Debt ceiling cost: $1.7 billion for Treasury bills - Aug. 1, 2011
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The debt ceiling debacle has just cost U.S. taxpayers more than $1.7 billion.
That's the amount of additional interest the government had to pay investors Monday to sell Treasury bills that finance its operations.
To be precise, the extra cost is $1,721,250,000 more in interest payments than the government would have needed to pay investors just two weeks ago, when they were willing to accept far lower rates before the debt ceiling became a crisis.
"That's real money," said IHS Chief Economist Nariman Behravesh. "Taxpayers need to wake up to the fact that these kind of shenanigans in the end cost."
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Conservatives don't care about the cost as long as it serves their political goals, in my opinion.
Debt ceiling cost: $1.7 billion for Treasury bills - Aug. 1, 2011
Indeed. Goddamn you conservatives. We of course are part of a dictatorship where you all had complete control and chose to delay this out of singularly your own choice.
...wait a second...
No, sorry, I got that wrong. We are a dictatorship, but we're a dictatorship under the Democratic Party, so the Republicans should've just did exactly what the Democrats wanted and dealt with it because we're not a representitive republic where people are elected by their constituents to push for their desires but rather are a dictatorship under teh Democratic Party. Silly me. Damn you conservatives! Damn you to hell for not doing exactly what the Democrats wanted.
...wait, no wait another second...
Oh that's right, we are a represnetitive republic. Both sides have one of the chambers of congress and one side also has the Presidency. Despite that, NEITHER side was able to actually fashion a bill that was able to get support from the other side until the past days. Both sides choices are the reason it took until the 11th hour for this to be done, not just one. But far be it for me to expect hyper partisans to pass up a chance to bash bash bash one sidedly for the sake of political points.
How much more is it costing today while we wait on Harry Reid to get his **** together?
Why don't you guys consider blaming the senate, who voted down or refused to vote for...what was the final total? Four bills?
Or do we blame the House for wasting their time passing bills they knew the Senate wouldn't? Goes both ways, IMO.
Budget debates happen every year, there is no reason in my opinion, to hold the country hostage. I have no problem with these debates, the problem as I see it is the debt ceiling which is an arbitrary figure that has been routinely raised until this year.Indeed. Goddamn you conservatives. We of course are part of a dictatorship where you all had complete control and chose to delay this out of singularly your own choice.
...wait a second...
No, sorry, I got that wrong. We are a dictatorship, but we're a dictatorship under the Democratic Party, so the Republicans should've just did exactly what the Democrats wanted and dealt with it because we're not a representitive republic where people are elected by their constituents to push for their desires but rather are a dictatorship under teh Democratic Party. Silly me. Damn you conservatives! Damn you to hell for not doing exactly what the Democrats wanted.
...wait, no wait another second...
Oh that's right, we are a represnetitive republic. Both sides have one of the chambers of congress and one side also has the Presidency. Despite that, NEITHER side was able to actually fashion a bill that was able to get support from the other side until the past days. Both sides choices are the reason it took until the 11th hour for this to be done, not just one. But far be it for me to expect hyper partisans to pass up a chance to bash bash bash one sidedly for the sake of political points.
Budget debates happen every year, there is no reason in my opinion, to hold the country hostage. I have no problem with these debates, the problem as I see it is the debt ceiling which is an arbitrary figure that has been routinely raised until this year.
Our Congress and President authorizebudgetsspending which I hope are based upon some need. To say we can't borrow money to satisfy those budgets is stupid.
The way I see it, the House continued to put together bills that the House could agree upon.
The senate provided no time for debate, no cross-chamber discussion, and no willingness to meet and hash out a plan. In that sense, the House didn't have much incentive or support for creating a bicameral bill.
Hearing, "we won't vote for that..that either...nope, not that one, either...not gonna happen...we want tax increases and no spending cuts", etc doesn't really give the house anything to work with that could pass either House, let alone appease the do-nothing senate. They spent much of the last few months sitting with their arms crossed, telling Obama to do their dirty work because they weren't going to compromise (on what, they were never clear because they never created a plan until Reid's plan came out...which, surprise surprise, had no tax increases). When they finally DID stand up and propose something it was still not voted upon (or was it? Last blurb I saw said Reid shelved the vote...).
