Political Ruminations

Quote of the Day

Bill Clinton, in an interview with ABC News, proposing a deal on the debt ceiling impasse, emphasis mine:

“If they [the Republicans] said, look, that now is not the time for big tax increases to harm the recovery, they would be right. But it's also right to say that now's not the time for big spending cuts.

What I'd like to see them do is agree on the outlines of a 10-year plan and agree not to start either the revenue hikes or the spending cuts until we've got this recovery underway. The confidence that the Republicans say would be given to investors with a budget plan, they'd get whether we started this year or next year or the year after that, for that matter.”

Watch:

(The Clinton interview starts approximately 1:23 in.)

About That Debt Ceiling….

“Debt Limit: Myth v. Fact” (pdf): A Treasury Dept. Fact Sheet:

“If Congress fails to increase the debt limit, the government would default on its legal obligations – an event unprecedented in American history. This would cause investors here and around the world to doubt, for the first time, whether the United States will meet its commitments. That would precipitate a self-inflicted financial crisis potentially more severe than the one from which we are now recovering.”

President Obama, June 29, Press Conference (from the transcript):

“By August 2nd, we run out of tools to make sure that all our bills are paid.  So that is a hard deadline.  And I want everybody to understand that this is a jobs issue.  This is not an abstraction.  If the United States government, for the first time, cannot pay its bills, if it defaults, then the consequences for the U.S. economy will be significant and unpredictable.”

Defacto Tea Party leader, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) June 26, on State of the Union (CNN):

“If we never raise the debt ceiling again, we're going to pay our bills, we're going to pay Social Security. …We won't default. We'll be going back to budget levels of about eight years ago.”

Founder and Leader of the Tea Party Caucus in the 112th Congress, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), June 26, on Face the Nation (CBS):

“It isn't true that the government would default on its debt because, very simply, the treasury secretary can pay the interest on the debt first and then, from there, we have to just prioritize our spending…. It is scare tactics because, Bob, the interest on the debt isn't any more than 10 percent of what we're taking in. In fact, it's less than that. And so the treasury secretary can very simply pay the interest on the debt first, then we're not in default.”

Republicans are running a con on the American people.

Contact your senators and representatives and tell them that they must raise the debt ceiling with out further delay. Everything else can come after that.

Contact your senators

Contact your representatives

Image courtesy of CBS News.

Adding.....Ezra Klein on challenging the constitutionality of the debt ceiling.

Full Text Transcript President Obama Press Conference

Watch the full video of the press conference here.

TRANSCRIPT PRESIDENT OBAMA PRESS CONFERENCE JUNE 29, 2011

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Good morning, everybody.  Have a seat, please.  I just want to say a few words about the economy before I take your questions.

There are a lot of folks out there who are still struggling with the effects of the recession.  Many people are still looking for work or looking for a job that pays more.  Families are wondering how they'd deal with a broken refrigerator or a busted transmission, or how they're going to finance their kids' college education, and they're also worrying about the possibility of layoffs.   

The struggles of middle-class families were a big problem long before the recession hit in 2007.  They weren’t created overnight, and the truth is our economic challenges are not going to be solved overnight.  But there are more steps that we can take right now that would help businesses create jobs here in America. 

Breaking: Lieberman and Coburn Unveil Plan for Medicare

And it sucks. Not as much as the Ryan plan sucks, but it still sucks.

The Lieberman-Coburn plan includes benefit cuts, and cost-shifting to seniors. It also raises the age for eligibility. The Hill:

But Lieberman and Coburn's proposal includes several politically risky benefit changes, such as making seniors pay more for their prescription drugs. It also would raise the eligibility age for Medicare.

The proposal would cap seniors' out-of-pocket costs depending on their income. The maximum would be set at $7,500 for people making less than $85,000 per year. Seniors with twice as much income would pay three times more in out-of-pocket Medicare costs.
Seniors also would pay more for their prescription drugs. Premiums only cover about 11 percent of the total costs for Medicare Part D, the senators said. They would require seniors to pay the full cost of their drug coverage. They said the change would free up between $5 billion and $10 billion in tax money.
The plan also would increase premiums for Medicare Part B, which covers drugs that are administered by a doctor. Part B premiums are more than $400 per year, and taxes currently cover only about a quarter of that cost. High-income seniors would have to pay the full cost of their Part B premiums under the Lieberman plan.
Both the changes to Part D and Part B premiums would only apply to seniors making more than $150,000 per year, or couples making more than $300,000.
"While it includes some much needed reforms to the Medicare program that achieve significant savings, we are opposed to additional cuts to patient care services provided by hospitals given all of the reductions we are already being asked to absorb," said a spokesperson for the American Hospital Association.
The plan hasn't been evaluated by the Congressional Budget Office, but they estimated that it would save $600 billion over 10 years. The proposal also includes a three-year patch to the formula that Medicare uses to pay doctors.

Will keep you updated as more information becomes available.

Republicans Want to Deprive Pregnant Women and Babies of Food

Krugman notes some of the spending cuts Republicans are proposing, emphasis mine:

WIC 1008 million
Food for Peace 544 million
NOAA 450 million
NASA 579 million
Energy efficiency and renewable energy 899
Science 1111 million
Nuclear nonproliferation 648 million
Federal buildings fund 1653 million
Homeland security administration 489 million
FEMA, various, around 1.2 billion
EPA clean water and drinking water about 1.8 billion
Community health centers 1.3 billion
Centers for disease control 900 million

WIC is nutritional aid for pregnant women and women with young children; let’s cut that, because the damage to the nation from malnourishment is a problem for future politicians.

Bob Cesca, emphasis mine:

The Republicans want to take food from the mouths of babies and pregnant women. Yeah, and they consider themselves "pro-life" and "anti-abortion" without laughing or acknowledgement of the self-contradiction and disgusting irony of their actions.

As I predicted in the beginning of January:

They will cut funding for education, the environment, social programs, and anything that does not directly benefit the wealthy.

So….does anyone really believe that Republicans don’t hate women?

Via Bob Cesca