Update on Federal Debt Negotiations
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-07-11/update-federal-debt-negotiations
Negotiations in Washington over the debt ceiling have reached another stalemate. President Obama and top Congressional leaders met at the White House last night. But they still remain far apart on the details of a deal. Saturday night, those talks hit a roadblock. House Speaker John Boehner abandoned efforts to reach a $4 trillion long-term plan. He blamed Democrats for insisting on higher taxes. Democrats say raising revenue must be part of a deal. As the debt ceiling deadline of August 2nd draws closer, President Obama and top party leaders will meet again this afternoon. Diane and her guests discuss the high stakes negotiations and the prospects for a deal.
Guests
Charlie Cook
editor and publisher of the "Cook Political Report"
Jeanne Cummings
deputy government editor, Bloomberg News.
Ron Elving
Washington editor for NPR.
Comments
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We heard with the bank & wall street bailouts that if we did not do this life as we know it would end. After they were bailed out everyone got bonues and things did not get any better. Now we are hearing the same thing about the debt ceiling. Everything else that I invest in has risk. Why should we insulate people who buy government bonds? Thanks Tom maher
Tension between Boehner & Cantor: must be racism!
Please address the "oath" that Grover Norquist is demanding from Republicans. Here is a guy who inherited wealth and has never held a "real" job and was not elected. Yet, he is dictating his desires to our leaders in Congress. I thought members of Congress took an oath to serve ALL OF THE PEOPLE. Think about the consequences of Norquist's goal of no taxes and to cut government down to a size you could drown in the bathtub.
In addition to destroying SS and Medicare/Medicaid, there would be no public schools including universities, no highways, no libraries, no refuse collection, no police or fire protection...the list goes on.
I just heard on the show a quote of statistic (?) that "unemployed people don't vote". I would like to know what is the source of this "fact".
I wonder if it is based on current information? The unemployed these days represent a cross-section of the American population: white collar, blue collar, immigrant, etc.
How can such a blanket statement be made?
My husband was unemployed for nearly 2 years (management high-tech job off-shored) and I assure you we vote and are very aware of politics and have been greatly affected by government actions in the last few years.
DEBUNKING THE SNOW JOB AGAINST SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, MEDICAID, AND WELFARE.
In decades gone by Congress spent the social security collections that should have been annuitized. Congress also liberalized banking, insurance, and investing enabling the mingling of funds and the theft of American resources.
While it may not be a myth that the Social Security and Welfare and the associated Medicare and Medicaid programs face difficulties going forward, it is indeed a myth that it is these programs themselves that are at fault for the status of the economy and at risk themselves due to inherent unsoundness.
The money that was spent elsewhere by Congress is money that could have earned interest all these years but, did not because it was not available to annuitize or to place in conservative investments.
It is also a myth that the private sector, if only it is not taxed, will provide work for the unemployed. While some of the private sector will create work, the mega-businesses play shell games with international money laws, send jobs overseas, and work Americans into disability and death. There is a conscious effort on the part of the super rich to rule the world via their own private mercenary armies and via our now essentially mercenary public military. The Congress, Presidency, and Supreme Court are their lackeys. It is only a matter of time until the once proud USA shall make Hitler's Germany look like an idyllic time and place.
meangreen,
Yeah you know the 1% that holds 70% of the wealth. Sounds about right that they pay 38%. Warren Buffet pays less than his secretary.
The poor don't pay taxes because they don't have any money. I would love it if everyone had to pay something to help run the country- but what percent should someone with nothing pay? 100% of nothing is still nothing.
If I made one years worth of pay that the non-working-rich do I would never have to work again. Neither would my children. Or my grandchildren. Or my great-grandchildren.
Good point though.
It's interesting that the caller who made a race-based comment was attacked without giving his basic assertion consideration. He was not the first caller to have a biased opinion but she chose to focus on what he said his question was versus what his question turned out to be...this isn't the first time I've heard Mrs. Rehm blow off a comment she didn't like.
meangreen,
You wrote:
'Our economy rewards the hard worker, it is government that destroys the hard worker by taxing and regulation.'
I would agree with you except for the fact that those who inherit wealth from their parents tend to be fine- even if they are lazy and don't work at all. In fact if you have enough money accumulated you don't have to do ANYTHING to make money. Inheriting money is not hard. Living off of dividends is not hard. It is so easy anyone with millions of dollars can do it.
I work for a company that helps other companies follow regulation. Regulation provides tons of jobs- millions and millions.
And 401(K)s are a joke. I pay a little every paycheck so that Goldman Sachs can play with my money and give out bonus'. It is a sad legacy of Ron 'the simple' Reagan that we trust the future security of millions of people to the casino atmosphere of the stock market.
