Tag Archives: debt ceiling

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Paychecks still roll in for lawmakers

I am holding out hope that the government shutdown is close to being ended and that the bickering parties will strike a deal to raise the nation’s debt limit.

Before all that happens, I want to vent one more time against those lawmakers — and even the president and vice president — who continue to draw their pay while taking measures that send other federal employees home without pay.

Some of our members of Congress have done the right thing. U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., for example has donated his salary to food distribution organizations in his home state. He declared that Americans shouldn’t go hungry while a portion of their government has been shuttered.

There have been others of both parties and I salute them all for doing what I believe is the noble thing.

My own congressman, Republican Mac Thornberry of Clarendon? He’s still getting paid. Hmmm. I am guessing a man of his means isn’t exactly living off his $174,000 annual salary.

I am acutely aware that House members, senators and executive branch leaders surrendering their salaries for a brief period of time won’t balance the budget, it won’t bring us closer to good fiscal health and it won’t settle this dispute between the parties.

However, I’ve long respected those who lead by example. We elect these people to lead, to make tough decisions on our behalf and to demonstrate that they are men and women of their word.

One way to demonstrate their commitment is to share in the pain their decisions are having on others.

Giving up a few weeks’ pay is one of those ways.

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This guy embodies civic-mindedness

Mount Pleasant, S.C., resident Chris Cox is the living, breathing symbol of selfless service to others.

The government shutdown has resulted in the furloughing of “non-essential” government employees, such as the maintenance crews that keep our national treasures dolled up for us tourists.

Enter Chris Cox.

Chris Cox, Superstar

He’s been mowing the lawn in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the past several days while our so-called “leaders” are arguing over whether to reopen the government and extend the debt ceiling to enable the nation to keep paying its bills.

Failure to do either of these things will create significant havoc in people’s lives. Economists say defaulting on our national debt obligations could be near-cataclysmic.

To be sure, Cox isn’t your run-of-the-mill do-gooder. He’s a bit rough around the edges. He reportedly has a colorful past. He might not be able to keep cutting the grass while the feds keep much of the government on the shelf.

You have to admire someone who wants to this kind of a statement. Many of the rest of us just sit around and gripe about Congress, the president and others at or near the top of the federal government chain of command.

This fellow took matters into his own hands.

There’s just something uplifting about this story.

Get yourself cleaned up, Mr. Cox, and run for public office.

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Worse than ‘dog poop’? Really, Rep. Grayson?

So … just how frustrated are members of Congress getting these days?

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., took the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday and said congressional Republicans’ standing in the polls ranks them below “dog poop and toenail fungus.”

Oh, please.

An Arizona state legislator recently compared President Barack Obama directly to Adolf Hitler, which ought to qualify as the supreme insult to civilized human beings everywhere. She has refused to take back her nasty reference.

Grayson’s outburst on the House floor isn’t new for the Florida blowhard. He served a single term in the House before losing his seat in 2010. He was elected once more in 2012 and has picked up where he left off, blustering with hyperbolic references to his political foes.

Grayson fits into that category of national politician who is in love with the sound of his voice and just cannot get to a TV camera quickly enough.

The government shutdown is dragging on. Polling data suggest Congress’s public standing indeed has reached record-low levels. While Grayson and other gasbags are making headlines with idiotic references to their political foes, there appears to be some movement to ending this shutdown and lifting the federal budget debt ceiling — which is the really big deal in all of this bluster.

These times require serious men and women to speak seriously to us about how they intend to govern. Alan Grayson does not fit that category of public official.

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Is it true? Can there finally be a budget breakthrough?

I try to remain optimistic on most matters, even those things relating to politics, policy and the federal government.

Therefore, the glimmer of hope we’re seeing late Wednesday about a possible budget breakthrough strengthens me enough to want to face another day.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/327665-the-ice-breaks-fiscal-talks-set

President Obama is meeting Thursday with key congressional leaders of both parties to start hammering out a deal to reopen part of the government and avoid the cataclysm that would occur if the government fails to increase its debt limit.

Turns out the chairman of the House Budget Committee, former GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, may have a way out of this mess. It involves a short-term spending resolution that is supposed to buy the principals time to hammer out a deal on “entitlement reform.”

Will there ever be a long-term funding solution that avoids this kind of ridiculousness in the future? That remains to be seen.

