Tag Archives: national debt

national news

Compromise wins!

President Joe Biden had reason to spike the proverbial football tonight, declaring outright victory in his protracted fight with the right-wingers over the debt ceiling.

He didn’t go there … to his great credit.

Instead, the president used his Oval Office speech tonight to offer congratulations to Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell — in addition to Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jefferies — for putting the good of the country over the wishes of the extremists within their own partisan caucuses.

Biden noted that the deal that ends the debt ceiling discussion for the next two years doesn’t please everyone but it does good for the whole nation.

That is the fuel that makes a representative democracy run, the president noted.

Yes, he took some credit for legislation he has helped push through a deeply divided Congress. And why not? He’s running for re-election and you can rest assured fully that whoever runs against him in 2024 will raise a ruckus over perceived errors the president has made.

I am not enough of a policy nerd to quibble over the specifics of the deal that Biden and McCarthy hammered out. I did fear, however, the consequences of failing to get this deal approved by Congress. They affect me directly: Social Security income, my retirement account and veterans’ protection hit me right in the gut. I did not want to lose any of it.

Thanks to the president and the speaker, I won’t. Neither will millions of other Americans.

Thanks to the president and the speaker for pulling us away from that proverbial cliff.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Economy is strong … period!

How in the world does one deal with the fearmongering on the right wing of the political spectrum that keeps fomenting the lie that our national economy is headed for the crapper?

President Biden keeps seeking to remind us of several undeniable facts: joblessness is at a historic low; new jobs are pouring in; business continues to make astounding profits; inflation is subsiding; the national budget deficit is shrinking; the national debt is receding, too.

It’s falling on deaf ears on the right. The right-wingers are looking for any advantage they can find as they seek to run against the president. They are fomenting yet another lie, that the economy is tanking.

Listen up, folks: The economy is not heading for the tank! The economy is showing remarkable resilience! Its strength is presenting itself almost daily!

I am going to use this blog to try to disabuse those who want to believe the liars that the economy is set to be flushed away.

It is not!

johnkanels_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Mr. Speaker, for whom do you work?

Kevin McCarthy clearly needs a lesson on public service, because the House speaker is listening to the wrong “bosses” as he digs in against efforts to raise the national debt ceiling.

Mr. House Speaker, you work for the people of south-central California, who sent you to Congress to do their bidding, not the bidding of the MAGA crowd that is pulling your strings.

McCarthy appears to be resisting President Biden’s effort to reach common ground because the MAGA cabal that comprises the vocal minority within the GOP House caucus is demanding it of him.

What will happen, then, if the nation defaults? If it fails to pay its debts by the June 1 drop-dead date established by the Treasury Department?

A lot of folks in McCarthy’s home district are going to go without Social Security or military benefit checks, they will watch their mortgage interest rates skyrocket, they will lose their jobs.

Do you think that will piss a lot of ’em off?

The House once had a Republican leader named Eric Cantor of Virginia who listened too closely to the GOP leadership and didn’t listen enough to those who sent him to Congress. Cantor ended up getting booted out of Congress when the GOP primary voters cast their ballots for someone else. Cantor was deemed out of touch with the home folks.

Mr. Speaker, you had better pay attention to who is going to feel the harm of a national default on our debt.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Debt-ceiling fight enters critical phase

Congress and the White House are fighting over an issue that doesn’t deserve this level of political bloodshed.

I refer to the debt ceiling. Congress should increase it as it has done always since the beginning of the Republic. But no-o-o-o! The Republican caucus in Congress, led by the MAGA cultists among its members, are seeking to make some sort of idiotic statement about the need to cut spending before increasing the ceiling.

How can I state this more clearly: If the nation defaults on its debts, the economy is going to crash; we will lose millions of jobs; interest rates will skyrocket; the world will feel the pain this nation will inflict on itself.

Do congressional MAGA cultists really believe this is sound fiscal policy? It is nothing of the sort!

I say all this as a way to suggest that I believe President Biden and the congressional leadership are going to find a solution before the June 1 deadline believed to be when the ceiling must be lifted.

If they do, and I believe it will happen, we are surely going to be treated with all kinds of back-slapping, high-fiving and self-congratulations from our political leaders over the courage they showed in ending this crisis.

It’s all crap!

I am afraid that the end will last only until the next debt-ceiling crisis arrives.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Biden budget = political weapon

Let’s put it all on the table: President Biden’s announcement of a new federal budget proposal is aimed at a political audience, not at anyone in Congress who he can persuade to join him in the effort to advance the “values” he espouses.

Joe Biden ventured to Pennsylvania to unveil a budget he says will cut the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade. That is, to borrow a phrase, a Big F****** Deal.

He wants to raises taxes on rich Americans and corporations. He wants to preserve Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act. The president wants to shore up our military, our national intelligence network, the fight for Ukraine’s sovereignty. Biden wants to make community college attendance free.

Is this going to fly with what he referred to continuously today with the “MAGA Republicans”? Not a chance, man!

Instead, he has laid out a predicate for his 2024 re-election effort, which many believe he will announce soon. President Biden is going to put congressional Republicans on record as opposing the very things he said he wants to do.

I am all in with what he wants to accomplish.

Of course, looming mightily over all this is the threat by Republicans to crash the world economy by allowing the United States to default on the national debt that it has accrued since the beginning of the Republic. The president made that point, too, telling Republicans that they had a hand in running up that debt and that the U.S. Constitution requires the nation to maintain its “full faith and credit.”

