Apr 19 2011
How To Use The Debt Ceiling To Control The White House
OK, so we need to raise the national debt ceiling. Here is my proposal – drag it out until the 2012 elections. Here is how.
Each month allow the government to borrow money for a very narrow item or program, say Medicare. As part of the price for giving the White House a 1-2 years worth debt ceiling increase for Medicare alone, we pass Ryan’s fixes to Medicare.
Then we look at the EPA, and we agree the White House can borrow some money to fund the EPA for 2 years, but it will require suspension of all this CO2 nonsense and investigations into the soundness of the now disproved AGW theories.
Every month raise the debt to keep one element of government alive for the next 2 years – at a price.
Don’t ever throw out a debt ceiling rise that covers more than one area of government. Require the Dems to make the case as to why we cannot cut wasteful, non-producing and marginal programs (or trade them in as block grants to the states to implement).
We need this hammer for two years, don’t sell it too quickly.
Update: And this is why my proposal is not a political game, but something we must do before our nation’s economy collapses again:
(1) The idea that we will have anything like currently anticipated entitlement payouts plus currently anticipated tax rates is a fantasy;
(2) This gap is enormous, and represents the “mother of all bubbles”;
(3) Our debt situation means that we need to address it quite soon or face a funding crisis; and therefore
(4) The correct primary metric for evaluating anybody’s plan to do this is what practical measures it puts in place now and how much additional time this creates for us prior to this crisis, rather than theoretical and unenforceable promises about the distant future.
It is way past time to get serious folks.
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This sounds like a “pay n go” approach that Pelosi used. And it didn’t work.
I agree that this is way past time to get serious. But seriously, ya think Obama and the Senate Dems will be this serious? Obama and the Senate Dems will go on the road with their ridiculous unfactual attacks.
The more they attack with those comments like the Republicans wanting to kill seniors, the more they now look worse.
It doesn’t work anymore, Dems!
Lurker – they have no choice. If the House limits the debt limit to cover specific programs then Congress (who controls the purse) can dole out the money once we know some responsible actions are being put in place.
Except for Obama and his executive orders (Re: Czars)….right?
Nope – executive orders cannot move money!
Does anyone know if the Ryan budget addresses defunding Obamacare?
The reality of the situation we face at the moment is that already cooked in spending will make it necessary to do some kind of increase. Even the most neutral cold analysis of the financial numbers support this.
Even IF we could pass spending reductions and defundings and get them past a likely WH veto they would still take a while to turn the ship of financial state around.
All we can likely do now is slow future increases until we gain a majority in the Senate and possibly the WH to stop the veto possibilities for true financial reform.
You can go back to the days of the Grace Commission or even just have your everyday CPA look at our books and point to tons of real savings just out of the waste that rolls along with nearly every program out there.
Mean while we pay a substantial tax burden (well unless we are part of the near 45% who don’t pay taxes now) for our tax bill and end up having a compliance cost load of near 30 cents on a dollar as a country to document the taxes we do pay.
70,000 pages of tax regulations really don’t help to ease that effort.
I can personally say that the tax code is totally off the rails.
Each quarter I electronically file my taxes to keep from deforesting half the country.
Every quarter my submission runs over 3000 pages in length and I am not really in that complex of a tax position.
That figure doesn’t even include a single required attachment and all those continuation pages for documentation of every last stock trade I do. Now considering that runs over 1200 trades per day average you can imagine how large that section alone is.
Read more: http://nanosecondinv.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=gensocialism&action=display&thread=18916#ixzz1JzjIjQHR
I think we just need to face reality…..OBAMA IS IN LA LA LAND!
Today he told the college students in your state AJ that our budget is so far out of whack because Bush fought 2 wars we didn’t pay for, he gave the rich tax breaks not paid for and prescription drugs not paid for. Are we as a voting population so dumb that we are going to believe this lie and reelect Obama?
AJ – I Like It.
Kathie, yes, I’m coming across many useful idiots that are so willing to vote for Obama.
I guess the mainstream media is boxing Paul Ryan into a corner while making comments to ensure Paul Ryan’s bill will not fly even when they win all three houses in 2012.
I was able to go to a neighborhood reception for Congressman Louie Gohmert tonight – always nice to be able to talk to your rep in person. I went primarily because I had one question I wanted to ask him, and I think his answer was quite revealing.
I asked him: Are the House Republicans serious about Paul Ryan’s plan? – he replied in a tone that was both very serious and disappointed: “Some of us are. The leadership isn’t – yet.”
Remember, this is from someone who’s been on the inside of the GOP House caucus meetings – if he thought they were really behind Ryan, he’d have been proud to say so. It would be better for everyone, including him, if we would tell his constituents everything is fine with the GOP. But he’s too straightforward to say what he obviously does not believe.
Boehner still has a chance to pull out a home run with this debt limit bill. He needs one, and he needs to get serious about facing this country’s problems.
I just don’t get it. Either the government is going to cut Medicare and Medicaid, there is already a panel set up by Obama of 9 persons to decide what the programs will cover, or I own insurance, subsidized by the federal government, and I make my own choices. I already buy insurance to cover the prices charged by medical providers so I won’t be turned down. I pay for a drug plan and the government takes $98 a month from my social security check. So just what is Obama saying?
WWS, did Louie explain why the leadership was not quite behind Paul Ryan’s bill? Is it because of the gridlock? I thought John Boehner wanted Paul to go ahead and release it. I think everyone knows that Paul’s bill doesn’t have any chance of enactment…just waiting for 2012.
Kathie, your last post reminds me of this cartoon: http://wizbangblog.com/assets_c/2011/04/ObamasClearContrast-thumb-450×360-194.jpg
wws, I see that intrade has Obama’s chances of 57 percent of getting re-elected. Everybody else were very low. Seems odd given Obama’s low polling numbers.
people read WAY too much into intrade. It’s best thought of as a snapshot of the conventional wisdom at any given time – but the conventional wisdom has been extraordinarily poor at predicting anything important the last couple of years.
Every republican has low odds right now because it’s going to be so hard to make it through the pack of contenders and come out on top. When one of them finally breaks out, then Intrade odds might start to actually have some predictive ability.
and as far as waiting til 2012 to fix the budget: Seen what oil is doing? Seen what gold is doing? We don’t have that long.
So while Obama and his dems fight against the Republicans over the FY2012 leading to a gridlock and NO FY2012 budget bill, then we’ll soon see some negative economic reaction…
That why we’re seeing the recent headlines about us reaching the debt ceiling limit within a week?
Someone needs to make a LOLcat like picture … instead of “ceiling cat” make it “ceiling debt” … with a wad of cash peeking out from some ceiling tile pushed askew.
Ceiling debt is watchin Obama!
What makes you think that obama will be constrained by those policies? He hasn’t been yet. In fact, he has already said more or less that he will do as he pleases. Remember? He won?
Obama will simply write an executive order to raise the debt ceiling limit, right?