This seems to be the most relevant section of your post, yet in your haste to get to the snark you ignore the central part of what I was saying and don't even challenge it. The rest is irrelevant otherwise. Get this. The US government does not need to, nor does it in reality, collect money before it spends it. Either by taxes or by borrowing.
Do you disagree with this?

You of course didn't say it in plain English. You didn't say 'was partially responsible for' or 'was one aspect of the issue.' You said that the results were terribly negative, linking to sources that say it was overwhelmingly the fault of Clinton, then linking to a far right shit gibbon that says it was entirely the fault of Clinton. When you say 'played no small part' but don't mention any other causes and link to opinion pieces such as that, of course someone who reads it is going to assume that's what you mean. Feel free to get better at communicating. This is not the first time this has come up.

In other words, you can't challenge anything else I say, because I provided the explicit facts directly from primary sources.

But regardless, yes, here comes the snark again. OF COURSE the US government does not need to collect money before it spends it. Why? No sovereign nation has to. Any fully sovereign country can simply print money.

The question is what impact that has, and that's the part you ignore that I spent time providing. The US has some level of insulation there, but it is not immune to the negative impacts of that. So the question is how much, and how drastically that impacts their budget to service the debt, and whether they try to spend their way out of that. Doing that is the core of hyperinflation. This is economics 101.

Even for the US there are negative impacts to endless deficit spending. And those are directly related to interest rates. We've been at near zero interest for years now, and that too is not sustainable, as it directly impacts savings. For the last decade putting money into a savings account in the US was a negative move, as with no interest and considerable inflation it simply eroded the money.

Now that interest rates are going up the debt service is also going up. In a time of runaway inflation that's a very delicate balancing act. Again, the money that the US has to spend on it's debt simply on interest payments is going to nearly double this year. Projections going out are far, far worse. The right wing talking points on this are we need to strip entitlements - when in fact most of those are paid outside this system entirely.

Jesus wept. You still didn't properly read the sentence. Further, I have nowhere proposed "endless deficit spending" and one again specifically called out the danger of inflation. No time for any more of this bad faith bullshit. Ta.

Fox News Sunday is worth a listen to see how the narrative is shaping up over there:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fox-news-sunday-audio/id418152882

Summarize it for me, FF.

Biden’s strident, public and consistent refusal to ‘negotiate on the debt limit’ was correct.

I don’t think most people grasp the subtly of what Biden is arguing (that he negotiated a budget not the debt limit) which is legit because c’mon pal, it is what it is. Whether you negotiated a debt ceiling deal that included a budget deal or you negotiated a budget deal that included a debt ceiling suspension* it is the same damn thing.

Most see it as him breaking his initial pledge to not negotiate which while short term might be a negative hit is good for him long term IMO as it makes it easier for Rs to swallow thinking they ‘owned’ him by just getting a ‘deal’.

Every single R defending the deal (and every R they had on did) brought up ‘and we got it from a President who said he wouldn’t negotiate’.

On the deal itself it’s about the best budget deal Ds could get from a divided Congress.

And it is a budget deal. Not just a debt deal. So we not only avoid default now but also a government shutdown in the fall.

So Biden gets two years free of Republican hijacking of the economy while showing he once again is someone who can reach across the aisle and get something done.

Like the Infrastructure Deal I don’t think Trump was able to get a regular budget passed even when he unified government did he? We just had CRs and Omnibusses IIRC.


*Speaking of distinctions without a difference McCarthy said a couple time that they aren’t raising the debt ceiling they are just suspending it for two years. LOL, okay buddy.

At least it seems like Biden kept the economic terrorism away until after the election.

I see it was important to keep the fucking pentagon from ever being cut or audited for their trillions of useless waste, but we would not want a person without a job to get less than 2400 a year in food. WTG Fuckhead banker Joe and your republican buddies. Great compromise.

Good to see this budget negotiation never included raising taxes on the wealthy to pay the bills to them. We would not want to stop redistributing wealth to the rich, then they might not hire the worthless coke addled losers of Biden and Trump families for far more than they were ever worth.

Look at the news blowing Dick Brandon like he saved the fucking world by lining his pockets and the pockets of his rich republican lovers.

Oh another thing I found interesting in McCarthy’s answers was he a couple times brought up how Republicans were able to get this deal that lowered spending from a Democratic President and Democratic Senate which they hadn’t even be able to do under Trump.

Like… okay buddy. You didn’t even try under Trump because Rs only care about Dems spending. But thanks for saying it out loud.

Although I guess for his audience it works. They are dumb enough to actually believe Rs are ‘fiscally responsible’*. LOL! Whatever helps this thing passed and the Rs to take their suicide vest off the American economy works me I guess.

Just started to listen to Hakeem Jefferies on Face the Nation. Will see how he spins the deal.



*

I cannot wait for the news coming in a few years that all the extra IRS agents Dick Brandon put out there only ended up taking more money from the poor to middle class rather than actually working on auditing big corporations. If you do not put requirements for them to focus on big corporations the will kill themselves going after the low hanging fruit. We will never pay our bills when we keep on wiping out the wealth of lower economic classes.

Payroll taxes on workers are not enough for big corps to pay for the benefit of the american market.

