What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[koalabear]

Tax Incentives on the Block as Lawmakers Eye Deficit Reduction

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...awmakers-eye-deficit-reduction/#ixzz1UVMBdWqo

 

[mercury14]

Tax Incentives on the Block as Lawmakers Eye Deficit Reduction

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...awmakers-eye-deficit-reduction/#ixzz1UVMBdWqo

But...

Republicans just cried to high heaven when Obama even talked about getting rid of tax benefits for the already profitable private jet industry. Now it's going to be okay?


(and let's ignore the fact that Republicans insisted on defense cuts that will hurt the aerospace industry far more than rolling back their subsidy)

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

And here I thought that S&P told us that revenues were okay, but we had to stop spending.

Spending:...Is that how you heard it?

Are the Republicans responsible for lengthening the recession?
If so, how?

That wasn't what S&P said. I'm not sure what source you're using for news.. But it sure isn't the statement released by S&P stating the reason for the downgrade.

One of S&P's explicit criticisms of the compromise was that it didn't address the biggest drivers of the nation's debt -- Social Security and Medicare -- and didn't allow for additional tax revenue. - CNN Money

They also stated that S&P changed its baseline assumption that the Bush tax cuts would expire on schedule in 2012 because Republicans are so insistent that they must be renewed. “We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues,” wrote S&P. That adds $4 trillion over ten years to the projected deficits.

So no, S&P didn't tell us that revenues were OK, quite the opposite in fact.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

You said a three million man "army." Which is false. China is the enemy, has been for years, and most of our major contingency plans involve countering their continuing build-up and military belligerency.

What's that phrase you love to use so much? Picking fly shit from pepper?
You knew what he meant, and chose to play(?) stupid.

The fact is that we spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined. It's madness (or willful ignorance) that anyone could think that there isn't a massive amount of waste that could be cut from that budget, not to mention non defense discretionary spending.

Someone should tell China that they're the enemy.. While they're at it they should tell US companies to stop supplying the "enemy" with aid by shipping manufacturing jobs to them.

 

[lustatopia]

The fact is that we spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined. It's madness (or willful ignorance) that anyone could think that there isn't a massive amount of waste that could be cut from that budget, not to mention non defense discretionary spending.

Someone should tell China that they're the enemy.. While they're at it they should tell US companies to stop supplying the "enemy" with aid by shipping manufacturing jobs to them.

You're wrong Ulaven. The only thing keeping this planet from descending into WW III is a US military force that can not be challenged anywhere on the planet, in several theatres of war simultaneously. China is our primary adversary, but we have many other enemies who long to see the end of Pax Americana.

 

[Sean Renaud]

You're wrong Ulaven. The only thing keeping this planet from descending into WW III is a US military force that can not be challenged anywhere on the planet, in several theatres of war simultaneously. China is our primary adversary, but we have many other enemies who long to see the end of Pax Americana.

Then why didn't WWIII happen on schedule in the 60's when the US could be challenged even by relatively small nations like Vietnam and Korea?

 

[koalabear]

But...

Republicans just cried to high heaven when Obama even talked about getting rid of tax benefits for the already profitable private jet industry. Now it's going to be okay?


(and let's ignore the fact that Republicans insisted on defense cuts that will hurt the aerospace industry far more than rolling back their subsidy)

Stop proving you are a moron, everyone knows it, MORON.

 

[koalabear]

That wasn't what S&P said. I'm not sure what source you're using for news.. But it sure isn't the statement released by S&P stating the reason for the downgrade.

One of S&P's explicit criticisms of the compromise was that it didn't address the biggest drivers of the nation's debt -- Social Security and Medicare -- and didn't allow for additional tax revenue. - CNN Money

They also stated that S&P changed its baseline assumption that the Bush tax cuts would expire on schedule in 2012 because Republicans are so insistent that they must be renewed. “We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues,” wrote S&P. That adds $4 trillion over ten years to the projected deficits.

So no, S&P didn't tell us that revenues were OK, quite the opposite in fact.