Arbitrary? Continually increasing the debt ceiling without serious consideration to our financial policy has led to us borrowing almost half of every single dollar we spend, but you're calling it arbitrary? Simply passing a new increase (especially a $2.4 trillion increase) would have left those interested in trying to recreate some semblance of fiscal responsibility with absolutely no leverage to get anything accomplished. You know damned well if we had just voted to raise the debt ceiling and said, "Oh, we'll cover our financial disaster later" that we never would have addressed spending.
Which really means nothing, considering the House is Republican-heavy enough to pretty much overcome any Democratic opposition on pretty much anything, and coming up with partisan bills is a total waste of time.
I don't see that the second sentence necessarily follows the first. Everything the House passed (including Cut Cap and Balance, which was actually a Senate GOP creation, and the Boehner bill), contained at least a few unreasonable provisions that THEY KNEW would cause it to fail in the Senate. Just because the other side is sitting on their thumbs doesn't mean it's a good idea to waste your damn time passing partisan bills instead of bipartisan ones.
Reid didn't really shelve the vote. He simply didn't have enough votes to end the filibuster of his bill, and so the bill died right then and there.
Bottom line: BOTH sides are to blame in this. Both the Tea Party Grover Norquist Republicans who absolutely wouldn't compromise on anything whatsoever (no tax increases, period! Even though Obama is putting 4 trillion worth of cuts on the table, something we NEVER would have gotten a few months ago!) and the Democrats who didn't want to face reality and realize that if we are to fix our deficit problem, we MUST reform the entitlements.
And yes, while I do agree that the Senate for the most part let Obama do their dirty work, the House, as I just explained above, wasted their mother****ing time passing bills they knew nobody else would agree to. Cut Cap and Balance would have garnered a hell of a lot more support, even from Dems, if it were simply just "Cut and Balance," for instance.
Arbitrary? Continually increasing the debt ceiling without serious consideration to our financial policy has led to us borrowing almost half of every single dollar we spend, but you're calling it arbitrary? Simply passing a new increase (especially a $2.4 trillion increase) would have left those interested in trying to recreate some semblance of fiscal responsibility with absolutely no leverage to get anything accomplished. You know damned well if we had just voted to raise the debt ceiling and said, "Oh, we'll cover our financial disaster later" that we never would have addressed spending.
When they chose to draw the line is the sand could be considered arbitrary. It wasn't, but it could be. The real reason why republicans chose now to draw their line in the sand, finally, is they thought they could win political points, especially with 2012 coming up, and if they should win in 2012, this opens up a little more spending room for them. You cannot go around spending nonstop, and then when the other guy spends throw a fit and hope to be seen as fiscally conservative.
For the record, I'm not referencing House v. Senate as a means of referencing Republicans v. Democrats. As I saw it, we had one chamber putting things together, asking for discussion, trying to get something done...and we had one chamber who pouted and acted like children, refusing to come to the table. They were trying to remain politically innocent and avoid having their names and faces put to the bill...at least that's my guess, and it's really the only explanation I can come up with that makes any sense...because they had no reason to be so unproductive and unwilling to get involved in any meaningful discussion. As much as the Senate made a political move by remaining inactive, the Houst made one by refusing to include any of the vague Senate demands on paper. In a sense yeah, they're both guilty...but the idea that republican refusal to compromise is the sole or primary reason that we had such a huge (albeit expected) delay and related expenditures is just wrong.
We have a group of people in elected positions of power in government who hate government and would like to see large parts of it destroyed or abolished.
What more needs to be explained to anyone?
I disagree. What matters isn't the size of the increase itself (or the length of time until the next increase), it's the size of the increase relative to the amount of cuts. The goal is pretty much for the cuts to exceed the increase. When Boehner said "I'm only going to raise the ceiling by 1 trillion, but my plan only has $900 billion worth of cuts" what does that mean? Why one trillion? If you raise the ceiling by only one trillion, another debt debacle will come up before the end of this year, and we have to go through this three-ring circus again. That only serves to create more uncertainty in already fragile economy, at this point (and, while I don't agree with this, there are cynics out there who even say that that move by Boehner was intentionally put in there in order to screw up the economy for the President). Why not just come up with an original bill that extends the debt ceiling by a lot, but also cuts a lot so we don't have to go through this bull**** again a mere 4 months from now?
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