Hi Diane--I have a request for a near-future show.
How are the budget cuts (both national and local; education and research, etc ) affecting the future of young people?
Concerns about young people paying hefty taxes in the future seem to pale to me, when you consider that the current budget cutbacks in public school and university education, in student loans, research funding, will affect their careers. Their job prospects, and hence their earning potential--as well as future tax revenue via payroll--would help offset the deficit in the future. No job, low earning, means fewer tax dollars collected AND a country that is not competitive (behind) in driving new ideas, medicine, and research.
Thanks--JLN
The poor might not have enough money to pay income taxes; nevertheless, the poor pay plenty of taxes, as everyone else does, on services, utilities, gasoline, etc., etc. -- including food though many of these taxes are hidden in the cost which contributes to paying wages, employee health insurance, corporate stock dividends -- and big bonuses.. This is another reason why the money people should want to have appropriate and authentic 2012 COLAs for Disability and Social Security recipients.
Why was the comment about race not addressed at all?
The Oligarch fascists and their Demopub helpers finally got what they wanted and planned. Federal and state and local government has been hollowed out to be replaced by corporate taxation under lax regulation. Now it will not take much longer for the bottom 85% to be completely fleeced and end up serfs. What they forgot was that the beast they starved was also a cash cow. The updraft of wealth as labor value stops when there is no more disposable income. We produce so little in relation to the shifting of money that 95% of the flow is speculation with no connection to production (of food, tools, electronics, anything). Germany exports more goods than the entire USA, even though the USA counts border swapping with Mexico as exports. The end of the shuttle is appropriately symbolic. We can't make anything anymore. Our corporate masters can't afford to let us work. I imagine they expect the Chinese to build our missile defense shield that will militarize space and make them all extortive gazillionaires. I got news, rich boys, it ain't gonna happen. Your Empire is already in cascade failure. This is two magnitudes above the French Revolution of 1789, and it will be bloody if the wealthy class doesn't surrender soon. Our only hope is to cap income and wealth before ecological collapse. The alternative is killer drones over every neighborhood exterminating anything that peeps.
Will T26
But unfortunely, most of the taxes fall under the middle class. It is no accident, being that as a group they have the largest wealth in the nation.
But then who is to say that individuals like yourself or Warren can't contribute to the US Treasury by personal choice. By the way Warren does not believe in dividen contribution which is taxable and also helps middle class with additional income.
The poor do receive many benefits without paying into the system. They get Earned Income which is an additional welfare check and if they qualify get Section 8 housing and food stamps. So that as far as living , they are not that bad off. It is the personal things in their lives that make their living situation worse.
Will T26
I would agree with you except for the fact that those who inherit wealth from their parents tend to be fine- even if they are lazy and don't work at all. In fact if you have enough money accumulated you don't have to do ANYTHING to make money. Inheriting money is not hard. Living off of dividends is not hard. It is so easy anyone with millions of dollars can do it.
I believe that the inherent wealth is something like 1%. Funny you mention this because my dad a self made man told me when I finished college that I would not have to work another day in my life. He was wrong because of inflation and higher taxes that small piggy bank is worth half of today's dollars.(1981) But I am happy for you because you can live a pretty good life, send your kid to private school. I can only afford to send my kids to private school while still paying property taxes for government schools.
As for regulation do not know what you are in. Private or Gov. Government I would think there are many jobs are out there. But as I stated in a previous thread, California 50th in creating jobs. I want to start a Carl's Jr in Cal. It will take 2yrs to go through all the government check to open my business. In Texas it would take 45 day to open my Carl's Jr.
As for 401k, you do not need it. I sure as heck want it and it gives me great joy to see how I can make grow without having to be taxed more. Thank my great company for letting me purchase individual stock. Remember poor people like to make money, that is one of the reason they are the largest group to play the Lottery.
Heidi: Racism, like sexism and classism, remains a divide and conquer tool of Oligarch opinion makers. Making it OK to blame ethnic minorities already heavy in the underclass turns wrath away from those elite speculators and manipulators who are robbing us of fair compensation and reasonable opportunity. Let's not fritter away human rights to a safety net, premium based entitlements, universal healthcare, basic public education and a safe-fair-living waged workplace for the thrill to terrorizing helpless poor people. Structural violence is real and we need to resist it. Hollowing out the things we work and pay for is a fraud and is now becoming a form of state sponsored terrorism against the populace. Diane is mistaken not to address this injustice.
