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"Fiscal cliff" averted -- now what?
Congress didn't completely fall off the "fiscal cliff," but they're still hanging onto the edge.
By waiting until the last minute to scrape together a limited bill (which extends the Bush-era tax rates for most Americans and extends long-term unemployment insurance, among other things), Congress sidelined some major fiscal issues they initially sought to resolve before the new year.
"Cliff" spending cuts on hold
Leaders in Washington deferred for two months the $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts (known as "sequestration") set to hit the Pentagon and domestic programs this week. Additionally, the bill passed this week failed to raise the debt ceiling, even though the Treasury technically hit the $16.4 trillion limit Monday. Both of these issues will come to a head just as Congress is expected to vote on a new federal budget. The convergence of these issues practically guarantees that within a matter of weeks, Washington will once again find itself embroiled in another fiscal crisis.
Obama on "fiscal cliff" deal: good first step
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in recent days have decried the state of uncertainty that's lingered over Washington for months: "We all know uncertainty is the enemy of prosperity," Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., said on the House floor Tuesday evening. Congress this week did manage to erase fears that the middle class would face an income tax increase. Still, the next "fiscal cliff" not only keeps the threat of a government shutdown on the horizon, but it is also sure to revive seemingly intractable fights over government spending and programs like Social Security and Medicare.
In remarks Tuesday night, President Obama said Washington should strive to address these remaining fiscal issues "with a little bit less drama, a little less brinksmanship, [so as to] not scare the heck out of folks quite as much."
How'd we get here?
Congress enacted the $1.2 trillion "sequester" cuts because of the 2011 Budget Control Act. That bill, passed as a result of the last fiscal showdown, required Congress to enact the across-the-board cuts (half hitting the Pentagon and half hitting non-defense spending) if it failed to reach some other deficit reduction plan by late 2011. Not surprisingly, Congress failed. There's near-unanimous agreement in Washington, however, that making mindless, across-the-board cuts to the budget would do more harm than good to the economy.
- "Fiscal cliff" averted after deal clears House
- What the "fiscal cliff" bill means to taxpayers
- The art of the "fiscal cliff" deal
The "sequester" cuts were slated for enactment over 10 years, with about $110 billion going into effect this year. The deal passed this week allocates $24 billion in spending cuts and new revenues to defer the "sequester" cuts for two months.
Meanwhile, Washington also left negotiations over the "debt ceiling" -- the nation's legal borrowing limit -- for another day. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced last week that the government was expected to hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit this past Monday and that Treasury Department is already resorting to accounting gimmicks to skirt the limit, buying Congress a couple more months to raise the ceiling.
Raising the debt ceiling was a relatively routine procedure on Capitol Hill until 2011, when tea party-inspired Republicans demanded spending cuts in exchange for allowing the government to go further into the red. The 2011 showdown over the debt limit prompted Standard & Poor's to downgrade the Treasury's debt.
In a speech before the Business Roundtable on Dec. 5, 2012, Mr. Obama warned, "We are not going to play that game next year."
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Here you are HILLZ, in case you missed it earlier.
Put it this way, I'm all for Wal-Mart restructuring and downsizing, massive cuts and layoffs, fewer workers. But before that, there has to be a way to invest in small, local business again, and legislate childbirth some day so that demand can be controlled and prices fixed.
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lbj, you are a nut.
Legislate childbirth to control demand and fix prices? You have got to be out of your friggin mind. If this is your position, then there can be no lucid debate with you. Your perception of the world is not based in reality.
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Sure bubba -- guess that's why a white conservative republican, ted yolo, is now the representative of the FL-3 district!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Yoho
You get more delusional by the day!
Well, I'll just chop my billion-dollar bill into quarters, if that's ok.
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That would only be 4 quarters :p
A billion quarters equals a quarter billion, so he'll have find a sheet of 250 million dollar bills- four or them,and cut that into quarters.
have a good night, LindaG.
Good night!
Doubt it. Dan has decided to become a real estate tycoon on some bank's dime.
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Dan does it all. Expert alpine skier, skilled in outdoor rescue, a retired Army Medic. He's a non-for-profit start-up superstar- par excellence, health care industry wizard, time share mogul and housing tycoon. He's a caring landlord and property manager, a proprietary honorable career military serviceman, a guy who still hits the gridiron during spring ball training camp at West Point. He's a pennywise street smart businessman, a consummate wine taster and spirits aficionado. He is a successful real estate investor, beautiful young wife and kids. Living the dream he is.
The guy's done it all. Nothing more to say.
