{"id":42433,"date":"2011-07-31T16:14:55","date_gmt":"2011-07-31T20:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=42433"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:50:47","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:50:47","slug":"hostage-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/fe-911-2\/hostage-situation\/","title":{"rendered":"Hostage Situation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have to confess. The last half of this month has had me verklempt.<\/em> Each passing day of the news story called“The Debt Ceiling That Can’t Get Passed”<\/em> sucked air out of my chest, making it hard to sleep, obsessive about the news, and living with a cloud of worry unnamed over me, unable to type a word. If you were wondering where Fe-911 went to, I’ve been in a mental hell of debt and default angst.<\/p>\n

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Clearly, I am not alone in my worry. We have been smothered by 24-7 debt and deficit news: the trillions of US deficit, talk of entitlement reform, the debt ceiling negotiation stalemate, the threat of US default on the world’s economy. We are bombarded by all-debt-all-deficit-all-the-time on All-Debt Radio — enough to make an already anxious nation sit nervously at the edge of its seat. As if we haven’t had enough Shock Doctrine here and around the world over the last week, let alone decade, we’re now getting pistol-whipped with the threat of our parents, our grandparents and ourselves getting robbed blind of the fixed monthly income we paid ourselves over decades of working life.<\/p>\n

This weekend, the Senate and the House have worked on a compromise that would raise the debt ceiling by $1.3 trillion through 2012, and cut three trillion from the deficit. There are still hurdles to overcome, as revealed by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The sticking point for Dems, Kerry said, involves detailed negotiations over an enforcement mechanism that would require Congress to act on entitlement and tax reform by a date certain or faces the consequences. Democrats want to ensure that such a trigger does not simply mandate severe spending cuts, but also includes tax increases — the so-called “shared pain” Democrats have cited lately.<\/p>\n

“That is the big sticking point here in the Senate,” Kerry said in a floor speech Saturday evening. “We need to know that if there is a trigger that is used in an automatic way in which money is going to be held back, that money has to be held back in a fair and balanced way.”<\/p>\n

“You do not just cut, you also have to have the possibility of revenue,” he said. “Because if you do not have the possibility of revenue, then the side that only wants to cut can wait for nothing to happen and the cuts take place automatically. There is no threat to them. There is no leverage for them to come to agreement on the other things.”<\/p>\n

So far, the “or else” has focused on a trigger that would slash spending across the board — including for entitlement programs like Medicare, a near-sacred program for Democrats, as well as to defense spending, which Republicans historically have sought to protect. One of the models for the so-called trigger goes back to the Reagan era when, in 1984, Congress passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act in 1984, which included a trigger imposing draconian across-the-board spending cuts unless hard-and-fast deficit reduction goals were met.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whether or not an agreement to the compromise is made, please remember to sage the house and pray. Mercury stations Tuesday, August 2nd.<\/p>\n

In the midst of this current apocalyptic deficit-debt-o-rama, Americans are struggling to climb out the financial hole caused by the sub-prime mortgage fiasco of 2005-08. America faces a nationwide average of 10% unemployment, with businesses (aka “job creators”) still refusing to budge to make more jobs, which would increase tax revenue. This has been made worse since the beginning of this year — the tapering off of the Obama Administration’s 2009 stimulus package, the first year of the new Republican majority from the 2010 midterms and a large Tea Bag Party contingent in the House of Representatives. Add to this the 2012 elections where the Republicans are doing everything they can to make Obama a one-term president, which means every job created means another vote for Obama. And they simply can’t have that.<\/p>\n

If it seems I am writing about our American budget woes as if it’s nuclear brinkmanship, it’s because of the nature of the parties involved, one of which has a constituency that carries guns with live ammo to political rallies. Our polarized politics are now represented by proxy in this fight over how the nation’s checkbook is managed. This is a gamble with the economic stability of America and the rest of world and is now how American politics rolls: guns to rallies, guns aimed at your political adversaries and the public to accede to their demands. This is a hostage situation.<\/p>\n

I wish we had <\/em>a lot less insane kidnappers than the 50 – 70 in the House stymieing efforts to conclude what should be simple business: increase the debt ceiling so that government can function, let alone push for deficit reduction. At this point, optimistically, even if we pass the debt ceiling limit, the rest of the world may wisely work to detach from America as a major tent post for the world’s economy,\u00a0 because the politics here make us too unstable to rely on. If that happened, it may be painful, and yet I wouldn’t blame them for a minute. Look at what happened earlier when we needed to ratify extension of the START treaty – unemployment benefits were held hostage for millions of Americans out of work. This is the type of scorched earth politics we’re working with.<\/p>\n

Currently, we hostages could be helped if at least our blindfolds were taken off and Congress, which is primarily responsible for America’s purse, would fess up. This is not about our grandparents’ monthly check. It’s about the pork: the subsidies to business interests which don’t need them; the undue influence of big business in the halls of Congress; lobbyists wooing heads of Congressional committees; lobbyists writing laws to protect their private clients’ interests.<\/p>\n

Here is a breakdown by percentage of the reasons why we’re in our current deficit struggle from the Congressional Budget Office: recessions or the business cycle (37%); policies enacted by President Bush (33%); policies enacted by President Bush and supported or extended by President Obama (20%); and new policies from President Obama (10%).<\/p>\n

Why do we need to continually pressure Congress to do the right thing, pass the debt ceiling increase with a clean bill (no budget cuts)? Our kidnappers aren’t desperate. They’re greedy and politically ambitious — a dangerous combination. And now with guns pointed at Grandma’s head, they’re in control — only if we let them. If you haven’t called your congressional representative yet, please do. And continue to do so until this insanity stops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have to confess. The last half of this month has had me verklempt. Each passing day of the news story called“The Debt Ceiling That Can’t Get Passed” sucked air out of my chest, making it hard to sleep, obsessive about the news, and living with a cloud of worry unnamed over me, unable to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42433"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}