Presidents Debt Offer, Risky bt Cold be Win, Win

President's debt offer: risky but could be win-win

By CHARLES BABINGTON - Associated Press,JIM KUHNHENN - Associated Press | AP
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's hard to know which is more surprising: a Democratic president pushing historic cuts in spending, including Social Security and Medicare. Or a Republican-controlled House refusing to accept the deal and declare a huge victory for long-sought GOP goals.
Political orthodoxy has been turned on its head ever since President Barack Obama stepped up his call for a bipartisan "grand bargain" to raise the national debt ceiling and avert a default on U.S. obligations. The deal would include $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, mainly through steep spending cuts but also including up to $1 trillion in new federal revenue.
Those are far bigger targets than typical budget negotiations. And the spending cuts would seem more appropriate for a Republican president than a Democrat.
Some pundits and political insiders say Republicans should leap at the offer. But there's a hitch: The new revenue — mainly from overhauling the tax code and lowering rates by eliminating or limiting a broad swath of loopholes, deductions and tax breaks — presumably would violate a no-net-tax-hike pledge that scores of Republican lawmakers have signed.
Mostly for that reason, House Republicans so far have rejected Obama's overture, despite the interest shown by Speaker John Boehner. Some pro-Republican analysts seem bewildered.
Obama's offer of big spending cuts would have "brutally fractured the Democratic Party," and congressional Republicans probably "will come to regret this missed opportunity," wrote David Brooks, a moderate-to-conservative columnist for The New York Times.
Such comments lead to a question: Why did Obama make the overture, and how might it affect him and his party as he ramps up his re-election campaign?
The consensus answer, based on interviews with key players in Congress, the White House and elsewhere, is that Obama may be maneuvering himself into a win-win political position for 2012, although it's not without risks.
If Congress approves a version of the "grand bargain," Obama can run next year as a president who began taming the runaway deficit, extracted concessions on higher taxes from Republicans and put Medicare and Social Security on a possible path toward greater stability.
If congressional Republicans block the plan — and especially if the Aug. 2 debt ceiling deadline is missed — Obama might persuasively argue that he tried his best to strike a compromise, at some political risk to himself. Recent polls suggest that strategy is working, as Americans seem disgruntled with the Republicans' dug-in opposition.
Either way, Obama can appeal to the all-important independent voters next year, portraying himself as above the bitterly partisan House and Senate squabbles. Polls show that independents are deeply unhappy with Congress. Even if Obama's ratings are not spectacular, he fares better.
A CBS-New York Times poll found that 68 percent of independents think an agreement on spending and the debt ceiling should include "a combination of both tax increases and spending cuts," which is the president's position. Fifty-five percent of Republicans in the survey hold that view.

These following comments seem quite reasonable. Still waiting to see whether a deal is possible.


News from The Oval Office.

Obama, in an op-ed for USA TODAY, reiterated that he wants to strike a "big and meaningful" deal that combines spending cuts with asking "the wealthiest individuals and biggest corporations to pay their fair share through fundamental tax reform."
That means that "before we stop funding clean energy research, we should ask oil companies and corporate jet owners to give up the tax breaks that other companies don't get," Obama wrote. "Before we ask college students to pay more, we should ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. Before we ask seniors to pay more for Medicare, we should ask people like me to give up tax breaks they don't need and never asked for."

Cant believe the Republicans are going to force a default and a debt downgrading basically because they dont want Obama to come away with a "victory".
Completely dysfunctional Party driven off the cliff by the Tea Party members. Unbelieveable.

wow - what a great reason for default.

Senate and House Still Far Apart on Debt in 2 New Plans

By CARL HULSE, JENNIFER STEINHAUER and JACKIE CALMES
Published: July 25, 2011
New York Times

WASHINGTON – The Democratic Senate and Republican House put themselves on a legislative collision course Monday as they moved forward with significantly different plans on how to raise the debt limit and avert a possible federal default next week.

House Republican leaders pushed for a vote Wednesday on a two-step plan that would allow the federal debt limit to immediately be raised by about $1 trillion and tie a second increase next year to the ability of a new joint Congressional committee to produce more deficit reduction.

But top Senate Democrats called the proposal a “non-starter” and said they would advance their own plan to reduce the deficit by $2.7 trillion and raise the debt ceiling until after next year’s elections, saying it met the conditions that Republicans had laid down during the ongoing debt fight.

“We’re about to go over a cliff here,” Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who serves as majority leader, said Monday afternoon as he outlined his proposal.

He said that Republicans were essentially attempting to embarass President Obama in the middle of the 2012 election year by forcing another debt limit showdown and that Democrats would not go along with any plan that does not guarantee a debt limit increase through next year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/us...er=rss&emc=rss

The democrats playing politics?? Don't they recognize the seriousness of the situation?? Here's a decent plan to say, "hey, let's raise the ceiling, step back and reveiw", and the democrites saying, "no".

The Democrites are a totally dysfunctional party driven by the hard left socialists who want to put everyone's paycheck into a pot and distribute is equally amongst all Americans because that's "fair", yet they themselves hide their money from taxation using tax accountants, off shore "investments" and other vehicles.

Here's an introduction to this minority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal..._United_States

In case you are too lazy to hit the link, here's highlight.

Demographics of American liberals

While it is difficult to gather demographic information on ideological groups, recent surveys by the New York Times and CBS News, between 18% and 27% of American adults identify as liberal, versus moderate or conservative.[35] In the 2008 presidential election, exit polls showed that 22% of the electorate self-identified as "liberal."[36] According to a 2004 study by the Pew Research Center, liberals were the most educated ideological demographic and were tied with the conservative sub-group, the "Enterprisers", for the most affluent group. Of those who identified as liberal, 49% were college graduates and 41% had household incomes exceeding $75,000, compared to 27% and 28% as the national average, respectively.[37]

Liberalism also remains the dominant political ideology in academia, with 72% of full-time faculty identifying as liberal in a 2004 study.[38] The social sciences and humanities were most liberal, whereas business and engineering departments were the least liberal, though even in the business departments, liberals outnumbered conservatives 49% to 39%. Generally, the more educated a person is the more likely he or she is to hold liberal beliefs.[39]

In the 2000, 2004 and 2006 elections, the vast majority of liberals voted in favor of the Democrats, though liberals may also show support for the Greens.