After Obama and the Dems wasted one year in an orgy of political maneuvering at all costs to pass their holy grail, Obamacare, and after wasting over $1T to keep government employees employed under the guise of stimulus………….. the only reasonable conclusion any reasonable person can make is that failure by the GOP to allow tax increases has caused this Historic Event to Happen to Our Historic President.

Remember how often we heard that phrase during Bush’s tenure? No matter what happened – 9/11 (which was to blame on the Clinton/Gorelick ‘wall’ more than anything else), Katrina (remember how Bush blew up the levees?), the global meltdown (which was due to people like Barney Frank more than to Bush), and on and on – we were reminded that it was “on his watch” … and therefore his fault.

That phrase disappeared in January 2009. Obama takes the blame for NOTHING. It’s Bush’s fault. It’s the tea party’s fault. It’s the Eurozone’s fault. It’s the Japanese tsunami’s fault. It’s the GOP’s fault. It’s (fill in the blank)’s fault. He’s offered up more excuses than he has played rounds of golf.

Also, did anyone notice that the market recovered a bit today when Berlusconi said he’d consider the Italian equivalent of the BBA? That would be same BBA that Obama and the Democrats have said belongs in the trash. Amazing.

This will put the final nail in the coffin of the Obama presidency. You cannot spin this. Fiscal Dems will be appalled by this.

CCB was the only solution, yet the “peace in our time” crowd successfully lopped us at the knees.

The Boehners and McConnells of this world cost us an extra few or several trillion. Thanks for nothing.

Chicago’s….BEAR market and downgrade of the USA credit.

Democrats hiding behind Barack Obama are the true holder of credit for this mess.

However, I don’t want to hear any Member of this current Congress in either Chamber speak one word if they voted for the Continuing Resolutions that kept funding Obamacare, et al and supported anything other than CCB in the Debt Deal.

Stop Spending!

Dems will scream even louder for tax increases but the problem remains the spending. We all know that increased tax revenues will just lead to more spending so the GOP cannot cave on this, ever. If the socialists would stop the class warfare, their assault on business, their anti-energy campaign, and their totalitarian impulse to micromanage our lives and just get the HEL! out of the way the federal government would soon find itself awash in cash. But the party of envy simply won’t allow it. These people must be crushed, not merely defeated but crushed and driven from the field of battle.

I just read somewhere that S&P is concerned about the growth of entitlements, especially medicare.
Changes are going to have to be made, no doubt.

I just read somewhere that S&P is concerned about the growth of entitlements, especially medicare.
Changes are going to have to be made, no doubt.

2/7/2010 – Jake Tapper
So on THIS WEEK, during our exclusive interview with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, I asked if the U.S. is at risk of losing its triple-A bond rating.
He responded bluntly: “Absolutely not. And that will never happen to this country.”

3/16/2010 – The Hill
Despite warnings from independent bond raters over the country’s unsustainable fiscal situation, Geithner told a House panel on Tuesday the bond rating is safe.
“There’s not a chance that’s going to happen to our country,” Geithner said in response to a question from Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.).

4/19/2011
(Reuters) – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday there is no risk the United States could lose its top-tier AAA credit rating as politicians move closer to agreeing on how to slashing the massive U.S. debt.

4/26/2011
Fox Business reporter Peter Barnes began his televised interview with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner two days ago with this question: “Is there a risk that the United States could lose its AAA credit rating? Yes or no?”
Geithner’s response: “No risk of that.”
“No risk?” Barnes asked.
“No risk,” Geithner said.

