Thread: This deal would have to get better to call it a disaster

'This deal would have to get better for it just to be a disaster'

Plan blasted for more spending without significant cuts

Posted: August 01, 2011
4:24 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh
© 2011 WND

The agreement by Barack Obama and some members of Congress that would allow the president to continue to borrow and spend money was blasted today by members of tea party organizations, including one who said it's worse than a disaster.

"This deal would have to get better for it just to be a disaster," Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation told WND. "We have a massive increase in the debt ceiling and no spending cuts until 2014."

The agreement on the proposal was announced by several congressional leaders and Obama over the weekend. It still needs affirmative votes in the House and Senate.

According to one report, the details of the proposal include permission for Obama to raise the debt ceiling in three steps


It also proposes spending cuts of some $2.4 trillion over 10 years, starting with a $917 billion cut now and another $1.5 trillion that would be defined by a 12-member panel of Congress that leaders would set up.

It also calls for, in nebulous terms, a vote in the House and Senate on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Reports out of Washington indicated the vote was anything but a sure bet.

But Phillips said spending cuts "proposed" for future years never will happen.

And it's unlikely the panel would produce anything beneficial to the nation, he said.

"You'll have six Democrats there who want to hike taxes, slash the defense budget and either not make cuts to entitlement or social programs or grow them," said Phillips.

Meanwhile, the GOP members could be expected to "raise the freshly laundered white flag of surrender" posted most recently by House Speaker John Boehner, he said.

Phillips said the Democrats' arguments on behalf of the debt ceiling hike – and its related taxes for consumers – has been defined handily as targeting corporate billionaires with jets.

"Billionaires and millionaires are going to find other ways to travel in style," he warned. "But it will impact pilots who fly the jets, the inflight cabin crew, the ground crew. They're not millionaires. The airport support services guys. The guys who build these aircraft. These are the people who will be hit."

He predicted that without a sudden – and soon – change in the nation's direction, "We will look like the 1930s, with people in the streets."

The GOP members in both houses of Congress, he said, "are being stampeded around like newly castrated cattle."

"There are some things worse than a default," Phillips told WND.

Sal Russo of Tea Party Express said it's obviously a bad bill because of the bad people sent to Congress.

"In 2006 and 2008 we elected a president and a Senate who believe the public wants more government services, higher taxes and a more European-style social democracy," he said.

That means, at this point, the best that can be hoped for is a "bad bill," he said.

He said that while the 2010 election was a repudiation of big government, the White House and Senate remain in control of those who want the nation's economy to grow more slowly, pay for their social agenda items and burden business.

He said the tea party influence has forced the nation to focus on the debate over borrowing and restricting taxes. But he said the remaining goal is to achieve significant cuts in government.

"There are a lot of bad people in office who want to spend money. … They really want to raise taxes on everybody. That's the way social democracies work," he said.

He said the obvious goal is to win the elections in the Senate and the White House.

Amy Kremer, the chairwoman of the Tea Party Express, told Fox News that voters in November put Washington on notice that fundamental changes were required, and Washington has failed to respond.

"This is not the fundamental change they wanted," she said. "I'm really upset that they're going out there threatening our military and seniors. It's absolutely shameful."

Mark Meckler of the Tea Party Patriots told Spiegel that the magazine's assumptions about a default simply were wrong.

"We take in over $220 billion in revenues every month and our debt service is only roughly $20 billion. The only way we will default is if the president of the United States makes the irresponsible choice not to pay our debts. We Tea Party Patriots put principles first, and we have to understand what America is about. Our country was founded on an idea: liberty. But it requires fiscal responsibility for people to be free. We are becoming slaves to our own government. Every U.S. family now owes $400,000 to $500,000 in national debt. We Tea Party Patriots fight for the future of the nation, and there can be nothing more patriotic than that," he said.

He told the magazine he didn't like Boehner's legislative plan, because its $22 billion in cuts was "ridiculously little."

