Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
|
this seems a reasonably good synopsis as of this morning. from the financial times:
Quote:
US debt deal elusive amid political puzzle
By Richard McGregor in Washington
They have been courted, cajoled, threatened and warned that they will bring the US and the global financial system to ruin. But as the crisis over the US budget has steadily mounted, the Republicans have barely shifted.
For months, the Republicans in the House of Representatives, a Tea Party-inspired group militantly against new taxes, have held firm against any budget agreement that contains higher revenues.
Then on Thursday, only days before the US Treasury says the government will run out of cash, Democrats in Congress erupted over suggestions Barack Obama was willing to trim healthcare to bring Republicans on board.
The fear among Democrats that the president will sell them out by agreeing to Republican spending cuts without a commitment to raise more revenues injected another level of uncertainty into negotiations over the budget.
A heady mixture of anxiety and anger, along with fragile optimism and deep fear, is engulfing Washington as the clock ticks down on the August 2 deadline for Congress to approve an increase in the country’s borrowing limit.
The debt ceiling has been approved mostly as a matter of routine for decades by both parties, but the country’s ballooning deficit, inflated by the financial crisis and defence spending in the short-term and health costs and pensions in coming decades, has changed the political calculus.
The negotiations increasingly resemble a game of 20-dimensional chess, with the interests of the White House, the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses all diverging even as they near a patchwork deal.
Business and Wall St are fretting as well, fearing a financial implosion if Congress fails to lift the borrowing limit, while worrying that any agreement could strip them of valuable tax breaks.
Overhanging the debate is next year’s presidential election, with the White House and Democrats nervous that immediate spending cuts could squeeze the faltering economy, and their prospects at the ballot box, at the same time.
Mr Obama and John Boehner, the Republican house speaker, have attempted to forge a grand bargain to cut $3,000bn over ten years from the deficit in tightly-held negotiations between their top advisers.
But so far neither men have been able to reach a deal between themselves, let alone sell the outlines of a potential agreement to their frustrated supporters.
Mr Obama returned to the campaign trail on Friday, saying that the “wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations” should pay their fair share of deficit reduction.
“Let’s ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes that are lower on their rates than their secretaries,” he said.
Mr Obama hinted that any deficit deal would be vague on the details of budget reform because of the complexity of rewriting the tax code in such a short time.
Some Republicans in the Senate have joined with Democrats in the chamber to try to forge a bipartisan deal, but in the House there is no such meeting of minds.
About one-third of House Republicans were elected in last November’s landslide victory for the party in the midterm elections and they have vowed to abide by their commitment to cut spending and oppose taxes.
“Anyone who got elected on the mandate they received, they can’t do anything less,” said Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican.
Republicans are furious that the Democrats in Congress have been unable to come up with a budget proposal, while they took significant risk in voting their own radical plan through the house.
“There is really not much to talk about when we have not had a response from the Democrats,” said Randy Neugebauer, a Texas Republican.
Both House and Senate members left a capital in the grip of a heatwave on Friday afternoon to return to their home districts, after engaging in a largely ritualistic vote in favour of their respective positions.
The signature House Republican proposal backed by Mr Boehner – to “cut, cap and balance” the deficit – was voted down in the Senate, leaving him under pressure to forge a more centrist position.
House Republicans left a meeting with Mr Boehner in a gloomy mood.
“The speaker was the most sort of melancholy I’ve seen him,” said Steve LaTourette, an Ohio Republican, told Bloomberg. “He wanted to, I think, report to the conference that substantial progress was being made, we’re moving in the right direction, and he couldn’t give that report.”
|
US debt deal elusive amid political puzzle - FT.com
so far as ace's repetitions are concerned...he lines up words in a sequence that makes sense structurally. by which i mean there are sentences that makes sense. but there's really nothing about this neo-liberal worldview that is coherent beyond the confines of econ 101. it's been a disaster as a guide for policy. it has no descriptive component---so it cannot take account of anything remotely like the social-historical world. we do not live in these simple-minded hydraulic models or amongst these metaphysical constructions like "real wealth" which is always Other than wealth created by anything...we live in a historical situation the magnitude of which is in significant measure a result of neo-liberal "thinking"---sooner or later we need to be done with it.
have to start somewhere.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|