Fact Check: Dueling Debt Speeches

[lloyd9988]

I'll fully admit that I'm a Classical Progressive, so of course what I'm about to say will exhibit that bias pretty clearly. Currently, the Democrats are far more allowably-diverse in thought than the Republicans. The latter is pandering almost exclusively to the most extreme elements of their party, the pseudo-Randian parts that believe in some taxless fantasy land where charity will suddenly replace the government's welfare programs in toto (just keep your hands off the older generation's Social Security and Medicare, but feel free to call both of those services evil incarnate to win votes). That's why they oppose any kind of tax increase, along with opposing things like closing tax loopholes or letting existing tax cuts for the wealthy expire. Whether it's actually prudent to raise taxes or ensure that people and companies aren't gaming the system in this situation is completely irrelevant - they haven't gotten the memo that trickle-down economics is a failure of such catastrophic proportions that it's actually a major contributing factor to this crisis, and continue to espouse its benefits while doing the political equivalent of plugging their ears and shouting 'la la la I can't hear you la la la I can't hear you'.

Not all of them are like that, but the moderate elements of the party are very marginalized by the fringe, and have been on that downward slide since the mid-90s. The reports of Republicans voting for Obama in 2008 were of those moderates, and probably the most center-leaning of them too.

Meanwhile, it's far more simple to try and paint their opponents as Stalinists than it is to engage in respectful and intelligent discourse. Nevermind that they can't seem to grasp (or rather, actively choose to ignore) the fundamental differences between the American left and Communism, because they're pretty much of the mindset that the Cold War never ended - or just rely on that idea to keep themselves in office due to fearmongering. There's also usually a rather scary conflation of those views with the Religious Right, and that's used quite a bit to keep the fear going. Heaven forbid you mention the Rerum Novarum - except that it wouldn't do much good anyway, since the Religious Right stereotypically consists of Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, not Catholics.

On the flip side, I'd view the average Democrat as being of questionable allegiance to any of that party's caucuses - you might get some with more Social Democrat or Labour-esque views, or they could be Blue Dogs. And then when you add in the voter apathy in the majority of the population, you end up with a small group of vocal die-hards on both sides duking it out with each other and serving their own interests than acting on the behalf of the public-at-large. One side does something, the other immediately tries to block it or reverse it once they gain power.


RE: the actual debt ceiling talks, I think in many ways this flare-up has only spurred both sides to actually agree that having such an arbitrary limit that can potentially ruin our financial standing is pointless. It only became an important talking point because the aforementioned fringe decided to turn it into one and dig in their heels to grandstand. It'd be far easier and less contentious to abolish the thing entirely, but contention and the threat of economic ruin are perfect things to bash your opponent with come election time.

Though I do believe that Democrats are more thoughtful, some do the most outrageous things. Personally, I'm not saying that I dislike our president because I don't think that he was the one who put us in this situation but to not do at least one free trade agreement during his whole term is saying something about either his confidence or intelligence as a president. Of course, many people will try and jump on the President for that.

I also do believe that many of the politicians are still in the cold-war thinking as well. That's why our second highest spending is in defense(First is Social Security and Medicare). Ever since WWII, politicians are so afraid of another war offsetting that they spend so much money on defense more than other things. That's why $350 billion on spending cuts came from defense on the new implamented bill. But, again, this bill is just another way to help keep the politican's hands clean so they can be voted back into office to run another term. If they really cared about this country, they would get off their high-horse and try fix this problem in a reasonable manner. At least in my opinion.

I've never heard of any Republicans wanting (or hoping) for an income for the federal government in the form of a taxless charity. From what I heard on wsj.com, they say they would need to jump through a lot of hoops just to raise taxes... Which just makes them sound lazy... but, if taxes were raised, wouldn't that just lessen the confidence in people spending?? Like, the people who are working so hard already to earn a paycheck to get by would find it discouraging to have more of their money taken away by the government when they are already struggling to get by. And, the less the people spends, the less revenue goes into the government.

As far that the Social Democrats and the Labour-esque views, I just find it upon the new generation not even bothering to read up on these sort of things. Honestly, how many young people do you see reading a newspaper?? In my hometown, not that many. Then again, I live in a retirement town (Bad place for a 19 year old) so it could just be the location I live in. Not every young person is like that, but its just how it looks to me.

Lastly, the debt ceiling does talk, and nearly everyone in America is aware of it. But this debt ceiling also acts as a way to gain votes. If you have one party solve the debt ceiling problem(Which has been blown out of proportion just to gain votes), then that party automatically looks like heros in nearly everyone's eyes. Not to mention, in the upcoming elections, any candidate can use the words "Debt ceiling" and "Solve" in a sentence and a big clap of cheers will arise. What sucks, though, is that the new bill implamented won't do sh!t because it cuts the debt down $914 billion while raising the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion... Its nice that the debt ceiling allows for more jobs to recover, but it sucks that this bill is suppose to Solve anything?? 10 years for a $14 trillion debt and we're only bringing down $914 billion... Now, I'm no math genius, but there is a BIG difference between a billion and a trillion.

You mean vote, not veto, I think.

You can't vote American politicians out of office except in some rare cases (Wisconsin allows recall elections, as an example). There is no way to force a vote of no confidence.You simply have to wait until their term expires and elect someone else.

(You hear that, Texas. ELECT SOMONE ELSE. I am very tired of twelve years of Rick fucking Perry. He's worse than W, and goddamn, to be that bad, it has to be either a God given talent or something you really, really work at.)

