No Deal: U S Congress Stares At Cliff Failure

[webfact]

No deal: Congress stares at cliff failure

Nick O'Malley

US Correspondent

WASHINGTON: Despite intense scrutiny and the growing frustration of the American public, the US Congress failed to come up with a weekend deal to avoid the sweeping tax hikes and spending cuts known as the fiscal cliff.

The 112th Congress, which is set to become the least productive since the 1940s, now has just a day to find a solution, suggesting that anything it comes up with will be a bare-minimum patch over key elements rather than the "grand bargain" hoped for, and that the crisis will lurch on through the northern winter.

American businesses and individuals are now left not knowing what taxes they will be paying next week.

A Huffington Post analysis of records held by the US House Clerk's Office has found this Congress to be the least productive since 1947, passing 219 bills, compared with 383 passed by the previous Congress.

The members of the 112th Congress, which sits for the last time on Monday in the US, have not only created the fiscal cliff they are now seeking to avert, but they have failed to pass a budget, failed to pass basic procedural motions, failed to pass a Violence Against Women Act and most recently failed to ratify a UN treaty protecting the rights of the disabled.

Congress's lower house has voted to repeal Barack Obama's health reforms more than 30 times, despite the fact the measure would never pass the Senate, let alone be signed into law by the President. [more...]

Full story: http://www.smh.com.au/world/no-deal-congress-stares-at-cliff-failure-20121231-2c2g6.html

-- The Sydney Morning Herald 2012-12-31

[Jingthing]

The American political system is smelling of dysfunction.

[chainarong]

Is this how I see this US problem, correct, millions of it's good citizens are swimming in the Sh!!t, so whats a few rich ones falling off a cliff gonna do.Enlighten me on this beautiful New Years Eve..

[NeverSure]

Great. An Australian news source quoting the communist-light Huffington Post.

How about the rest of the story?

[qdinthailand]

Great. An Australian news source quoting the communist-light Huffington Post.

How about the rest of the story?

The rest of the story? You mean, 'the other story'. The one conservatives like to hear. The ones the John Birchers spin. The ones that a small minority of American's believe to be fact!

While the rest of great majority of Americans - you know, the commie lib portion of America, about 75% of the rest of the country - moves along with the main-stream and knows that come Wednesday morning, they are in deep dodo. Talk about a New Years hang-over.

But hey, some people gotta feel pain (not bankers, the rich, the military industrial complex...) - just all the poor little people that don't have anything, and never will if conservatives get their way. Not even decent affordable health care. And oh, btw - don't even think about retiring!

[Steely Dan]

Well this is the reward the Democrats and Republicans fought to own at the last election, the Dems won, now it's for them to own it. Enjoy.

[Jingthing]

Well this is the reward the Democrats and Republicans fought to own at the last election, the Dems won, now it's for them to own it. Enjoy.

Not quite right there. The congressional republicans are clearly obstructing any kind of deal and they have no incentive to make a deal, because if they do, they face a challenge from someone more right wing than them if they did make a deal. Like I said, smells of systematic dysfunction. The solution was basically to kick out almost ALL of congress but the voters aren't participating.

[chuckd]

Well, let's see here. To pass a budget, or any law for that matter, it takes action on the part of the Legislative Branch, consisting of both Houses of Congress, to pass a bill. Then the Executive Branch, Obama, must sign the bill into law.

So now all the intransigience is blamed on the part of the Republicans, who control by a small majority, one part of the three part process, while the Executive Branch shows no leadership and the Senate Democrats having offered nothing in the form of a compromise get a free pass?

You people need to realize the crap we are sliding into is caused equally by both parties AND the President.

There's enough blame to go around to everybody concerned.

Edited some wording.

Edited December 31, 2012 by chuckd

[Jingthing]

If one branch (congress) is obstructing and that branch is controlled by republicans, the people are correctly going to place MOST of the blame on the republicans. Obviously super partisans will never blame their own party on ANYTHING, but most Americans are not super partisans. Primary voters are though, and that's who the republican congresspeople are worried about.

Edited December 31, 2012 by Jingthing

[Ulysses G.]

Obama wants to go over the cliff, blame it on the Republicans and keep on spending.

Edited December 31, 2012 by Ulysses G.

[cloudhopper]

Politicians from both major parties have been spending far beyond our means for years on social programs and war mongering. Both parties will fold, the "cliff" will be averted, the US will devalue its currency even further, the country will go deeper into unrepayable debt, and the MSM and stock market will celebrate "success".