At least everyone is talking to each other.

Let’s get this deal done.

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Bring ‘CR’ to a vote … and reopen government if it passes

President Obama laid it out there for all to see and hear.

If the speaker of the House of Representatives is right, that a continuing resolution to fund the government lacks the votes in the House, then put the issue to a vote to decide this matter. Period.

Speaker John Boehner keeps insisting the continuing resolution doesn’t have enough support to pass. With that, we’re supposed to take his word for it. Never mind that some independent analysts have suggested at least 22 Republican House members would vote “yes” on a CR, putting the issue over the top assuming all Democratic lawmakers would vote for it.

The president held a news conference today and spelled out as plainly as possible: Put the issue to a vote and let’s find out who’s right.

It cannot be that hard for the speaker to bring the matter up for a vote of the full House. He is the speaker, the Man of the House, the guy with the gavel. Do it, Mr. Speaker.

Then he and the rest of his gang can get back to an even more serious matter: raising the debt ceiling to enable the U.S. government to keep paying its bills.

Obama used some strong language today in excoriating what he called a “radical” bunch of GOP lawmakers. He accused them of extorting the government to get their way.

We’ll raise the debt ceiling, but only if we get everything we want. That’s how Obama framed their argument. Is that wrong? Isn’t that what they’re demanding? Has he misrepresented their argument? I think not on all counts.

If they don’t get what they want, the nation defaults on its obligations, it refuses to spend money already appropriated by Congress, its credit rating gets downgraded — again — and the markets are going to react very badly, taking a lot of retirement account balances into the crapper.

First things first. Vote on the continuing resolution to determine who’s got the votes. If it passes — which I’m betting it would — the government can get back to functioning fully.

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Justice Scalia knows ‘nasty’

When Antonin Scalia says the tone in Washington has gotten “nasty,” you know it’s bad.

As in really, really bad.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/326835-scalia-bemoans-the-nasty-time-in-washington

The U.S. Supreme Court justice, who’s been on the high court bench since 1986, has carved out a reputation for being one of the court’s surliest members. Decorum during oral arguments at times goes out the window when Justice Scalia gets going. As for the opinions he writes — whether for the majority or in dissent — Scalia unsheathes the poison pen on occasion.

“It’s a nasty time,” Scalia told The Hill, a newspaper covering Capitol Hill. “It’s a nasty time. When I was first in Washington, and even in my early years on this Court, I used to go to a lot of dinner parties at which there were people from both sides. Democrats, Republicans.”

Yes, it’s gotten nasty. Democrats are saying it, as are Republicans. They say they liked it better when everyone got along once they were off the clock. The old-timers in Washington remember a more collegial time.

It’s just interesting to me to hear Justice Scalia now call attention to the poisonous climate in Washington.

He spoke as the court begins its new term. I’ll be anxious to see what this new term brings from the outspoken and occasionally cantankerous justice. Maybe he’ll tone it down a bit himself.

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GOP ‘playing with fire’ over debt limit

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is the latest Washington, D.C. official to turn himself into a Sunday news show hologram, making five appearances today on broadcast and cable TV to deliver a stern message.

Failure to increase the nation’s debt limit would be catastrophic to the economy, Lew said.

Is anyone listening on the Republican side of the aisle?

http://thehill.com/video/sunday-shows/326799-lew-congress-is-playing-with-fire

The debt limit stands at $16.7 trillion. If Congress doesn’t approve a measure to boost it by Oct. 17, the nation’s ability to pay its debts runs out. The United States would default on its obligations.

The Republican-led House of Representatives, though, is digging in on that one. The GOP wants to defund the Affordable Care Act so badly it has produced a partial government shutdown. GOP showboats like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas say they’ll do “whatever it takes to defund Obamacare.”

Does that mean destroying people’s retirement accounts, downgrading the nation’s worldwide credit rating, forcing a stock market collapse? Is that what they mean by “whatever it takes”?

Lew’s message is stark. I happen to believe his prognosis. Does anyone in power in D.C. care about those of us out here who are going to pay the price for their foolishness?

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National attention span is so … fleeting

A colleague at work posed a most interesting question the other day.

“Why is it,” he wondered, “that Americans’ lose attention so quickly on crises deemed critical to our national security? Does anyone care these days about Syria?”