Great... That sucks :/ But, then again, I wouldn't vote out Nansi Pelosi just yet. Things have been doing a bit better for Arizona, we've got more jobs in copper mining and, until Arizona starts to decline on jobs and our state increases on crime, we're keeping her.

Also, does the same thing apply to a president?? (Like, we can't vote a president out of office) Not saying I want to kick out Obama because I don't find him to be the sole cause of this whole mess, but I'm just curious because of Bush.

[Kariudo]

Remember back in the 90s when Clinton was almost impeached?
It's possible, but it takes a whole lot to get impeached (and the process can only be started by congress IIRC.)

Not trying to go off topic here, but while I have the chance...
There's a lot of political hype about job creation. It seems that a lot of the focus is on creating unskilled labor. In the end, what good are jobs like copper mining? Jobs of that sort are only gonna get you enough money to pay rent+utilities, food, gas and insurance for your car (with some room for incidentals). It is my opinion that we should be concerned about adding skilled labor jobs.

[Qyot27]

I've never heard of any Republicans wanting (or hoping) for an income for the federal government in the form of a taxless charity. From what I heard on wsj.com, they say they would need to jump through a lot of hoops just to raise taxes... Which just makes them sound lazy... but, if taxes were raised, wouldn't that just lessen the confidence in people spending?? Like, the people who are working so hard already to earn a paycheck to get by would find it discouraging to have more of their money taken away by the government when they are already struggling to get by. And, the less the people spends, the less revenue goes into the government.

It's a fairly standard Tea Party and co. talking point that welfare programs (any and all of them) are a cancer and the real solution would be charities (religious or not) doing that work, not the government. I've seen it reiterated dozens of times on other websites and talk programs with such certainty that it's like they'd seen this idea actually work in practice. The only problem is that history and other political wranglings over the past 30 years have shown that it clearly doesn't work in practice - give people more money, they stash it away or invest in overseas ventures that starve local economies to death; I simply have no reason to believe these same groups would suddenly be giving mountains and mountains of their money to charity just because the government wasn't taking it out of their paycheck and allotting it toward Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. People might have an outpouring of emotion over a tragedy like any of the natural disasters that occur yearly, but to solve something like poverty or making preventative health care available/affordable to most citizens, forget it. They aren't that altruistic.

'Raising taxes' is not a uniform concept. We have progressive taxation - you fall into different brackets based on the amount of money you make as income, and then this is used to calculate how much you pay. Higher brackets pay more, lower brackets pay less. If a tax hike occurs, it would not be on the lower brackets. Extraneous taxes (like sales taxes) are the only ones applied at the same rate to everyone, but sales taxes can vary from state to state and even county to county (for instance, we pay a 7% sales tax here in Pinellas County, but across the bay in Hillsborough County it's 6% - the extra 1% here goes toward county works projects, or at least it's supposed to).

Lastly, the debt ceiling does talk, and nearly everyone in America is aware of it. But this debt ceiling also acts as a way to gain votes. If you have one party solve the debt ceiling problem(Which has been blown out of proportion just to gain votes), then that party automatically looks like heros in nearly everyone's eyes. Not to mention, in the upcoming elections, any candidate can use the words "Debt ceiling" and "Solve" in a sentence and a big clap of cheers will arise. What sucks, though, is that the new bill implamented won't do sh!t because it cuts the debt down $914 billion while raising the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion... Its nice that the debt ceiling allows for more jobs to recover, but it sucks that this bill is suppose to Solve anything?? 10 years for a $14 trillion debt and we're only bringing down $914 billion... Now, I'm no math genius, but there is a BIG difference between a billion and a trillion.

The concept of a 'debt ceiling' is what's useless, not the effect it actually has (think about it this way: it's pointless to shoot yourself in the foot, but if you did that the pain and damage isn't pointless at all). As was noted on one of the reports about it I watched, the only two countries that actually have a debt ceiling are the U.S. and Denmark. No other country seems to have a need for such a thing. The original intent was to make it a goalpost to reign in government spending, but it's absolutely useless when Congress just raises it whenever it needs to (and before the debacle over it these past few weeks/months, Congress would raise it with nary a second thought - it didn't matter which of the two parties had majority status). And of course, we saw first hand the kind of political circus it sparks when you don't reach a deal on it in a timely manner - like the, was it $1.8 billion?, of losses incurred by it being locked up in this mud fight. $1.8 billion that the taxpayers have to foot now. To say nothing of what might have happened otherwise.

What would happen is that if one side 'solves' the issue, it's going to run afoul of the other's pet ideology, regardless of whether it's actually coupled with things both sides could actually agree on (like a general goal of 'reducing the deficit' - it's all about what gets cut). Cutting funds to social programs would piss off the Democrats; cutting defense, and by that I mean far more than this bill did, would piss off the Republicans. No one is going to be completely happy, and chances are they're going to be equally angry about it.

[Kionon]

Remember back in the 90s when Clinton was almost impeached?
It's possible, but it takes a whole lot to get impeached (and the process can only be started by congress IIRC.)

Impeaching a president for being inconsistent in his testimony about consensual, if extramarital, sexual relationship.

Not impeaching a president for (or more accurately a vice president) for twisting the Constitution into a pretzel to increase executive power and encroaching on protections limiting searches and seizures.

...No, I'm not bitter at all. Not. At. All.