What's that phrase you love to use so much? Picking fly shit from pepper?
You knew what he meant, and chose to play(?) stupid.

The fact is that we spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined. It's madness (or willful ignorance) that anyone could think that there isn't a massive amount of waste that could be cut from that budget, not to mention non defense discretionary spending.

Someone should tell China that they're the enemy.. While they're at it they should tell US companies to stop supplying the "enemy" with aid by shipping manufacturing jobs to them.

Seek counseling, then stop picking fly shit from pepper, it can't be sanitary.

 

[lustatopia]

Then why didn't WWIII happen on schedule in the 60's when the US could be challenged even by relatively small nations like Vietnam and Korea?

Because, World War was not to the advantage of all the major players.

Things have changed dramatically since the 1950's. No longer can China or anyone else brutally oppress dissent. Tianamen Square taught the Chinese that when they murder civilians, the world finds out and they lose face. It's the same all over the world. Turkey would have already massacre all the Kurds like they did the Armenians long ago, but they can't. The world is watching. Syria would like just to kill 20,000 people in Hama, to pacify the whole country, just like they did before in the 1950's, but they can't. The whole world is watching. Burma likewise, and so on and on. Israel could finish off those pesky Palestinians. Iran could take control of the Gulf States...Russia take back part of its lost empire....

The list of aggrieved power centres with the means to simply kill their opposition has grown very long in recent years. They're all itching for the opportunity to cleanse away their problem people. It's all because of this damn information/media age that they can't. Everyone is now connected to everyone else. A honest dictator can't quietly do a genocide or an invasion anymore without having the unsavory details broadcast into every living room and every computer on the planet.

So the world has a back log of conflicts that could be "solved" quickly by military force, but that process has been frozen by the whole world watching. Rapes never happen in the middle of busy intersections, unless, of course, the whole system has collapsed and anarchy rules.

And that's the clue.... The only reason the WWW exists intact and the dominance of peaceful and free western civilisation with it is because of the massive strength of the US military to command the air, sea and land anywhere on the planet they damn well choose to go. Take that away and the whole global media structure that watches all but the darkest corners of this planet collapses overnight.

The decades of relative global peace are only due to Pax Americana combined with the loss of face power elites feel with they act as brutal as was common only a few decades ago. That's why there are no modern Stalins or Mao. Pol Pot couldn't easily happen today.

And that's why this planet is ripe for WW III. Just about everyone is armed to the teeth and just about everyone who matters would like a good crisis as cover to pursue their own local vendettas or expansion plans. Including the asshole currently sitting in the Oval Office.

And if history is any guide, when all the major players calculate with Machiavellian precision that war is to their advantage, there will be world war.

The window of opportunity begin in the spring of 2012.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

You're wrong Ulaven. The only thing keeping this planet from descending into WW III is a US military force that can not be challenged anywhere on the planet, in several theatres of war simultaneously. China is our primary adversary, but we have many other enemies who long to see the end of Pax Americana.

No, I'm not wrong. But you are, on several points. Actually, your entire post couldn't be MORE wrong if you tried.

The US military is not alone in keeping the world from descending into WWIII. We play our part, sure, but we are hardly the "only thing" keeping another World War at bay. We are hardly able to maintain a presence in two small middle eastern countries without stretching our forces to the limit, let alone fight in several theaters at once successfully. You overestimate our importance and influence in world affairs as well as our capabilities. You're simply wrong on all counts here.

What keeps those countries who would like to see the end of ours by military means are held in check? It's not the might of our armed forces, troops, but by the threat of utter annihilation worse than Japan suffered at the end of WWII. We are, after all, the only country to ever actually use a nuclear weapon against anyone. Which makes it kind of ironic that we assume to tell other countries they can't have them because they might use them.. All the while maintaining enough nuclear firepower to end the world as we know it.

China has now become the bogey-man that Japan once was. Every day we're inundated by the right about how China is buying up our debt just like when we were given dire warnings that Japan was buying up our country one plot of land at a time in the 80's.

