Discussion for article #242194
Should be fun to watch the suicide caucus self-immolate this morning. Popcorn?
Yes please. Iâm saving a couple of seats near Mo Brooks. I have plenty of marshmallows but if someone else could bring a few toasting forks, that would be good. (Though maybe unnecessary â once Mo reads that no dollars are allocated towards just kicking gay people off cliffs, heâs going to ignite like the core of a newborn star.)
Oh man, smoresâŚshould have thought of thatâŚ
If it passes, even Iâll tip my chapeau to Boehner. Amazing though that when faced with his exit, the time constraints for passing said budget et al, the Republicans fold like a cheap tent! Yes, some pain in the budget accord butâŚ
Seems like they are again playing their base. The Planned Parenthood committee, the Benghazi committee and God know what other sham committees they will form in 2016 are all offered as soothing balm to their unwitting voters. The real action ALWAYS include money, as in âshow me the moneyâ. These shiny objects will continue to be offered up to their base as âproofâ of their fighting the Democrats.
The military budget dodge though is most troubling. Do we really need more money for more weapons and wars? I do hope that once Hillary is crowned and we regain the Senate, serious work will begin on cutting the real dollars from the defense budget and re-allocating same to civilian infrastructure projects and other worthy domestic spending. One can only hope!
64% of your tax money goes to wars
36% of your tax money goes to education, infrastructure, environment, health & welfare, etc.
$72 Billion for war and $40 Billion for domestic, family, environmental, infrastructure, etc
This is what Obama and the rest of our elected ârepresentativesâ agreed on.
It is a true statement of Reagan Republicanism supported by both parties.
The representatives of both parties are clearly against the American people.
All this hoopla just because these crooks did their jobs. Pathetic.
The devil is in the details on this sort of deal. When can we expect some analysis of the Medicare and Social Security provisions? What are the âother budget offsetsâ?
I want some details beyond, âWeâre passing a real(-ish) budget and raising the (unconstitutional) debt ceiling until after the next electionâ before I decide how I feel about the deal.
It always amazes me that the same Republicans who decry government spending at every turn canât wait to pour more and more into that bloated, corrupt bureaucracy known as the Department of Defense.
If the economic elites of this country really want to spend that much on the military, how about a special âwar taxâ on the top incomes to finance it? Letâs see how much the really want it.
Not having to worry about the debt ceiling for that long would be great and if actually addressed spending and such for two years to avoid government shut downs than even better. I wonder what the cuts are though. But it mostly sounds good, the sad part is that those are things that should happen anyway.
It would be nice if they were not so last minute about all of this stuff thought but if they were not than Heritage and others would be able to rally against them and make distortions.
Yesterday they where talking about cutting Social Security. Today they are âfixingâ it, its confusing. I wonder what is really going on.
And short of a subsequently-revealed scandal involving children being intensely coached in showering areas. I expect to join you.
The Hastert Rule is de-, uh, not completely well; long live the Boehner Exception To The Hastert Rule!
And fortune continue to favor you, Weepner, as you endeavor to contrive some at least hypothetically plausible explanation for how, following your retirement front the rigors of Congress & the demands of being Speaker, your golf index will not have improved at all.
Boehner is in a hurry to start his lobbying gig.
I didnât hear any baggers complaining back in July about the appropriations bills they never even got to vote on. So to say they were kept in the dark is just a lie. It was deliberate strategy all along.
Boehner â "OK guys⌠Open wide ⌠If youâll just relax a bit⌠This wonât be too bad ! ! "
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If the âconservative / far rightâ block this measure what does this say about Ryanâs conditions to be speaker? it seems that the Republicans once again take on the mantle of obstruction.
Lots of cuts and a GOP-led push for more military spending. A âbipartisan dealâ?
Are we just now at a point where the window has been moved so far that a bipartisan compromise now means that we get what would have been a far-right smorgasbord 20 years ago?
No thanks. Because this is one of those movies thatâs so horrifying, it ceases to be entertaining.
if Boehner doesnât get thirty two votes out of his caucus to vote for this, the entire world blows up. Remember October, 2008? Remember how we were on our way to another October, 1929 until the government rode in to save the day on a horse named âFull Faith and Credit of the United States?â Well picture that again, except this time the crisis will have been caused by the Rightâs having killed that horse.