Jefferies is claiming that while it does increase the age cap for able bodied adults without dependents to receive SNAP benefits from 49 to 54 by adding total exemptions for veterans and the homeless less people total will actually have work requirements moving forward than there are today.

Plus, any Republicans who vote against it now, we get to go "BUT WHAT ABOUT OUR TROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPS" at them.

Basically all of these fuckers get to claim a victory going into the 2024 election cycle and Biden gets to claim victory until well after whoever is sworn into office in January 2025. That's if it passes.

Biden: One of the things that I heard some of you saying is why doesn't Biden say what a good deal it is? You think that's going to help get it passed? No. That's why you guys don't bargain very well.

https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1663264238125629447?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

The hilarious bit on this is that not only will the "No help for the poors!!!" radicals find this entirely weak sauce, but the amount of money involved in restricting (and thus theoretically removing) such a narrow group of people wouldn't buy a tire for an F-16 so it really is a mockery of their "restrain government spending damnit!" rhetoric.

There are a couple of things I don't like, in a vacuum (rescinding the IRS money on principle although apparently they could have spent all the money at once, if they wanted, so they can effectively "back load" the cut out four years and hope for further appropriations in 2025, and even more money to the military literally on the very heels of 60 Minutes detailing what we all instinctively know - defense contractors are fucking us all in a massive way and basically nothing will ever be done about it) BUT apparently Biden gave McCarthy less than the idiot could have gotten during normal appropriations so in that sense he basically gave them nothing but a couple of talking points claiming phantom victories.


Oh, also, Joe Manchin can cram that fucking useless pipeline up his ass until it comes out the other side. What a massive bastard.

I see the MAGA bunch aren't happy:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/debt-limit-mccarthy-biden_n_647620f9e4b0047ed77daab1

It's a shit "deal". Business as usual for Congress.

This is quite the debt ceiling wrinkle: CBO projects that the bill’s changes to SNAP work requirements would INCREASE spending and enrollment in the program overall
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2023-05/hr3746_Letter_McCarthy.pdf​

https://twitter.com/adamcancryn/status/1663689714145083392



Talk about a win. While work requirements are generally bad policy they are politically very popular. So this is kinda a best of all worlds. A popular political win that actually helps more people.

It’s almost like he has been doing this legislating and deal making thing for while.

Yeah, so this is an awful deal, despite threats to blow up the world economy not being realised.

Deficits (not that anyone is actually interested in those) will not be substantially reduced. There is a very large cut to social spending in real-terms, and an increase in military spending. Among other very bad things.

Republicans have shown that they have no problem abandoning precedent and being radical when they want to achieve their goals. It says much that Democrats are unwilling to take such steps in the face of continual blackmail.

I think it reflects the American mindset as demonstrated by the midterm elections.

Deficits only matter when the other party is in power.

Did you read the chart? What pattern do you see?

Good read:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/the-sound-and-fury-of-the-house-freedom-caucus

Correction: Deficits only matter when Democrats are in power.

Enough of this bothsidesing bullshit.

Let’s break this down a little.

The US budget has a run at a surplus 3 years out of the 18 years the Democrats have been in the Whitehouse since 1989.

The US budget has a run at a surplus 1 year out of the 16 years the Republicans have been in the Whitehouse since 1989.

The US budget deficit has decreased year over year 16 (including the surplus years) years out of the 18 years the Democrats have been in the Whitehouse since 1989.

The US budget deficit has decreased year over year 3 years out of the 16 years the Republicans have been in the Whitehouse since 1989.

In other words Democrats have had budget surpluses exactly the name number of times the Republicans just haven’t INCREASED the deficit.

Dems have increased the deficit LESS often than they have run surpluses.

Can any sane person that believes in reality argue that Republicans are the party of fiscal discipline?

For the record, I don't really think that Joe Biden did some kind of genius job negotiating. I'm sure he did just fine, but even though Kevin McCarthy isn't the brightest bulb in the ceiling, he didn't fall for some kind of Tom Sawyer "I'll let you whitewash Aunt Polly's fence if you pay me" routine.

What's more likely is that McCarthy had polling data, or was convinced in some other way by other Republicans, that the "deliberately crash the economy and then hope voters blame Biden for it" gambit wasn't going to work this time around.

There is also this polling data:


https://apnews.com/article/spending-budget-poll-biden-cd55f1c3859b62a861cdbdc0cd23bd79

Americans are united in believing that the US Government spends WAY too much money except for all the things the US Government spends money on in which case they all agree we aren’t spending enough.

The only two categories of spending polled that don’t have the overwhelming majority (but still a plurality) saying we need to spend more are border security and the military which no way Rs can cut.

Reminds me a little of this:

Republicans had a surplus in 1 year, 2001.

Oops, you are correct. And now I am thinking about whether it is fiscal years or calendar years…

Holy fuck that was fast. I thought they were aiming for Saturday.

US Senate passes debt ceiling bill to avoid default ahead of Monday’s deadline, sending legislation to President Biden’s desk
​

https://twitter.com/factal/status/1664466936950841344?s=46&t=t4SjKAdDfFIcJ6SvqCRv6A