Who owns the majority of US debt? We do. China owns just 7.5% of it, 42% is owned by US institutions and individuals, 18% is owned by the Social Security Trust Fund, and Japan owns 6%. The remainder is spread among "other foreign nations" (11.6%), the US civil service retirement fund (6%), and others that hold less than 2% each.

Like all bogey-men, they aren't nearly as frightening when you turn on the lights and stop staring into the shadows while listening to the horrid tales of monsters under the bed or inhabiting your closet.

 

[RightField]

No, I'm not wrong. But you are, on several points. Actually, your entire post couldn't be MORE wrong if you tried.

The US military is not alone in keeping the world from descending into WWIII. We play our part, sure, but we are hardly the "only thing" keeping another World War at bay. We are hardly able to maintain a presence in two small middle eastern countries without stretching our forces to the limit, let alone fight in several theaters at once successfully. You overestimate our importance and influence in world affairs as well as our capabilities. You're simply wrong on all counts here.

What keeps those countries who would like to see the end of ours by military means are held in check? It's not the might of our armed forces, troops, but by the threat of utter annihilation worse than Japan suffered at the end of WWII. We are, after all, the only country to ever actually use a nuclear weapon against anyone. Which makes it kind of ironic that we assume to tell other countries they can't have them because they might use them.. All the while maintaining enough nuclear firepower to end the world as we know it.

China has now become the bogey-man that Japan once was. Every day we're inundated by the right about how China is buying up our debt just like when we were given dire warnings that Japan was buying up our country one plot of land at a time in the 80's.

Who owns the majority of US debt? We do. China owns just 7.5% of it, 42% is owned by US institutions and individuals, 18% is owned by the Social Security Trust Fund, and Japan owns 6%. The remainder is spread among "other foreign nations" (11.6%), the US civil service retirement fund (6%), and others that hold less than 2% each.

Like all bogey-men, they aren't nearly as frightening when you turn on the lights and stop staring into the shadows while listening to the horrid tales of monsters under the bed or inhabiting your closet.

Your arguments aren't credible. Choosing weakness isn't a smart approach. While China might own some of our debt, that's not enough to prevent them from taking other advantage if it should present itself. History is littered with the carcasses of countries who made your choice. Even if war isn't the ultimate result, weakness is problematic from a diplomatic perspective also. The guy in the post above you shows a detailed knowledge of several key hotspots around the globe and I find his points clear, concise and rational.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Your arguments aren't credible. Choosing weakness isn't a smart approach. While China might own some of our debt, that's not enough to prevent them from taking other advantage if it should present itself. History is littered with the carcasses of countries who made your choice. Even if war isn't the ultimate result, weakness is problematic from a diplomatic perspective also. The guy in the post above you shows a detailed knowledge of several key hotspots around the globe and I find his points clear, concise and rational.

We could reduce our defense spending by half and still be more than three times as well outfitted, or better, than any other single country on the planet. Better than many of them combined.

Our 2010 military expenditures according to SIPRI were somewhere just north of $698,000,000,000. The number two in expenditures, China, was $114,000,000,000. Both figures are in 2009 dollar amounts. Yup, we spend more than 6 times the amount of our "enemy" on our military. But we're supposed to be wary of their build-up?

Here's a handy graph to illustrate this point.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/96eaf793a74453b1aafe7ddf6964a1ab.png
The world's top 5 largest military budgets in graph.
(also permanent members of the United Nations Security Council)
Figures sourced from SIPRI.

You're woefully uninformed, as usual. You should have let Lustatopia field a response rather than speak out on something you obviously know little to nothing about.

 

[RightField]

We could reduce our defense spending by half and still be more than three times as well outfitted, or better, than any other single country on the planet. Better than many of them combined.

Our 2010 military expenditures according to SIPRI were somewhere just north of $698,000,000,000. The number two in expenditures, China, was $114,000,000,000. Both figures are in 2009 dollar amounts. Yup, we spend more than 6 times the amount of our "enemy" on our military. But we're supposed to be wary of their build-up?