Not to forget to mention of Obamacare, which will absorb medicare and medicaid to strengthen it against challenge. ( That is the game..you get the Seniors in and you are bulletproof… constitutional or not )
We want our rating back!! The only way to do that is walk the walk.
Obviously, nobody is buying the talk, and that is all we got for our 2.5Trillion.. a buncha talk and empty promises.
I pointed out at every single opportunity ( Here we go again…kicking the dead horse..) There IS NO such thing as a ten year budget.
So those ten year cuts, are pure fantasy, a 2.5 Trillion dollar gamble, and a guaranteed loser because they will not…absolutely not cut one single thing other than projection numbers which they will inflate before cutting them to get to the desired outcome…

They have in the days since the debt ceiling increase…already spent more than the ten year projected reductions.
And we aren’t having any fun and we want our money back….
We have a great battle cry here.
We want our credit rating back.
Unlike unilateral debt ceiling hikes, credit ratings are earned, not deemed by our fearless leaders. Nobody cares how much you think you can borrow, they care if you can pay it back.
Grrrrrrrrrr…….

if you want to play along and blame the tax cuts, that is.

How did they expect to pay for $1T more in new baseline spending?

S&P includes in the analysis a comparison of GDP and inflation – included in the mix of factors is our ability to grow our way out in addition to condition of spending/taxation. And of course that accounts for many different regulatory/labor issues as well as the nationalization of at least a quarter of the economy (finance and healthcare). I think it is quite safe to assume that smothering the life out of the economy under the regulatory burden which has only grown exponentially in the last couple of years places the majority of the burden of this fiasco in the laps of Obama and his Democrats. If only they had listened to even the more moderate voices of warning against the huge outgrowth of the administrative state and demagogy of enterprise in general, it might not be such a bad situation.

Right now, the US borrows 40 cents of every dollar it spends. If the Bush tax cuts had expired, and that revenue was added, how many cents of each dollar would we have to borrow?

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow criticized S&P for “bad math.” Barney Frank was called (he’s a financial expert, dontcha know) and he also blamed S&P.

Austan Goolsbee was on Jon Stewart’s show a day ago, and he was so giddy about leaving on Friday (today). Nice timing, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

OT: Maddow apologized for running a year-old Rush Limbaugh clip in a pointless. beat-a- dead-horse “brither” segment yesterday.(See Newsbusters.) She blamed World Net Daily for causing the error. As per usual for her “apologies,” she played a bunch of out-of-context Rush Limbaugh clips to make him seem as racist as possible. What a class broad in a class organization.

Blame Obama.
Well, I hope we don’t even have to mention that name, because it makes me mad every time I hear it now.
Fortunately, this all can be corrected in short order, with real fiscal responsibility, intelligent tax strategies and a business friendly environment.
If our gutless representatives do not again get into a popularity contest where they are more concerned with re-election, independents ( Who gives a flip about them? ) and being portrayed as some kinda hard nose conservative kitten drowning, tree killing capitalist. ( Guilty here… all counts )

I wonder why that is?

This is what I said on some of these issues in Google+ thread I was invited over to comment on–I hope it’s okay to paste–too much for me to rewrite Yours truly @ChampionCitizen:

you said, “for doing your very best to screw up the US economy and wreck the retirement and college savings of millions of families. ”

Those are strong accusations. So far you’ve not given them a shred of credence and are desperate enough to say tea partiers have racist motivations lurking in the background. How about if you man up and tell us how the tea party is trying to destroy college savings and screw up the US economy.

While you’re putting those thoughts together I’ll put some material on the thread for those of us who have intellectual integrity and maturity to consider:

1. S&P said, “We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process. We also believe that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration agreed to this week falls short of the amount that we believe is necessary to stabilize the general government debt burden by the middle of the decade…” http://hotair.com/archives/2011/08/05/breaking-sp-downgrades-u-s-to-aa/

Cliff notes version–they did what tea partiers and talk radio people said what they would do for weeks for the reasons we said–they downgraded us not over a fear mongering debt ceiling debate that was shamefully used by politicians to mislead people, but rather they lowered the credit rating because our spending is out of control and the agreement gave no sign to them that we are serious about reining in spending and reigning in runaway entitlement spending.