Republicans, particularly the know-nothings who comprise the MAGA cabal, need to understand that they cannot mess with the national debt without collapsing the entire world economy. Got it? They had better!

President Biden’s budget as he has presented it won’t get through Congress. A big part of me believes the president — who knows how Congress works — understands that, but he has thrown down the gauntlet and dared the GOP to pick it up.

johnkanelis_92@hotmaial.com

economic news

MAGA cult = political arsonists

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The MAGA cult that has seized control of the Republican agenda in the U.S. House should really think long and so very hard about what it intends to do regarding the national debt.

The right-wing cabal within the GOP caucus wants to insist on spending cuts if the government seeks to increase its debt ceiling. What the right-wingers seemingly want is to cut Social Security and Medicare.

If they do not get their way and the nation defaults on its debts — for the first time in U.S. history — then all hell (and then some!) is going to break loose.

Americans’ retirement accounts well could vanish. Investors will bail out of the stock market en masse, driving stock portfolios into the dumper. The economy will collapse.

The national debt ceiling must be increased. Period, full stop and all that crap! Yet the MAGA crowd is insisting on something that’s never been considered, let alone been done … which is to cut spending as a tradeoff for doing what should be a routine matter.

Our nation’s founders enshrined our “full faith and credit” into Article IV of the Constitution, declaring that it must be honored — or else! The cultists who strong-armed concessions from Kevin McCarthy in exchange for their votes to make him speaker of the House, are ignorant of the founders’ intent. Then again, they’re ignorant about how to govern.

That is not dissuading them from making demands that are unreasonable, immoral and perhaps even unconstitutional.

They are hellbent on torching our system of government.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Who holds key to debt?

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A fascinating statistic is making the rounds out here in the Land of Ordinary Americans.

It involves the national debt, which is at its breaking point, and it speaks to the hypocrisy among Republicans who insist on spending cuts to counteract increasing the nation’s debt limit.

It’s this: One-quarter of the nation’s total debt was acquired during the four years that Donald Trump served as president. Furthermore, let us never forget — after all, Donald Trump damn sure won’t — that he is a Republican.

Thus, it becomes imperative to put this GOP yammering about spending cuts in its proper perspective.

Republicans in Congress were all but stone-cold silent during the time Trump was amassing the enormous debt. They weren’t demanding spending cuts the way they are these days with a Democratic president sitting in the Oval Office.

Why do you suppose that’s the case? Oh, I know! It’s politics, man, pure and simple.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Debt or investment?

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One man’s piling onto the national debt is another man’s “investment in the future.”

So it goes with the debate over Build Back Better, which is President Biden’s domestic spending initiative that is hung up in wrangling between congressional Democrats and Republicans and, yes, even between factions within the Democratic Party.

Whether it’s a $3.5 trillion spending package over 10 years or a $1.5 trillion package, it’s a lot of money.

What is so damn troubling, though, is that the GOP caucus is now worried about the national debt. It wasn’t worried one little bit about it when Donald Trump pitched an idea about cutting taxes for rich people, depriving the government of revenue it could “invest” in programs to help the rest of us. Now, though, it is all hung up on the debt and the cost of the infrastructure package that Biden and some within the Democratic caucus want.

Yeah, I know. It’s politics. That’s a family member of mine’s favorite rejoinder. It’s his fallback position when he can’t find any justification for the nonsense being bandied about.

It still stinks, man.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Some perspective, eh?

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A certain amount of context has been tossed aside in the discussion over whether to approve President Biden’s plan to “Build Back Better.”

We have become fixated on the number: 3.5 trillion … as in dollars.

What has become tossed aside is that the number that Biden and congressional progressives want would cover a 10-year period.

So, that figures to be a $350 billion expenditure annually to do a number of things: improve roads and bridges; modernize air travel; develop ship channels; improve Internet broadband service.

Here’s some more perspective. The United States of America boasts a $20 trillion annual economy, which suggests to me that $350 billion each year is like so much spittle in the proverbial bucket.

Congressional Republicans and some moderate congressional Democrats are wringing their hands over the amount of money that progressives want to spend. Again, I have to wonder: Why?

If the plan is to spread this expense out over a 10-year span of time, why are we quibbling over the total figure that in the grand scheme seems less relevant when you add some needed context to the discussion?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Now the deficit matters?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Listening to Republican members of Congress bitch about the possibility of running up the federal budget deficit because a Democratic president wants to invest in our infrastructure makes me want to laugh, scream and cry … all at once!

Only now does the ostensible party of fiscal restraint choose to raise its voice against the cost of infrastructure overhaul. Puh-leeze.

President Biden is planning this week to meet with Republican congressional leaders to seek a compromise. Biden wants to spend $2.2 trillion on various projects including infrastructure; the GOP has come back with a $568 billion proposal that focuses more intently on roads, bridges, airports, ship channels … those kinds of things.

Yes, that’s a big gap. The GOP is yammering about deficit spending after approving a big tax break for rich Americans when Donald Trump was president. The tax cut helped run up the deficit and, of course, the national debt.

Where was the outrage then? Hmm. I heard them crickets, man.

I do hope President Biden can bring his immense negotiating skills to bear when he meets with his Republican friends. I also hope he can persuade them of the importance of employing government to work for the people who pay for it.