Here's a handy graph to illustrate this point.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/96eaf793a74453b1aafe7ddf6964a1ab.png
The world's top 5 largest military budgets in graph.
(also permanent members of the United Nations Security Council)
Figures sourced from SIPRI.

You're woefully uninformed, as usual. You should have let Lustatopia field a response rather than speak out on something you obviously know little to nothing about.

Please pardon me if I don't find the juvenile rantings of a middle-aged pool boy/boiler kicker/lightbulb changer credible on the topic of national security. In fact, I find it rather alarming that anyone is calling for the dismantling of our defense and national security infrastructure in a time of war and continuing international destablization. Even the democrats are shying away from significant defense cuts.

 

[RightField]

Why government cuts won't hurt growth
By Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large
Fortune Magazine
August 8, 2011: 5:00 AM ET

S&P has a point: We need to cut more spending. Debunking the Keynesian argument that the forthcoming spending cuts will be a job and growth killer.

Big spenders.

FORTUNE -- Congress may have narrowly escaped a debt debacle last week, but it couldn't agree on enough cuts to satisfy Standard & Poor's, which downgraded U.S. sovereign debt after the deal's $2.1 trillion in proposed cuts came in below the $4 trillion the rating agency felt was necessary to warrant a triple-A rating.

Still, it's the beginning of a much needed shift towards fiscal austerity. But now economists and pundits are warning that curbing government spending now, with growth in a rut, is a major mistake. It's totally obvious by pure economic math, they argue, that lower federal outlays will shrink GDP.

Americans are hearing this argument from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, his Princeton colleague Alan Blinder, and Fed chief Ben Bernanke, who recently cautioned that quick, severe reductions in government outlays could prove a job and growth killer. Supporters of President Obama, including Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post, worry that when the cuts take hold in 2012, the slowdown they'll inevitably produce could endanger the President's prospects for reelection.

But the Keynesian argument that lower government spending automatically hampers GDP growth, right now, is far from the sure thing its champions keep trumpeting. Many eminent economists, from Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago to Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon, take a totally different view. And the utter failure of the $862 billion "stimulus" to produce a robust recovery should encourage Americans to listen carefully to the view that more spending did little or nothing to raise GDP in the past two years, and lowering it will no virtually nothing to hamper expansion going forward.

We have been running an enormous and very expensive experiment for the last three years," says Kenneth French, a professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. "Although the stimulus seems to have produced none of the effects predicted by its Keynesian advocates, they remain as adamant as ever about their policy prescriptions. And more and more of the press and the public seem to be buying their arguments. One wonders what evidence would make people question the conclusion that more government spending will improve economic conditions."

Indeed, the persistent overconfidence of the "Keynesians" is remarkable for two reasons. The first is the poor results of the stimulus plan. The second is that although Keynes recommended temporarily higher spending and deficits to exit a recession, he never even remotely advocated big increases in government outlays on top of existing, gigantic structural budget deficits.

It's crucial to understand the logic behind the "spending-equals-growth" argument. GDP has four components: consumer spending, private investment, government outlays, and the excess, or deficit, of exports over imports. The Keynesians believe in something called the "multiplier effect." It states that every dollar the government borrows and spends raises GDP by more than it would increase in the absence of the new borrowing and spending. For example, if new outlays rise by $1 trillion, and the multiplier effect is 1.2 -- and advocates, including the administration, swear the multiple is over 1 -- GDP will jump by an extra $1.2 trillion. In that scenario, Americans can have more teachers, solar energy subsidies and bridges without sacrificing a dime in corporate investments or consumer spending.

Moving money around

But that math could be bunk. It certainly doesn't sound right. In physics, energy can be neither created nor destroyed, it simply changes form. So is it really possible for the government to create money that wouldn't otherwise exist by borrowing and spending?

