Why Republicans have so fetishized passing a “budget” when it is the authorization bills that actually matter is beyond me.

Red or blue, peacocks are peacocks.

It would be wonderful if Congress did not get paid. After all, it’s not like they’re actually working.

Thanks Jon.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for House Dems to call for an amendment legalizing pot or raising the cap on payroll taxes about $113,000.

My gosh, I thought they had all the leverage!

That was last Congress. It seems the House leadership is not sure what the Senate Democrats are going to do about the filibuster. Wonder if Reid’s opinion depends on what happens with the debt ceiling?

I am really suprised the Repubs caved. I wonder what really happened behind the scenes? Who got paid off? Perplexing . . .

I have a theory.

The Congressional Republicans are all about taking victory from O, right? Well, I think they saw some collusion between Boehner and O for getting some kind of Grand Bargain passed with the excuse of the debt ceiling “crisis”.

The best way to take away the ability for O to have a victory is to take away the crisis that will allow the victory. So, no debt ceiling crisis.

I’m not. The rich own all sorts of investments, including in our government. What do you think happens to those if the rest of the world thinks we’re going to default on our obligations to anything that touches our economy?

It’s not to the benefit of the rich to hold the limit hostage or even create an air of uncertainty.

I think they’re concerned that they’ll cause our economy to be downgraded and that will impact the market. We’re already looking at an economy that is slowing. The last thing they need is to devalue investments.

Maybe. However, they’ve allowed two rounds of the very same uncertainty in the last 18 months with the debt ceiling and then the fiscal cliff. Were those two incidents a mistake?

It not hard to figure out. Obama was not going to cave this time. He communicated it through the Wall Street community. The Koch Brothers got wind of it. And voila. The GOP snaps to.

But this face-saving measure is kinda strange kabuki. Give the Tea Party majority of the majority something meaningless to vote for that will either sit idle in the Senate, or the Senate will strip out the debt ceiling and leave the meaningless budget crap. (The Senate could for example just pass the President’s budget as is and send it to the House as a budget bill. Anything that’s punitive on Congress can work to the President’s advantage.)

The GOP faces three choices: raise taxes, cut Medicare and Social Security, or cut military spending. They face those choices because they control the House spending committees. The Democrats can sit back and take potshots. That’s the situation. Will the Democrats use it to the people’s advantage? Cynicism says No. But we will have to wait and see.

Public opinion has been on the Democratic side with regards to the budget AND they lost the election so yes, I’d say they believe they made a mistake.

I think it’s interesting that Cantor is attempting to blame the Senate for not rubberstamping his version of the budget or “cutting” what he wants cut in their version.

They’re positioning themselves for the political blame game. It’s all the Senate’s fault that they won’t pass what the House wants.

IMHO, they won the election–we’re talking about the Richie Riches of the world, right?–and public opinion isn’t worth their billing time.

Do the elite benefit more from shifting wealth away from the lower income brackets toward the top of the income pyramid by cutting SSMM, raising payroll taxes, and keeping military spending as is, or do they benefit more from keeping the economic status quo and not send the economy back into recession? I argue that the elites have benefitted more from the economic collapse itself, so I think they are not concerned at all about worsening economic conditions. (Looking for link that included handy graph showing how wealth has moved upward since the economic collapse, but haven’t found it).

They are all still after a “grand bargain“.

The House will not vote to raise revenue or cut defense and they can’t get to a meaningful number without going after Medicare and possibly Medicaid. Most importantly, we must remember that the long term goal of the Republicans is to privitize and voucher Medicare. The opposition Democrats have no long term goal.

They want a bite out of SS too, even thought it has nothing to do with the budget. Obama will give it to them.

The Richie Riches have a tenuous hold and they know it. We outnumber them. They need to make it appear as if they’ve lost while making Congress people commit political suicide.

They haven’t managed to keep the DoD gravy train intact or cut Social Security yet. They need to either change public perception by making the almighty deficit the most important thing evah(which required them taking a puny tax hit and decoupling it from spending) or they need to find enough lobbyist positions for Congress members to fill when they get deposed for voting to cut programs that everyone knows are popular and not the problem.

We need to repeat over and over our Defense budget is the largest in the world it is bigger than China, Great Britain and 8 other countries combined. People tend to be very surprised to learn how much we spend on “defense.”

Objectively speaking, it is the Republicans whose actions have averted cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Of course, they want a grand bargain. Putting off the debt ceiling for 3 months just says that they don’t have the votes for it yet.

They need to convince the public that the deficit is so very, very important(after years of saying otherwise) and convince them that they already raised taxes(even though what they raised was less than the gimmees they also approved.)

It’s ironic considering they also are the ones insisting that these cuts occur to begin with. They’ve been calling for “entitlement cuts” for years.

The National Memo has more: http://www.nationalmemo.com/house-republicans-announce-vote-on-three-month-debt-limit-extension/

The GOP-to-English translation of this is: We know that to let the debt limit function would kill not just our economy but the world’s, yet the crazy base that we’ve spent a half-century making crazy via the Southern Strategy won’t let us openly do the right thing, so we have to smuggle it in there with a slap at Harry Reid to save face.

That’s where we come in.

We keep reminding everyone — through letters to the editor, phone calls to radio/TV call-in shows, email forwards and retweets and Facebook shares, you name it — that a) these clowns cut taxes on the rich AND b) lied us into two major wars that have lasted longer than our official involvement in any other wars. They didn’t give a hoot about the deficit then, unless they were following the Norquist plan to run it up so it could be used as an excuse to cut social programs.

We remind everyone that Dick Cheney said “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter”.

And we do it over and over and over again. Continuously.

making the almighty deficit the most important thing evah

That’s why I think this move by the Congressional Republicans is more about preventing the optics of an O win more than any political play by for and of the elites.

I honestly believe that the Congressional Republicans who are no longer planning to hold hostages over the debt ceiling are more concerned with political manuvouring and trying to keep their jobs than with representing the interests of the elite. This time.

Yes. Considering those have been the peeps who have historically advocated cutting entitlements and slashing the safety net, it’s worth asking why they are not taking the opportunity to do it now.

Huh. Okay. The Congressional R’s are on board with the Grand Bargain but since there aren’t enough total number of bipartisan votes to get it done this time, they’re waiting another 3 months to whip the votes to get it passed? Maybe.

I think the Rs are worried about placating the elites and about their political futures, and that these two concerns are intertwined. If the U.S. defaults on it’s debt, everyone (including the elites) lose their shirts. The Rs finally agreed to lift the debt the last time because Wall Street was panicking. I don’t think the Rs care if the middle class loses their retirement funds, but they sure do care if the elites (aka, their donors) lose a significant portion of their wealth.