Put it this way, I'm all for Wal-Mart restructuring and downsizing, massive cuts and layoffs, fewer workers. But before that, there has to be a way to invest in small, local business again, and legislate childbirth some day so that demand can be controlled and prices fixed. More abundance of the necessary things for survival that don't get wasted by either being thrown out or cannabalized for unnecessary scrap, or sent off our soil. Economic rules that economize and politicize the process of beginning a family. That's the only solution, long term, that I see. I don't foresee rebuilding America and its infrastructure, and getting people back to work in alternative industries that show private sector growth patters, given the path we're on now.
There's just no personal accountability anymore, and the federal government just keeps creating massive health care and social bureaucracies that is caring on regulated private payrolls funded by taxpayers, for a wide cut of people who just see no opportunity before them, and cannot find a job. If the jobs lost aren't coming back ever, than there needs to be less of a population in the future that isn't formally and suitably retired or otherwise doesn't have to work.
There's not enough resources left to put EVERYBODY who is able-boded, back to work. We essentially pay people in this society to basically not work, and balance that out with other persons somewhere else in society who otherwise would be unemployed as well, by giving them a government job in a field tied to Social Security, Big Pharma, hospital program architecture or the legal system, or any combination thereof. A hundred million benefits recipients in America today! Massive amounts of health care and social workers, hospital and court folks, all regulated under a federal structure of one kind or another, with employees who benefits and pay scales drive up the debt ceiling.
It appears to be cheaper, at east in the near term, to run an economy that way, or let it run itself that way. War overseas, to the tune in the last 12 years of 3 trillion dollars by now. Where would all those jobs go, if we bring the troops home. What are the veterans gonna do? Hell, we're still to this day answering that same question for those still alive and who served during Viet Nam.
I don't know about the debt crisis but it is only relative to the amount of means left to survive as a society without massive slow downs, unbearable austerity, hostilities and widespread unrest. We could be living like people are in Syria right now, if we don't by the midpoint of this century start looking for serious alternatives. Ones that might seem radical now, but will pay off in the longer term.
Things don't naturally grow from the middle out, and nor does our economy. Things have to grow from the bottom up, and people who are working for starvation wages need to expand their horizons and be doing other things, if indeed they are on a certain amounts of public assistance. Not all levels of public assistance, but some level for those who work but still cannot afford their bills and household expenses. So should their government bureaucracy handlers. There's a better way.
It starts with thinning the herd, and doing so by enacting innovative legislation that, essentially, dictates the requirements for having a child. Violation of such requirements should involve a process that isn't actually too unlike what we do in this society anyway. Taking people to family court (men mostly is the usual trend) and punishing them for being a 'bad' parent and non-supportive. (I know, it happened to me, my child was basically kidnapped by the system. And my child support was current, and I was in my child's life regularly.)
There can only be so many mouths to feed, and the young generation today hopefully sees that a little better than previous generations. This is not the guilded age, and we're never gonna go back to one. One hundred years from now, there won't hardly be any oil left, and people will begin to starve immensely. Why should the agony being felt already all around the world today, be any less than that of what human beings are going to be experiencing next century? Should it not be far more, if we're truly caring for the future of the world and the unborn
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Hillz: If you think wiring up circuit boards can be done by a trained monkey, obviously you've never done the job. The type of soldering done on them takes quite a bit of skill or you get bridges and cold solder joints. Doing the job by machine (wave soldering) doesn't work very well. I've had to clean that mess on more than one occasion when I intalled radios in cop cars.
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Maybe you didn't read my comment completely or just misunderstood what you read. If what you are doing requires any skill or training, you would be in demand, and thus, if you were smart, would negotiate better pay because of that demand.
If you are bottom wrung hourly wage unskilled labor, a monkey could do your job and you should be grateful just to have job.
This is the distinction between reality and what the Keynesian nuts are spouting. They talk about the "downtrodden" worker at the bottom and why aren't they getting a bigger share of the "take" from the corporation?
Know why - because the unskilled laborers who will take less than that are standing 10 deep behind you. That's why.
Working in a skilled manufacturing environment sends many a pretender back into the HILLZAGAIN.
Either way, it matters not to me. I've done plenty of hard work in my lifetime, and I am formally educated as well.
It is just an opinion, but the minimum wage is obscene and there's just no point to paying people it AND handing them food stamps, free child health care, housing benefits and rent assistance, in addition to SSI for some others. It makes no sense at all, HILLZ, and if you don't see that, that's too bad for you.
You're right about the "ten deep behind you remark," and its the result of having too many human resources and not enough of every other type of resource. It's why we have Big brother looking after so many. You probably would just as well see them starve with ZERO assistance.
I got your drift.