The stimulus skeptics come in two categories. The first we'll call the hard-liners. They include Fama, one of the most influential financial economists of the past half-century, and his University of Chicago colleague John Cochrane, a prominent macroeconomist. Fama and Cochrane essentially argue that the multiplier doesn't exist, and that by simple accounting, every dollar in government spending must reduce another part of GDP by an equal amount, resulting in a wash.

"The money you lend the government has to come from somewhere," says Cochrane. "The stimulus is just moving the same money around."

The hard-liners argue that if Americans buy government bonds, their own spending and savings must fall by an equal amount. What the government lavishes on grants to the states or high-speed trains is precisely offset by lower spending on cars or forklifts. Cochrane emphasizes that savings are all spent. They flow into corporate investments in plants or workstations, or to hire new workers. Simply transferring savings that would be spent on private investment to the government to spend on salaries and subsidies has zero impact on output.

What if the government borrows the money from abroad? It's the same story, say the hard-liners. If the Japanese buy our bonds, we will use their yen to purchase more Japanese semiconductors or other Japanese products, increasing imports and hence lowering GDP at the same time all the borrowing is supposed to be raising growth.

In effect, the hardliners maintain that government spending doesn't raise GDP at all, even in the short-term. The second group of economists, call them the "productivity hawks," acknowledge that higher borrowing and outlays may temporarily raise growth. But they claim that the immediate bump in output is far weaker than its advocates maintain, and that the longer-term effects of the big borrowing and spending are extremely damaging.

Both Robert Lucas, a Nobel Prize winner from the University of Chicago, and Robert Barro of Harvard debunk the power of the multiplier effect, and decry the burden borrowing imposes on future growth. Says Lucas: "The stimulus and multiplier effect were way oversold," says Lucas. "Germany and Britain are cutting spending, and they're doing better than we are."

Another prominent skeptic is Meltzer. For this distinguished monetarist, the reliance on spending is moving America in precisely the wrong direction, boosting consumption when we should be saving far more and plowing those savings into new plants and logistics system. "The borrowing lowers the productive types of spending on capital equipment America needs now," says Meltzer. "We need to raise our competitiveness and become an export-led economy driven by savings and investment rather than borrowing and consumption."

The skeptics are an impressive group, and they deserve a prominent place in the debate. If these folks just don't get it, as the spending advocates loudly proclaim, why hasn't all the spending resulted in better growth and more jobs? It's highly probable that Americans were sold a myth, and its champions are now selling still another myth.

 

[busybody..]

INSIDER INFORMATION? Who ‘made $10bn on 10/1 bet that U.S. credit rating would be downgraded’?

 

[busybody..]

You will recall

That it was I that first mentioned this

As a sort of "joke"

It isnt

Is it?


Here We Go: Michael Moore Wants S&P Heads Arrested, Senate Democrats Merely Want to Investigate Them

Is it just me, or are we lurching toward banana republic status now? Here’s the intemperate socialist Michael Moore:

Liberal firebrand Michael Moore called on President Obama to respond to the U.S. credit downgrade by arresting the leaders of the credit-ratings agencies.

On his Twitter feed Monday, the Oscar-winning film director also blamed the 2008 economic collapse on Standard & Poor’s — apparently because it and other credit-ratings agencies did not downgrade mortgage-based bonds, which encouraged the housing bubble and let it spread throughout the economy.

“Pres Obama, show some guts & arrest the CEO of Standard & Poors. These criminals brought down the economy in 2008& now they will do it again,” Mr. Moore wrote.

Yeah, that’ll do wonders for the market: Keep the idiot Treasury Secretary who presided over this mess while arresting the head of the independent agency that finally flagged it. Only a fool who hates America could have come up with this. Which, it turns out, is pretty much what happened.

So…over to the adults in the US Senate…the world’s greatest deliberative body…?

Following S&P’s Friday night decision to reduce the nation’s credit standing from AAA to AA+, the panel has begun gathering information about the downgrade, according to a committee aide. Reuters first reported the committee’s interest in the downgrade.

