govt shutdown looms

[Danzig]

http://news.msn.com/us/house-votes-t...hutdown-closer

republicans, by a wide margin, concede that a govt shutdown would be horrible for the country and the economy.
but politics triumphs over what's good for the people.

i see a trillion dollar coin in the offing. i wonder if the debt ceiling can removed by exective order....

[Danzig]

and i just saw a story about a conscience clause added by repubs to the spending bill. outrageous.

keep in mind that erectile dysfunction pills, vacuum suction devices, penile implants and vasectomies are covered by insurers and medicare....yes, medicare covers vacuum suction devices. one viagra or cialis is about 15 a pill. one MONTH of bc pills is about $15.

[geeker2]

Too bad the Senate decided to take Sunday off - I guess the gov shutdown is no big deal

[jms62]

GOP committing political suicide. Markets set to crater will get people to notice.

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by jms62

GOP committing political suicide. Markets set to crater will get people to notice.

It's not. They'll pay no penalty for this at all. With the current gerrymandering we'll have this Congressional makeup until at least 2022. Good times ahead. And by that I mean, "Good times if you're already rich."

[joeydb]

[Danzig]

and here, from will saletan (one i don't always agree with, but always read)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...le_ground.html

Republicans pretend there’s lots of precedent for this sort of “compromise.” They point to 17 previous shutdowns (helpfully outlined by Dylan Matthews in the Washington Post), most of which were resolved by concessions. But when you examine these cases, the claims of resemblance evaporate.



The present shutdown threat is nothing like those cases. For the first time, a single party, controlling a single house of Congress—despite having lost the popular vote for that chamber by more than a million ballots in the most recent election—is refusing to fund the government unless the other chamber and the president agree to suspend previously enacted legislation.


Sorry, Republicans. Nothing in the Constitution authorizes a single house of Congress to retroactively veto U.S. law by refusing to fund the rest of the government. The manner in which you’re attempting this blackmail—on party-line votes, engineered by the party that lost the popular vote—doesn’t help. The Senate and the president have no legal or moral obligation to humor your demands. Do your job, or we’ll throw you out.

[joeydb]

I say we vote to reduce the debt ceiling.

[hi_im_god]

Originally Posted by joeydb

I say we vote to reduce the debt ceiling.

great bumper sticker.

disastrous fiscal policy.

[joeydb]

Originally Posted by hi_im_god

great bumper sticker.

disastrous fiscal policy.

Kinda like this one:

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by joeydb

I say we vote to reduce the debt ceiling.

and i thank you for reading what i posted.
your comment only shows that you misunderstand the subject.

[Danzig]

http://www.slate.com/articles/busine..._limit_is.html

Normally the way things work is that the Treasury Department cuts the checks Congress has told it to cut, collects the taxes Congress has told it to collect, and borrows to cover the difference. But the statutory debt ceiling also instructs Treasury not to borrow more than a certain amount of money. When we hit the debt ceiling on Oct. 17, Treasury will lack the legal authority to borrow any more money to close the gap between spending and tax revenue.

At that point, there are basically three options. One is President Obama could decide that the government’s legal obligation to spend (and certain elements of the 14th Amendment) trump the statutory debt ceiling, and just order the Treasury to sell more bonds. The second option is Obama could instruct the Treasury to pay some of the government’s bills and just not pay the rest. The third option is to pay nobody. All three of these options face the same basic problem of seeming to be illegal. (The second one also faces the problem that Treasury says it lacks the logistical capacity to do it.)

The general consensus is that the third option would, among other things, provoke a global financial crisis by causing a default on U.S. treasury bonds—bonds that are meant to be the safest asset in the financial system. The first option may avoid this fate, but perhaps not. It’s difficult to imagine financial markets would be undisturbed by the prospect. And in general, simply nobody knows what anyone should do about anything if the debt ceiling is breached. Unlike with the shutdown, there is no overriding OMB guidance. There are no rules to spell out essential versus nonessential services. Officially, at least, there’s no contingency planning at all. It’s just a kind of terrifying world of uncertainty.

And that’s the big difference between these two events. There hasn’t been a government shutdown in a while but they were common in the 1970s and 1980s. They’re a big deal in Washington, D.C. because federal employees don’t get paid when they happen. But as long as it doesn’t last too long, it’ll be fine. A debt ceiling breach, by contrast, is completely unprecedented. There’s no guarantee that it’ll lead to a worldwide financial panic and a massive global depression, but there’s honestly no guarantee that it won’t. Nobody knows what will happen, and you should find that prospect terrifying.

[randallscott35]

Much Ado About Nothing.

[dellinger63]

Remember five years ago when we were told we have to spend to prevent going bankrupt?

One thing that spending did get us was $6 trillion more in debt. $40K for every man woman and child in the country, about $160K for every senior. And now we don't have the money to pay the seniors the money they already paid in? Something drastic needs to be done. The budget needs to be cut by a trillion and the debt ceiling should be raised and re-visited in 3 months and every three months after until steady progress is made.

And the next time Washington says it's going to give money to bailouts, junking cars, and bailing out failed cities the American people need to say no f---'n way!

Yea the economy has gotten better, but at what expense? Guess what the interest is on $6 trillion? It's the gift that keeps giving.

Ending on a positive. Thank God the President changed his mind about bombing Syria.