US Passes Historic Debt Deal

The US House passed the "compromise debt deal," and nobody whom I've spoken to in the real world thinks it is worth the paper it is printed on... except the Congressmen who voted for it. Martha Roby is quite happy with it... which should tell you a lot about Martha Roby. She's not alone, though, because none of our Alabama Congressmen voted against it.

But let's look at the deal. It would, potentially, raise the debt limit by more than $2 trillion... and isn't that the largest debt limit increase in recorded history? The extra borrowing is "matched" with corresponding spending cuts... supposedly. The initial "spending cuts," however, amount to a total of $900 billion over the next 10 years. That's an average of $90 billion per year... a mere 6% of our current $1.5 trillion yearly deficit.

However, the deal isn't that level. In the next budget year, you will be thrilled to learn that the deal only enacts $27 billion in spending cuts. The rest are left to later years, which could easily not materialize, because future Congresses have total control over future budgets. In other words, the future cuts won't happen, and we'll be trillions of dollars deeper in debt in exchange for a paltry $27 billion in spending cuts.

Think about it. All of the new borrowing and spending will happen between now and the 2012 elections, but only $27 billion of the cuts will? How can any thinking person count that as a victory? Or, for that matter, as a good thing?

Speaker Boehner, however, is proud of his deal, and says he got 98% of what he wanted.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/01/eveningnews/main20086598.shtml

"When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the white House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I'm pretty happy."

So that means the Boehner didn't want to cut $27 billion in spending next year, he really, REALLY wanted to cut next year's spending by a whopping $27.5 billion!

Pardon me, but that's hardly breathtaking, and it shows the poverty of the Republicans' position. It also shows the disconnect between THEIR idea of "significant spending cuts" and OURS.

You see, they don't REALLY want to dramatically reduce spending immediately, because they could catch the blame. No, they just want to capitalize on the political rhetoric and do nothing while they make us think they're doing something good.

Elsewhere in the debt limit deal debate, our own Vice President Biden has declared that fiscal conservatives who support spending reductions are terrorists.

That's a real helpful and constructive comment, Joey-boy.

Guys, the issue is simple, and it's one that neither party's leadership wants to address. The Democrats want to keep right on spending as much as they want. The Republicans want to "control the rate of growth of the debt." In other words, deficit spending is fine, just not so much of it all at once. In the meantime, our debt continues to rise.

The REAL issue isn't the deficit at all, it's that unrealistically huge mountain of debt that they are busily adding to. We can't "reduce the deficit," we have to ELIMINATE the deficit, turn it into a surplus, and start paying down our debt. And the sooner we start, the easier it will be.

The debt is the looming disaster, and this "deal" did absolutely nothing to address that problem in any meaningful way.

UPDATE: Since I posted this, the bill has also passed the US Senate... where BOTH of our Senators, Sessions and Shelby, voted against it. Way to go, guys!