The unprecedented downgrade of the nation’s debt roiled financial markets Monday, and S&P was subject to fierce criticism from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.).

“As the financial markets stumble, investors continue to regard Treasury debt as a safe haven in times of economic uncertainty. This irresponsible move by S&P may, however, have spillover effects that tax the American people by increasing interest rates on home loans, credit cards, and car loans, and by increasing the cost of finance for some state and local governments,” he said in a Monday statement. “I am deeply disappointed in S&P’s decision to enter into the game of political punditry.”

The Democrats are playing with fire, but they have been doing that since they decided not to ever pass a national budget. Between all this and the “Tea Party downgrade” nonsense, it’s fair to say that the Democrats as a party have lost their ever-lovin’ minds.

It is fair to blame S&P for some — though by no means all — responsibility for the 2008 collapse. There’s plenty of blame to go around for that, from Barney Frank to Jamie Gorelick to shady banking practices and inflated credit ratings based on unicorn vapors rather than economic fundamentals, no shortage of targets. But calling for arrests and investigations sends yet another signal that left is in total denial about the collapse of their economic world. This is going to get very very ugly.

 

[busybody..]

http://iowntheworld.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ObamaNewsweek.jpg

 

[busybody..]

http://iowntheworld.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/16.jpg

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Total bullshit. Busy bigot is either a moby posing as a tea party supporter or he's mentally retarded. Either way, Epic fail.

If you guys really want to elicit recitals of "mantras of consensus" (LOL) you should do an art performance posing as Adolf Hitler and Jack the Ripper expounding on the glories of the Final Solution and murder-rapes.

Oh, those group think, gov-ed zombie will race out to catechism you!

IF BUSY BIGOT DOESN'T WANT PEOPLE TO THINK HE HATES OBAMA BECAUSE OF RACE, THEN STOP CALLING HIM A NIGGER. and stick to the policy. Play the ball not the man.

If he's a Tea Party supporter, then the Tea Party is a pretty old movement...

Hitler, really?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

No President has ever been as tardy as Obama when it comes to being on time for public appearances.

Guess who used to do that for effect...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

INSIDER INFORMATION? Who ‘made $10bn on 10/1 bet that U.S. credit rating would be downgraded’?

Good lord, the only people who did not see the downgrade coming are the 43% still in full support and admiration of our President and his economic policies.

 

[busybody..]

If he's a Tea Party supporter, then the Tea Party is a pretty old movement...

Hitler, really?

Oh, lool who showed up, Mr O'Fendy

So lemme AXE you this, O'Fendy, you avoid THAT WORD,

Do the "people" here treat you better....Discuss issues with you in a more intelligent way? Or do they SHIT over you and your FAMILY?

Its ok to LET THEM do what they do, and its OK to not stand up

BUT

IT SERVES ZERO PURPOSE, O'Fendy

But you are better than I am

Me?

I WOULD SLAUGHTER EM ALL IF I COULD!

Better THEM then ME

and Im certain it would be me if they had the chance

Go on O'Fendy

Kiss ass

Oh,

You might as well IGGY me

Cause I aint stopping

If I have JUAN READER, or less, I aint stopping

The COUNTRY IS BUSYBODY!

 

[unregistered]

 

[busybody..]

http://egoist.blogspot.com/AndTheLoserIs-X.gif

The big bloated shit pile.

2 weeks ago

The DUMZ attacked teh REPOZ for watching a movie.....a "bad" movie with "bad" words............They became Mr O'Fendy




YET, THE DUMZ SAT THRU THE PREMIERE OF FARENHEIT whatever, M Moore's anti American movie


Yes, I know, lets be NICE and be in DENIAL, MAYBE THEY WILL LOVE US

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

merc asured us that the reason the S&P downgraded us was no taxes (because they said something about increasing revenue) which was a lie by omiission from this threads #2 lie detector...