[NeverSure]

If one branch (congress) is obstructing and that branch is controlled by republicans, the people are correctly going to place MOST of the blame on the republicans. Obviously super partisans will never blame their own party on ANYTHING, but most Americans are not super partisans. Primary voters are though, and that's who the republican congresspeople are worried about.

Congress isn't controlled by the Republicans. Only the House is by a small majority. Two of the three branches are controlled by the Democrats.

Both the Republicans and Democrats are obstructing, but both with their own reasons due to differing views of what's best. I'll do my best to give you the two sets of views.

Republicans. "If you raise taxes on the rich, you take money out of the private sector where jobs are created. You raise taxes on those who provide the jobs. "You never got a job from a poor man." The job creators will now have less money to spend on payroll and it will hurt the economy and well have fewer jobs and fewer net taxpayers."

Democrats: "The rich should pay more taxes because they can afford it. The little guy will go along with that for sure because he doesn't have to pay more taxes, and he'll like us for telling him we're helping him."

Now my view: This rich which would be taxed is only 2% of the population. Increasing their tax rate would be a drop in the bucket financially, but a boon to the politicians who can tell the 98% that they are helping them. In the meantime, no branch of government will seriously consider cutting spending which is where the real budget balancing would have to come from.

If you taxed every single American with an adjusted gross income of 1 million dollars or more 100% of every dime they made and I mean confiscated every dime, you'd get enough money to reduce only the deficit by just 75%.

The budget would still be horribly in the red. So while both sides bicker about whether to tax the rich more, the ship is sinking from too much spending about which no one will talk.

It's all political grandstanding.

[Jingthing]

I obviously meant the house of representatives which contains CONGRESSpeople, rather then the senate which has senators. As all three branches must approve legislation, one can block.

[virtualtraveller]

It's not exactly a cliff, more like a drop off, the kind I can negotiate on my mountain bike, there's always next week or month, if the taxes go up for one month, it's not the end of the world, but it indicative of this congress's record of being dysfunctional to spite the president.

[chuckd]

I obviously meant the house of representatives which contains CONGRESSpeople, rather then the senate which has senators. As all three branches must approve legislation, one can block.

We are not talking about three branches of government here. Congress is the total of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House and the Senate are not each a separate branch of government. They combined make up the Legislative Branch.

The Republican controlled House has already passed a bill to get past the fiscal cliff, but it does not tax that 2% of the rich.

Harry Reid won't even call it to the floor for debate and a vote and Obama has said he won't sign it anyway.

PS; The "tax the rich" scheme will raise around $85 Billion...which is enough to run the behemoth called the federal government for a grand total of six days and six hours.

That's a drop in the budget. Spending is the problem.

[Jingthing]

The democrats control the senate and the presidency, and republicans expect to shove their own uncompromised agenda through by controlling just one out of three, the house? No. It does not work that way.

Look, Obama was crystal clear about his tax policy intentions in the very recent elections. He won and won big. He has the strongest democratic party mandate now since FDR. If the republicans think they can regain power by sinking the country, well, good luck to the country.

That's why I say things have become dysfunctional. So let the republicans do the damage they seem hell bent on causing, and we'll see if the next midterm election in two years might clean things up. No reason to be optimistic, of course.

Edited December 31, 2012 by Jingthing

[NeverSure]

I obviously meant the house of representatives which contains CONGRESSpeople, rather then the senate which has senators. As all three branches must approve legislation, one can block.

There are two parts to Congress; the House and the Senate. All are congressmen.

[NeverSure]

The democrats control the senate and the presidency, and republicans expect to shove their own uncompromised agenda through by controlling just one out of three, the house? No. It does not work that way.

Look, Obama was crystal clear about his tax policy intentions in the very recent elections. He won and won big. He has the strongest democratic party mandate now since FDR. If the republicans think they can regain power by sinking the country, well, good luck to the country.

That's why I say things have become dysfunctional. So let the republicans do the damage they seem hell bent on causing, and we'll see if the next midterm election in two years might clean things up. No reason to be optimistic, of course.

Apparently you didn't read what Chuckd or I wrote? This "tax the rich" sticking point would raise enough money only to run the federal government for about 6 days. It's insignificant and showmanship. In my scenario, even if you confiscated all of the "rich's" income, you couldn't even wipe out the deficit, much less have a balanced budget.