This is in sharp contrast to your blaming this on GOPers and tea partiers no? Actually you can blame much of this on much of the GOP that also wants to SELFISHLY LIKE A TEENAGE PUNK kick the can down the road. The S&P was obviously hoping the reality of the tea party message of the dire need of limiting spending NOW and an aggressive bipartisan plan to do so would be embraced by all. It was soundly rejected by the establishment GOP and overwhelmingly rejected by the democrats and their supporters.

So I think we are up to $46,000 on each of my kids heads now of debt thanks to the incessant desire to kick the can down the road and accuse those who are wise enough to confront the reality $$$ (tea partiers) of being racist. It’s much easier to accuse someone of racism than it is to take an honest and objective look at whether the policies one has been advocating are based on realism or a pathetic idealism i.e. whether policies are effective or failing. Realizing one’s preferred policies are failing definitely shakes one’s world up intellectually and most are not that brave. Better to say you’re a freakin racist.

2. 5-6% unemployment during Bush years mostly? Or did it hit 7% Anyway that doesn’t sound like wrecking economies to me?

3. Tax revenues to federal government shot up 44% from 2003-2007 after Bush tax cuts. Ouch that hurts. You see it’s much more effective to have a ton of taxpayers (employment) than it is to try to tax the wealthiest more. Because when you do the latter they just change their behavior–hide their money, not take risks in new businesses, work less, etc. ALL THIS TALK OF TAX CUTS AS HAVING ROBBED THE GOVERNMENT OF REVENUE ARE ONE OF THE MORE EGREGIOUS LIES/DECEIPTS BY A WILLING MEDIA that is going on today.

Most liberals–now they’re calling themselves moderates it seems–are too ignorant to know how effective the tax cuts were in raising government revenue. The problem after record revenues…was record spending.

AND WHO TOOK CONTROL OF CONGRESS IN 2007 — yes liberals did and away the spending went–even worse than Bush’s.

+Kevin McGuirk now wants to blame bad economy on Bush. Well isn’t that special. It’s special if you’re head isn’t up your arse and you’re too cowardly or juvenile to research the truth.

4. Tea partiers are in heavy support of Herman Cain. I think it’s because tea partiers are racists.

5. Sort of a side note….many liberals don’t realize how raked over the coals Bush was on talk radio for big spending by conservatives aka tea partiers for his last couple of years. The principle and ideal of lower spending didn’t become important because a black President came into office. Only an idiot or asshole would make such an assertion.

6. What is it now– 830 days since Democrats passed a budget????? That’s really responsible. And that’s the GOP’s fault too, right? Because Dems had all 3 branches at the time….

7. Moody’s agrees that the spending cuts are not significant enough–that’s is more the fault of Dems than Reps. http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2011/07/30/moodys-boehner-reid-plans-dont-go-far-enough/

8. Wrecking the economy???? Have you not figured out that Obamacare put deep skidmarks on hiring and has helped put an end to much hiring.????? This graph shows hiring before and after Obamacare was passed. http://www.heritage.org/multimedia/infographic/2011/07/the-obamacare-effect-on-employment It is not surprising. Anybody with a brain could have told you it was going to play out this way….

8 b. Wrecking the economy??? Obama has put a MASSIVE blanket of regulation on oil, gas, healthcare, shale and finance the past 2 years that has effected the losses of 100,000s of jobs. Do liberals give crap???##!!!

I don’t understand how uninformed people are about economics 077. You think O can idealistically throw regulations on industries and there will not be negative effects. You think you can spend and spend without consequence. And then when people say hey we need to get more responsible with overspending and over regulation you smear them and demonize them. And the willing media carries the Obama water shamelessly as Norah O’Donnell recently complained during a white house press conference, ““Where are the tax revenues?”

“He gave them everything they wanted and we got nothing.”” Of course she is just reporting the news…she’s not biased.
http://www.breitbart.tv/cbs-news-nora-odonnell-where-are-the-tax-revenues-we-got-nothing/

9. President Obama has very dark connections in his past that the media never vetted….His extremism is not surprising when you know his past: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=456584 Or the last several in the series on this page: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/SpecialReport.aspx?id=516621

Those of you who defend the big spending and want to keep the status quo are some of the most cowardly and selfish people the planet has ever known…or just deceived by talking points and your hearts and sincere concern for others. What is sad is that often the most sincerely constructed policies to help people often end up destroying them instead in mass. That’s not social justice.