The Obama administration and congressional Democrats are betting their political futures on the hope that the American electorate is ignorant and forgetful, and hence the memo has gone out to functionaries hither and yon, from David Axelrod to John Kerry: This is to be called the “tea-party downgrade.” That this is said with straight faces bespeaks either an unshakable contempt for the mind of the American voter or an as-yet unplumbed capacity for Democratic self-delusion.

Let us revisit the facts. The original debt-ceiling deal put forward by the Democrats totaled $0.00 in debt reduction. This would have fallen approximately $4 trillion short of the $4 trillion in debt reduction the credit-rating agencies suggested would constitute a “credible” step toward maintaining our AAA rating and avoiding a downgrade. This $0.00 program was the so-called “clean” debt-ceiling bill — the one that contained not a farthing of debt reduction. Bad as it was, Republicans agreed to give Democrats a vote on it. Some 82 Democrats and every Republican voted against it, and for good reason: Doing nothing at all is hardly a “credible” program.

The Democrats have suggested that Republicans’ refusal to accede to tax hikes is the main reason Standard & Poor’s felt it necessary to issue a downgrade, the first in American history, last Friday evening. In their assessment of Standard & Poor’s reasoning, the Democrats are acutely at odds with Standard & Poor’s. The credit-rating agency did not call for tax hikes in its assessment: “Standard & Poor’s takes no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures that Congress and the Administration might conclude is appropriate for putting the U.S.’s finances on a sustainable footing.” No position on tax hikes. But S&P, along with the other credit-rating agencies, has long taken a position on one aspect of our fiscal troubles: entitlement reform. From S&P again: “The plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.”

...

But the CBO does score legislative proposals, and gave good marks to a bipartisan proposal offered by the president’s own hand-picked deficit-reduction panel. The presidential commission offered a credible plan, one that even included the tax increases so beloved of this administration. Naturally, the president disavowed his own commission’s proposal, just as he would disavow his own budget proposal. Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi declared it “dead on arrival” in the House. The plan was angrily rejected by congressional Democrats precisely and specifically because it contained modest entitlement-reform proposals. Likewise, Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, which would have brought health-care entitlement spending down to sustainable levels while making key reforms to improve the performance of those programs, passed the House only to be rejected out of hand by Sen. Harry Reid and his Democratic colleagues, precisely because it contained entitlement reforms. It would have cut some $4.4 trillion off of the deficits over a decade, well beyond the $4 trillion mark suggested by the credit-rating agencies. But Democrats would have none of it.

The deal that finally did pass would have contained significantly more in deficit-reduction, except for the fact that Democrats categorically refused to consider — is this sounding familiar? — entitlement reform, the most important issue.

Content to offer blind opposition, the Obama administration never put forward a detailed plan of its own, though it insisted it had one, a fact that resulted in a moment of unintentional comedy when White House press secretary Jay Carney irritatedly asked unconvinced reporters: “You need it written down?” When it comes to the Obama administration and spending restraint, the American people have every reason to demand that the president put it in writing.

...

Entitlement reform is the “key issue.” The Tea Party is not standing in the way of entitlement reform. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid are. Democrats believe that they have discovered a cartoon villain in the Tea Party, and they are hoping that American voters are gullible enough to be distracted by the political theatrics. Come November 2012, Americans should keep in mind both the insult and the injury — to the nation and its credit. President Obama has indeed “made history,” as he promised, but not the sort that we might have hoped for.

Editors
NRO



Futures down 250...

That wasn't what S&P said. I'm not sure what source you're using for news.. But it sure isn't the statement released by S&P stating the reason for the downgrade.

One of S&P's explicit criticisms of the compromise was that it didn't address the biggest drivers of the nation's debt -- Social Security and Medicare -- and didn't allow for additional tax revenue. - CNN Money

They also stated that S&P changed its baseline assumption that the Bush tax cuts would expire on schedule in 2012 because Republicans are so insistent that they must be renewed. “We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues,” wrote S&P. That adds $4 trillion over ten years to the projected deficits.

So no, S&P didn't tell us that revenues were OK, quite the opposite in fact.

They also downgraded Fannie and Freddie...