The real issue is spending, and neither side is talking about that.

[Jingthing]

I obviously meant the house of representatives which contains CONGRESSpeople, rather then the senate which has senators. As all three branches must approve legislation, one can block.

There are two parts to Congress; the House and the Senate. All are congressmen.

Nope.

Whereas the term Member of Congress applies to members of both houses, the terms Congressman and Congresswoman usually refer only to members of the House of Representatives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_of_Congress

[NeverSure]

I obviously meant the house of representatives which contains CONGRESSpeople, rather then the senate which has senators. As all three branches must approve legislation, one can block.

There are two parts to Congress; the House and the Senate. All are congressmen.

Nope.

Whereas the term Member of Congress applies to members of both houses, the terms Congressman and Congresswoman usually refer only to members of the House of Representatives.

http://en.wikipedia....ber_of_Congress

..."the terms Congressman and Congresswoman usually refer only to members of the House of Representatives."

First, I can edit Wikipedia myself and change that, and then if you have created an account can come along behind me and change it again. Wikipedia is the opinion of whoever edited it last.

We're just arguing semantics. All members of the House and Senate are members of Congress. Just as in most of the US, people in my area might use a different term than someone else. We tend to call members of the House "Representatives," and members of the Senate "Senators," but no one would argue if all of them were referred to as "Congressman." I take another issue with Wiki. Women in the House aren't necessarily called "Congresswoman" any longer. I often hear them called collectively "Congressmen" as in "The Congressmen in the committee voted to approve it" rather than "The Congressmen and Congresswomen..."

Peace.

[puck2]

A German magazin

[Pakboong]

In 2009 and 2010, according to studies by Emmanuel Saez of UC Berkeley, the average real income per family rose 2.3% — but that of the top 1% grew 11.6%. That means that 93% of the income gains in the post-recession period went to the top 1%. In the last century that would have been a strong argument for socialism. Today, however, it is merely an argument to control the advantage gained from debt based money at the top levels of banking and industry. The money did not really vaporize as many believe, it simply migrated.

The advantage given to the central banking process and the too big to fail banks, is IMO criminal. The advantage is a ponzi scheme that has to be dealt with. I do not wish a higher tax rate for the wealthy unless, we are unable or unwilling to call a spade a spade and neutralize their built in advantage. A simple example is the no interest on your money but as much as 30% interest on your credit card bill. Many of us learned long ago not to let charges on a credit card build up to where interest needs to be paid. But this particular process has gotten so out of hand that the people in the streets have no choice but to pay the minimum if that. The big banks know the people cannot pay off their bills and know that eventually, the majority of citizens will have to pay the 30% vig. This particular advantage is unavoidable with the current process. I think the smart and capable should be allowed to get rich at the expense of the slow and stupid but they should all be given an equal playing field from which to operate. The international bankers IMO do nothing that I need so why should I care if they get new private jets for Christmas.

The many personal failures of the recession will not be able to function without a credit card and they have no way to get a card unless they are willing to pay the top percentage of interest to the big banks. Talk about a catch 22. Even a card secured by cash to rebuild credit will cost huge percentage numbers. Debit cards are not accepted in some places, so debit cards are not the answer. The banks do not favor debit cards and lobby to minimize their usage.

Now in the US, student loan totals have out paced Credit Card debt and now exceeds a trillion $. That would be trillion with a T. The too big to fail banks get their money up front and the government acts as their collection agency and take what ever losses should occur. And they will occur. That, of course means we all will have to pay for the losses of the many defaults. The banks get their money up front and when they do some careless investment of their own making "We the People" bail them out. What a racket. Iceland just sentenced two of their bankers to prison terms for their play in the recession.

No government can fix this. USA debt now is pulling on par with world GDP figures. It matters not what congress does today or any day for that matter without dealing with the problem at its root. We have been lobbied to death on this matter and pretty much every congressman or senator has sold their soul to to the metaphorical devil. Throwing them all out and starting over doesn't work because the new guys and girls are oriented the day they show up for work unless they had previously accepted the devils campaign moneys to run.

The big banks have been allowed to put the world at risk by creating as much as $300 trillion in derivative exposure. All of this has been largely unregulated and growing. There is no collateral to back this number. We all go down if it fails.

I just don't see any of this as a partisan political matter.

The laws that created the advantage need to at least be reconsidered. This mess will bring us all down.

[Scott]

//Closed//

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