"This is a question of spending. There is no amount of taxes that we could raise that would stop our deficit spending caused by politicians who have lied so often," he told the magazine.

Writing as the "conscience" of a liberal, Paul Krugman said in his New York Times column that the media shouldn't even be reporting the tea party's perspective.

"We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backwards to be accommodating," he wrote.

"So what do most news reports say? They portray is as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent."

Krugman wrote that the current predicament "is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war."

WND previously reported that U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., proposed legislation that would make certain the payments to senior citizens are made in a timely manner, no matter the status of the debt ceiling.

The president warned recently, "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd. There may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it."

Posey said if the checks are not mailed, it will only be because Obama wants them withheld.

"The president is essentially saying he could take incoming Social Security payroll taxes and spend them elsewhere," Posey said. "That money belongs to the nation's retired seniors who have spent their entire lives working and paying into the system.

"The federal government is obligated to make these payments and anything short of doing so should be considered theft," he said.

A recent poll also indicated that Americans by significant numbers want Washington to stop spending away the future, and a stunning 4 in 10 believe if the debt ceiling isn't raised, President Obama will punish the public with the way he allocates the hundreds of billions of dollars available.

The July 16-18 poll by Wenzel Strategies contacted 1,096 respondents through a telephone survey. It carries a margin of error of 2.93 percent.

It showed that 54.4 percent of the respondents believe the nation's fiscal situation should be fixed with cuts in government spending, while 21.4 percent say the debt ceiling should be raised so President Obama can borrow and spend more money, and 16.6 percent – led by Democrats – believe the government should raise taxes.

Fritz Wenzel, chief of Wenzel Strategies, said, "As the political argument about U.S. federal government spending ratchets up, a significant majority of Americans still want their leaders to focus mostly on cutting government spending instead of making plans to borrow more money or increase taxes."

"This latest polling does show a shift over the past two months toward a short-term fix from a bigger solution to the overall problem of spending by Washington, as the percentage of those who consider an increase in the debt ceiling to be the best solution has more than doubled – moving from 10 percent to 21 percent since this question was last asked in May. Meanwhile, the percentages of registered voters who most favored cuts in government spending decreased, down from 64 percent two months ago," Wenzel said.

"What I think we are seeing here is the realization by many that there is such political gridlock in Washington that Democrats and Republicans are so far apart on how to deal with government spending that a short-term solution needs to be found to get the nation through the 2012 elections without destroying the economy. Once that is done, wholesale changes – one way or another – can be made," Wenzel said. "This is clearly going to be a key issue in next year's presidential and congressional campaigns, but this survey also shows the Republicans have the upper hand in the argument at this point, as more than three times as many registered voters agree with them that the best solution is to cut government spending than agree with Democrats that taxes need to be raised.

"Whether they articulate that effectively on the campaign trail is another question indeed," he said.

More than 60 percent of the respondents said they would be willing to see the federal government "dramatically downsize" to deal with the debt issue, to 24 percent who said they wouldn't. And a startling 52.6 percent said they would be willing to see "entire agencies and departments of the federal government shut down." Thirty-six percent said they would not.

"Even among Democrats, slightly more than not favor big cuts to government. As is typically the case when details are placed on the table, there is a little less support for cuts in government. When asked specifically about the elimination of whole departments of the government, 53 percent favored such cuts, while 37 percent opposed them," Wenzel said. "Among Republicans and independents, more than not favored such cuts, but among Democrats, 51 percent opposed the elimination of whole departments, while 38 percent favored such action."

Wenzel said that by a 2-to-1 margin Americans don't believe that the government needs to borrow another $2 trillion, and respondents were split on whether the debt ceiling should be raised that amount.

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=328813

Bachmann: Debt Limit Deal Means ‘We Embrace Being Greece’

Monday, August 01, 2011
By Nicholas Ballasy
Video at the link

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said today on Laura Ingraham's radio show that the debt-limit deal struck by President Barack Obama and congressional leaders is “like saying we embrace being Greece.â€