He’s talking about the national fixation on the government shutdown, which has supplanted the Syria crisis as Public Issue Topic No. 1.

Hmmm, I’m still thinking about that one.

It does seem like a long time ago, when it really was just a month ago, that we were worried sick about whether we were going to start bombing Syrian military targets in retaliation for that government’s use of chemical weapons on its citizens. President Obama issued the threat. The Russians stepped in and brokered a deal that appears to have persuaded the Syrians to turn their weapons over to United Nations inspectors. We aren’t going to bomb them after all — at least for the time being.

Never fear. Leave it to members of Congress to jerk our attention away from one crisis to another.

The House of Representatives’ Republican majority, led by its tea party wing, now has determined that the Affordable Care Act, an established law, is reason enough to shut down many agencies of the government. They hate it so much that they want to include defunding it in a bill that would have kept the government open and serving the people. That, of course, is a non-starter with the president.

Concern over Syria has subsided. Now we’re worrying about the future of our own federal government.

I’m waiting for the next crisis. Oh wait. That one’s coming soon. It’s called the “debt ceiling.”

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Debt ceiling: non-negotiable

Former President Bill Clinton is an expert on dealing with Republican members of Congress.

That’s if you consider today’s crop of Republican lawmakers in the same league as those with whom the 42nd president dealt. Still, Clinton offers some sound advice to the 44th president, Barack Obama: Don’t negotiate on whether to raise the debt ceiling. It must be done, Clinton said, and the nation must avoid defaulting on its financial obligations, no matter what.

http://thehill.com/video/sunday-shows/325345-bill-clinton-tells-obama-to-stand-firm-on-debt-limit

The federal government appears headed for a shutdown on Tuesday. Miracles do happen. Don’t count on one to save this train wreck. Mark it down: A shutdown is going to cost the Republicans — perhaps dearly — in the 2014 midterm elections.

The bigger battle awaits. On Oct. 17, the United States’s ability to borrow money to pay its obligations runs out unless the Congress increases the amount of money it can borrow. Republicans are playing hardball over that as well.

Bill Clinton told ABC News this morning that his own negotiations with congressional Republican leaders were “very minor.” The government shut down in the mid-1990s and voters reacted angrily to the GOP’s tactics. “We didn’t give away the store and they didn’t ask us to give away the store,” Clinton told ABC’s George Stephanopoulous. True enough, but the Republicans then were a more reasonable bunch than those with whom Barack Obama is dealing.

Of course, Clinton’s problems with the GOP congressional leadership didn’t end when the government re-started. He ended up getting impeached by the House — and acquitted in the Senate.

If you look only at Clinton’s dealings with the House GOP on budget matters, though, you have to conclude that he had it right and congressional Republicans had it very wrong.

Today’s GOP leadership needs to wise up to the calamity that’s about to occur if they force the government to default on its debts.

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Debt ceiling battle getting serious

The Affordable Care Act takes effect soon, which won’t end the fight to end it.

Before we get back to that old fight, another old battle — a much more critical one — is being waged in Washington, D.C. It’s about the debt ceiling. Failure to increase it by Oct. 17 could send the nation into default on its obligations. Does anyone really and truly understand the cataclysm that will occur if we fail to pay our bills?

Congress has the authority to increase the amount of money the federal government can borrow to, um, pay its bills and meet its financial obligations. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives, though, is attaching a laundry list of demands on any bill to increase the debt ceiling. The list includes items that have nothing to do with the debt ceiling. They include approval of the Keystone pipeline project and federal tort reform.

President Obama says he won’t negotiate over the “full faith and credit of the United States of America.” He contends — correctly in my view — that the GOP-led House is “blackmailing” the president over the nation’s financial obligations.

President Reagan went through this as well. He scolded Republicans who ran the Senate for threatening the nation’s economic well-being by blocking efforts to increase the debt ceiling. GOP Senate leaders relented and listened to the Gipper.

This time around, House GOP leaders are telling a Democratic president to stick it in his ear.

I am not going to accept the notion that Reagan’s approving the debt ceiling 18 times during his presidency was more acceptable then because the national debt was so much smaller than it is today. The consequences of failing to act are just as grave now as they were during President Reagan’s tenure.

The major difference between then and now — as I see it — is that one major party has been hijacked by individuals who see themselves as institutional reformers. I see them as attempting to destroy the very government they took an oath to serve.