Does anyone else think Miss Diane has a bit of attitude about this issue? Last week it was a comment, joke perhaps, that she hopes this issue is going to be over soon. I've got news that this issue is never going to be over, the government has to be funded for fiscal year 2012 which starts October 1, then an election, then another debt ceiling (if not sooner), then fy 2013, then another debt ceiling probably, then fy 2014, then another election, debt ceiling, budget, etc... Sorry, but do you get my point?
Today she showed some attitude because callers were talking about something completely different than what they told the screener. I would wager this happens all the time because of both obfuscation and the evolution of the show while the caller has been on hold listening.
Until Miss Rehm can stop seeming sick of doing shows about this issue she shouldn't.
I think this show is going downhill and I am close to giving up on the first hour of it as well as the second.
On SS... Let's not forget that the original fund was tapped for other spending. It is time these funds were restored to the levels they would be today if left untouched and allowed to gain interest. This is the governments responsibility to the citizens. As it is our responsibility to allow congress to fairly administer the program. This includes raising ages on withdrawals etc.
Absolutely love the show, Diane.
This is a request for the hard-left seminar callers to knock it off.
The Koch Brothers are the reason why the negotiations are going badly? Really?
Or maybe it's the KKK down south that's keeping the Black president down. Give me a break.
You guys are doing nothing for your cause and you are ruining my favorite show. Keep that stuff on DailyKos or call Limbaugh if you must. Let the adults keep running the DR show please.
PS. You guys failed to blame it on Palin and/or Bachman. LOL.
YES WE IN THE MIDDLE CARE. WE WILL SPEAK UP AT THE POLLS IN 2012. THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR A SHUTDOWN AND STALEMATES WILL BE REPLACED. MY VOTE COUNTS!
DavidBaltimore wrote:
Today she showed some attitude because callers were talking about something completely different than what they told the screener. I would wager this happens all the time because of both obfuscation and the evolution of the show while the caller has been on hold listening.
So in your mind, lying is OK.
Thanks for clearing that up. Stay on Dailykos, DR show is one of the only places I can find that deals with the center and not the hyperpartisan left/right.
There is Corporate Uncertainty because they have fewer & fewer customers coming through the door with fewer & fewer $$$ to spend.
3 panelists who have never worked in an environment where their jobs & hours were directly affected by daily sales???
It's pathetic that 3 DC Bubble people take the Supply-Side Economics that the GOP borrowed from the Soviets that it has now become "traditional economics."
Keynesian Economics haven't failed this time because they have been tried. HAMP, TARP, QE-I, QE-II, QE-III, Fed discount window $$$ have all gone directly to the banks without ever entering the Real Economy!!!! Are they really as deaf, dumb & blind as they seem????
Have they been drinking Jim Jones Kool-Aid?
Without customers, the companies that are not hiring now may not be around when their customers have $$$.
It is so amazing how much the left keep manipulating there base with all their rhetoric about no new taxes for the rich because they are the one creating job. I just don’t get it and certainly not from their way of thinking and their point of views, Okay help me understand this, the wealthy, and most certainly the big corporate CEO’s, is paying taxes from their earning will prevent them from using these earnings to create business, more jobs or investment into the corporation that they own or run? When do corporate executive start using their personal wealth to run a corporate entity or establishment? Doesn’t general understand is corporation is an independent entity from them that are leading it or sometimes from those that owns it? And already as it is, these corporations are already giving all kind of tax breaks, especially the ones that relate to their ability to create more job through hiring and investment?
Well if these corporate executive already having all kind of corporate tax break, how come the income that those that are running it can not be tax?
Rehm is no Terkel any more at all, and like Barbra Walters has ossified and lost all sense of curiosity while becoming as tone def as her mealy mouth neoconservative "journalist" [sic]. At least a couple people got a call in question that didn't get screened away, but still, as usual the "journalist" [sic] here managed to go on paraphrasing the "news" [sic] to death in all but was proposed by the callers. It's rigged, spin, spin on NPR now, just FOX-NPR now. It's just like Dian Rehm is the Miss Havisham for the news corp that is NPR.
Well said!
Love_the_show wrote: So in your mind, lying is OK. Thanks for clearing that up. Stay on Dailykos, DR show is one of the only places I can find that deals with the center and not the hyperpartisan left/right.
I didn't say lying was OK. I know it happens on Diane's show so I expect that she should too. I just think she should lose the bad attitude and concentrate on doing an informative show.
Why do you assume that I even know what DailyKos is just because I criticized Diane's show today? I do know what it is but I don't look at it because the little of it I have seen sounds as critically thought out as Rush Limbaugh. I have been listening to the DR Show for decades and find it less and less valuable.
