The House of Representatives just passed the debt ceiling bill.
Democrats played games, holding back their votes to see how many Republicans were voting in favor, hoping to minimize the number of Democrats who had to vote in favor in order for it to pass. With 4 minutes left to vote, 120 Democrats still had not voted.
Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) returned for her first vote since she was shot last January, and voted in favor. She received a loud round of applause.
The final vote count was 267-161. Sixty-seven Republicans and Ninety-five Democrats voted against.
The Senate will not take it up until the morning.
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Comments
By all accounts, it’s a really shitty deal. After 2010, I thought things would get better. Not.
Well, we must work hard for 2012
Once again, the republicans cave in right?
It STINKS!
This just in:
Wonder Woman Lives. Her name is Giffords, Gabby Giffords.
Whether you like her or her vote or not, she lives.
Boehner must go! McConnell too!
Well, look at it this way: they’ll be writing entire chapters about us in history books.
What is about to happen may actually eclipse the Revolution in its significance.
Congress and the President have completely and entirely missed the essential problem that we face, indeed, those who got us into this mess are exactly the people that have failed us right now. They have sold us down the river to ruin.
And the consequences of their failure will mean catastrophe for hundreds of millions.
They do not care. In fact, they lead us here with glee.
The founders bequeathed us significant redress for exactly the times we live in right now.
Understand that no man in American history eclipses Barack Hussein Obama in measure of treason against the Constitution of the United States. No. Man. Not Benedict Arnold, not any of the Cold War Soviet spies, not Sacco and Vanzetti, not Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Their crimes are but jaywalking with an ice cream cone versus what Obama is doing knowingly and with full malice aforethought. He is a traitor – in the Constitutional and criminal sense – a textbook definition. He is exactly the man who the founders were worried might come to power.
Now is the time to contemplate the next move. We have just over a year until the next election, an election that will not go as elections have gone in the past – that is already clear.
Bone up on your history, folks. Figure out when in our history we have endured such hardships and how were they won. Learn. That is all we can do at the moment is to learn.
It’s going to come in handy.
Because, as the Chinese say, may you live in interesting times. And these are as interesting of times as this Republic has ever seen.
america, love it or leave itt
should be updated to love it and leave it solvent! quit “improving” the country thru leviathan gov and socio-economic levelling. the progressive experiment has proved to be dead level wrong.
Get long toothpaste.
And all throughout the 2012 campaign season the Ruling Class elites in the Republican Party will promise to cut spending and lower taxes and end suffocating regulations, end ethanol subsidies, promote legal rather than illegal immigration if we elect the same old corrupt politicians who have lied since Reagan left office,
The Ruling Class Republicans promise to keep their promises this time around, after the 2012 election, if you just elect them….again
The Ruling Class Republican campaign to us Hobbits living in Middle America will be “Yes we’re as corrupt as the Democrat Party, but you don’t want Obama/Reid?Pelosi to win even though we reach across the aisle and give then everything they wants!”
Sure, syn, but what exactly is it “they” want?
I am just thankful that the Tea Party Republicans changed the entire conversation in DC. Were it not for them (and us), Obama would have gotten a clean debt increase vote with no strings attached. Of the two sides, I say we won. And, I take Paul Ryan’s word for it that the Bush tax cuts will not expire. Ryan is in no way The Establishment.
The realignment really starts after the 2012 election. Rest up folks.
A clean debt limit increase might have been better. Strings are attached and there’s ample opportunity for Obama and Senate Dems to pull on those strings.
I do realize that Obama and the Senate Dems are cringe worthy scary, but, Ryan’s point was the House controls the purse strings. And Obama is, and has been in re-election mode. The closer we get, the less you will hear “tax increase” come out of his mouth. The economy is too fragile, and his tax the corporate jet owners mojo has not connected with the people.
As for the possibility of massive defense cuts, once again, the House controls the purse strings. If they want to tackle waste at the DoD (we all know it is there), they could very well serve as a model of waste cuts that could be made in a wide swath of the public sector. As you can tell by my avatar, I am very pro defense, and I would take great pride in seeing our best servants lead the way on reasoned austerity.
Another Tragedy of the Commons?
The Relationship Between Taxpayers and Tax Spenders
“This paper argues that the Sixteenth Amendment establishing the income tax nullified the prior constitutional restraint on the size of government and enabled one group of citizens to vote themselves benefits at the expense of another. In terms of economic theory, the budget has become a “commons” and is subject to the tragedies of overuse and abuse. Over the past three decades, the distribution of U.S. tax liability has become more skewed. A rising percentage of citizens pay few or no federal taxes, so that a smaller share of the citizenry increasingly bears the tax burden. Analytical work shows that the skewed distribution of the U.S. tax liability is correlated with higher debt and greater entitlement spending. Since currently there are no constitutional constraints on deficit spending, the research calls for policy makers to broaden the tax base so that more citizens will feel the cost of deficit spending and to take action to reduce the associated tax burdens. This paper demonstrates that when the tax-price of government services is zero, more will always be demanded.”
<MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
background:
Tragedy of the commons