The troll forums are full of it and this is interesting all the email alerts to blame the Tea Party came in at the same time. They must be in full panic mode!

“We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements”

The blame “growth in public spending, especially on entitlements” ?

Finally, the curtains have been lifted and the idealogical divide between those that believe in individual freedom and those that do not will be meeting in the streets.

A paradigm shift of tectonic proportions is about to take place… and it happened in my lifetime.

In 2012 we pendulum turns… swings back..

If you’re not a Constitutional conservative … you’re on your way out…

And, Washington must learn to live within the constraints imposed by a $2.1 Trillion revenue stream.

Federal pink-slips are required, they must eliminate at least 40% of the federal bureaucracy and they must begin immediately.

I told all my leftist friends that I really wished the full effect of Obama’s idiotic policies would occur immediately so that the bonehead 52% could have it jammed up their collective colons, but I had a feeling the hell we would have to pay would come after his term was over.

Boy, was I wrong, and boy, am I getting my wish.

have some level of psychosis involved in their thinking. Anytime something happens it is always someone else’s fault, even if it was their policies that clearly caused the mess to begin with.

They always have someone or something to blame.

If it is blazing hot in the South in the summet it is global warming.

If it snows too much in the North in the winter it is global warming.

Anything and everything, including the common cold, is GW Bush’s fault.

A downgrade on our credit rating caused by the most profligate spending President in history is the fault of the Tea Party ( the people trying to STOP said spending President from driving the country over the cliff by spending).

There is no logic, no sanity to these people anymore. They must defeated if this country is going to survive.

Or maybe we could take a more sympathetic approach. We could start a rehabilitation center for the poor Leftists. We would have to detox them first
from HuffPo, DKos, MSNBC, and most importantly the NY Times. Then we could begin slowly introducing the sanity and wisdom of conservatism. Maybe start with a few Reagan speeches, then move on from there. Hey, it might work!

As soon as the ink was dry on that debt ceiling bill the tea party was holding a gun to his head over, Obama jacked up borrowing by nearly a quarter trillion in one day. Coincidence, or did he know this was coming and tried to lock in some “cheap” borrowing?

If this will increase the cost of borrowing, and we are going to keep borrowing like crazy for the next year and a quarter, couldn’t this cause us to hit the debt ceiling before the election?

This creates an interesting scenario. Obama and Reid wanted to get this off the table through the election, but I don’t know whether they had this downgrade factored in or not. If not, then there is at least some chance that Obama will blow all the money before next November, in which case here we go all over again – except with the pressure ratcheted up about 10,000%.

that history repeats itself. What is little talked about in the realm of history repeating itself (as it relates to human suffering), is the geometric increase of proportions in each cycle.

We’ve all heard stories of the great depression, famine, riots and violences, but they have always been aberrations taking place on distant shores. Now our generation gets an empirical lesson in why other governments that do not subscribe to the protection of individual freedom and personal responsibility have almost without exception lead to the suffering in large numbers of their populous.

We have no one to blame but ourselves, through our own ignorance and lack of self discipline, the coming years will be the toughest we have ever seen.

did this for political reasons as some have suggested. The $$ numbers speak for themselves, as does the long term view. If anything, Obama & Dems got a PR pass up to now.
The horror of it all is that the crazed left will not assume responsibility. And so things will get worse, even violent.
Obama is winning, & laughing all the way.

……is that the left isn’t even logically consistent in their assessment of blame for the downgrade.

They are taking up the White House call that S&P made a $2 trillion error in their analysis (which would be little more than rounding in a White House Analysis). I’m sure that will be followed by claims that the S&P is full of Republicans / Tea Partiers, or at the very least S&P is doing this with the intention of hurting Obama’s re-election chances.