This doesn't make me a leftist a TEA Party activist or anything else but a disappointed listener. The validity of an argument has nothing to do with the political beliefs of the person making it.
Truthprevails wrote:
YES WE IN THE MIDDLE CARE. WE WILL SPEAK UP AT THE POLLS IN 2012. THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR A SHUTDOWN AND STALEMATES WILL BE REPLACED. MY VOTE COUNTS
Just like what happen when 63 seats changed, 40 of those from Tea Party supporters and polls showing that the majority of the public does not want the debt ceiling to go higher.
Brett Greisen wrote:
"There is Corporate Uncertainty because they have fewer & fewer customers coming through the door with fewer & fewer $$$ to spend."
I thought it had to do more with uncertainty about government policiies, like how much more will I be taxed next year or what additional regulations will I have to deal with.
"Keynesian Economics haven't failed this time because they have been tried. HAMP, TARP, QE-I, QE-II, QE-III, Fed discount window $$$ have all gone directly to the banks without ever entering the Real Economy!!!! Are they really as deaf, dumb & blind as they seem????"
You forgot to mention the ARRA or the Recovery Act of 2009. A total failure which is part of Keynesian Economics. "Shovel Ready not so Shovel Ready". You could of given the 2.4 million unemployed $100,000 each and had 426 Billion dollars left over. Now we the taxpayers have that 800 pound gorillia on our backs. More taxes to pay fewer goods and services we will purchase.
"Without customers, the companies that are not hiring now may not be around when their customers have $$$."
Lets reword this:
Without clear concise government policies, companies are not going to hire and many small business will go under.
Diane and the panel don't know why people in the "middle" don't call their congressional representatives to express their views. Here's why, because it does absolutely no good. They do not care what average constituents think because we cannot donote the big campaign bucks. They do what their corporate contributors want them to do. Recent polls show a large majority of Americans don't want Soc Sec and Medicare cut but that is exactly what they are talking about doing. A significant majority think the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should expire but it hasn't happened. As another comment noted, this would reduce the deficit dramatically.
Many Obama distracters claim he has failed to lead on reducing the Federal Debt, the Debt ceiling vote, and other budget issues. These distracters (and even some democrats) insist that Obama join in Congressional negotiations and that he should have joined earlier.
When is someone on the Diane Rehm show (and other media) going to comment on the basic principles of US government? I remember learning in high school this: Congress makes the laws and controls the national budget purse strings, the president signs laws and enforces them, and the courts interpret the laws passed by congress and enforcement tactics of the president.
Why does Congress, and the American people, insist the president do the job of congress and the president's job? I think the president (a former constitutional scholar) is just following the constitution and insisting that Congress (Republicans and Democrats) do their job(s) outlined in the constitution. He did this with the Affordable Healthcare Act (also negatively and purposely referred to as "Obamacare" - why not call it "Congresscare" - remember congress passed, Obama only signed it into law), the 2011 budget, most of the lame duck congress bills, and now the debt ceiling debate.
Shame on the US Congress for shirking their constitutional duties and passing the buck to President. Shame on the American public for letting Congress continue this work slow down. President Obama should let America know why he is doing things this way, and ultimately shame Congress into doing their constitutional duties outlined by our forefathers.
And everyone wonders why Congress' approval is in the low double digits? Duh!
I agree with the comments that are critical of the show's rightward lean. I would offer as evidence of this bias the fact that Diane always talks about this issue from the perspective of the right and never discusses alternative plans such as that proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. This plan does more than any of the prevailing plans in the mainstream to balance the budget and does so with investmentments in our nation while maintaining support for Americans who need it most. We talk about Medicare as the problem when, in fact it is the solution, and should be strengthened. Medical costs are way out of line and are consuming way too much of the GDP with poor returns (bubble anyone?) and yet we never question the underlying issue that affects us all. Get real! Median household income is $31K, with 15% deducted from the first dollar for FICA and yet we believe that the middle class gets too much in benefits? The same wealthy bankers who had their banks rescued at a cost of trillions of dollars (well beyond the amount of TARP) were defended as job creators and there was no moral hazard when they were issued billions in bonuses? Now we quibble about a 4% increase in the upper tax rate in allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire (which, although they were designed by the Republicans to do just that, we blame the Democrats when the Republican plan works as designed). Diane, it is really easy to take the right's position on these matters so I get your bias on this show and many others. But you have an opportunity to take a courageous stand and debate these important issues from the true middle of the pack. There are plenty of liberal firebrands out there - find them and allow their voices to be heard!