But they are also trying to cover their bases by saying the downgrade is the direct fault of the GOP / Tea Party.

Can’t have it both ways. Either the S&P is wrong or the downgrade is the fault of GOP / Tea Party. Not that logic ever gets in their way of assessing blame to everyone and everything but the Obama administration.

It is a myth that the rich are the ones who are “job creators.” It is, in fact, consumers who create jobs. Wealthy people may create businesses that hire people, but they don’t create those businesses for the sole purpose of creating jobs, they create them to meet a consumer demand for some good or service. When consumer demand for that good or service grows, businesses often hire more people to meet the increased demand. When consumer demand falls, businesses fire people they can no longer afford to keep on the payroll. And it isn’t just rich people who create businesses. Less wealthy people do it all the time. In fact, many people who ended up rich (and not through inheriting their wealth the way the Koch Brothers did), will proudly, and rightfully, tell you how they started with nothing (or a loan from a friend or family) and worked hard to make their millions. Most people, however, do not become millionaires and while they are able to keep their businesses going, the consumer demand for what their business offers is not enough to hire more people. Fewer than ten percent of “small businesses” would make the kind of profits subject to the taxation rates being discussed by the Left.

The primary reason jobs are not being created is because consumers do not have enough spare cash to buy things that will spur businesses to hire more people. Rich people do not take their money and spend it all, they keep it for themselves or their children and grandchildren. And they certainly don’t hire people just for the sake of hiring people, they only hire people when there is a job that needs to be done. A very large percentage of the wealth in this country is in the hands of a very small amount of people, and they simply aren’t spending enough of it to spur economic growth. When the private sector won’t spend the money that needs to be spent to spur economic growth, the government is the only entity that can, and it must.

One of the best ways to spur economic growth is for our government to invest in infrastructure projects. The government doesn’t have its own construction companies, it hires private sector firms to do the work. More work for the private sector means more people getting hired, not simply to build the things that need to be built (we have a lot of highways and bridges that need repair), but to do the support work that goes with it (filing paperwork, answering phone calls, etc.) rather than reducing government spending, we should be increasing it, and not just on building military weapons, but on building something useful to the average American (like a bridge that won’t collapse in the next five years, as many of ours will.) But to do that, we shouldn’t borrow all of the money, we should raise taxes on the richest Americans who haven’t been spending their money. After all, they benefit from the infrastructure projects, too. If their employees (if you insist on claiming the rich are the job creators) need to have well-paves roads on which to drive to work. Potholes cause car damage that average workers have to pay for, and this takes away disposable income for them to spend in other ways.

“Starving the beast” may sound like a politically-pleasing strategy, but at the end of the day, it’s your friends, neighbors and co-workers who get hurt by it. And the rich just keep their hoards of money and remain largely unaffected by the economic downturn. Whose interests would you rather see protected? Your friends’ and neighbors’, or the rich people who couldn’t care less about you?

infrastructure projects are funded by fuel/road-use taxes, which do not fluctuate with marginal tax rates. And “shovel ready” projects generally are “bulldozer” and “backhoe” ready. The days of the WPA and putting 200 workers with shovels to work on a road project do not happen any more. Automation and machines do the work of 95% of what used to be manual labor back in the FDR days.

Second, the rich do not sit around on couches and mattresses stuffed with cash such that said cash is not available to the economy: usually it is in lucrative investments, i.e. it is “lent” to businesses for use in growth.

Third, marginal tax rates have been as high as 94% and as low as 30%, and the most the fed has ever been able to acquire in revenue is 17-19% of GDP, even when tax rates are at their highest.

Fourth, the Kennedy tax cuts, the Reagan tax cuts and the Bush tax cuts have all resulted in immediate and sustained GDP growth which, in turn, resulted in federal revenue growth.

Fifth, you need to really take a GOOD course in economics (taught by a Milton Friedman student, not a Paul Krugmann student). Reading some opinion pieces by Thomas Sowell could be a good starter course for you, because economics is obviously not your strong suit.