This is the part where most liberals whistle a little tune called "âWall Street Wonât Let it Happenâ as they walk past the graveyard. But corpses are actually rising from the dead in that graveyard, mindlessly bent on death and destruction for its own sake, and they just donât give a damn what Wall Street thinks. (And why should they when Wall Street has rewarded them time and again by contributing money to the same people who took the world to the brink of disaster time and again?)
There are, unfortunately, valid reasons for much of that military budget. Not all of it - donât get me wrong, Iâm not gonna sit here and say âwe need to keep throwing money at the Pentagon uncheckedâ. Hell no. But for a lot of it⌠yeah.
As an example, the Ford-class supercarriers - yes, $10 Billion per unit is a hell of a lot, but amortized over the 50-year life expectency, thatâs only $200M - or roughly $2.2B to buy 11 of them. Which is fairly cheap, considering their capabilities. They also reduce our operating costs - both by being inherently more efficient in their operations, and by paring down the crew compliment by 20% each. So as they come into service and replace the Nimitz-class (Ford herself is replacing Enterprise, with Kennedy scheduled to replace Nimitz), theyâre reducing the operating costs to the Navy. But first, they had to be developed, and built.
Now, whether or not we need 11 supercarriers is another discussion entirely - personally, given how much of the planet is covered in water, and how little anyone else is willing to step up to guard the shipping that brings the majority of the worldâs goods to our shores, Iâd say thereâs a fairly good case for it under current economic pressures. I certainly donât want to have to trust the Somali Navy to deal with piracy in their waters. Of course, that could just be me. Or it could be the effective non-existence of the Somali Navy*. I dunno.
Those 11 (currently 10) carriers also provide the backbone to our humanitarian efforts pretty much everywhere - theyâre mobile command and control centers that bring with them significant resupply capacity and the instant availability of a safe, stable airfield and hospital, manpower for relief efforts, and security personnel to help keep populations safe during a crisis. Could we do the humanitarian job with 6 of them? Almost certainly, but the ability to do that humanitarian job without abandoning the other important duties (like anti-piracy patrols), while allowing for reasonable amounts of time in their home ports** has, for the last 40 years, dictated 11 supercarriers. Which is actually down from the number of carriers when we were still operating the Essex- and Midway-classes.
We are way down from Reaganâs 600-ship surface fleet, with the entire Navy, including assault ships and landing dock ships, tenders and other support vessels, and submarines coming in under 450 ships. The Pentagon wants the best toys - we all know that. But they know that in order to justify the spending needed to get the newest, bestest toys⌠they have to trim the fat pretty much everywhere they can. Unfortunately, sometimes that leaves us in a position where the money guys donât authorize spending for things like body armor for Army and Marine personnel on the ground.
The trick isnât just slashing spending, itâs doing it wisely. Otherwise, we wind up shuffling spending costs that never should have been incurred in the first place from one Department (the Department of Defense) to another (the Department of Veterans Affairs), and heaping a metric buttload of completely non-monetary costs onto the shoulders of young men and women who will never get out from under them.
*-Technically, Somalia has a Navy, at least administratively. Four years ago, they put forth a proposal to buy half a dozen coastal patrol boats from Turkey. Three years ago, the United Arab Emirates donated $1 million to help Somalia get communications and other equipment needed to actually get a coast guard up and running. So far, havenât heard anything about either part of things moving forward into operational capacity.
**-This, believe me, is incredibly important for military families. I know I grew up more or less in a single-parent situation as a Navy brat - my dad was at sea for six months at a time, and never home for nearly as long at any stretch. And itâs not just the sailors on the carriers and their families that this effects. Fewer carriers means fewer carrier battlegroups, so every sailor on every destroyer, frigate, tender - basically the entire blue water surface fleet - would wind up spending more time at sea, under more stress just to maintain normal operational tempo. Every contractor working on the servicing, refueling, and upgrading of ships (which happens pretty much every time they come home, to some extent) would need to get it all done in a smaller window, with less redundancy if a ship experiences problems.
Itâll pass. I find it hard to believe Obama would meet Boehner again without that assurance. Nancy will bring the necessary Dems to the table and Boehner only needs something like 29 votes. Itâll pass. This is really Boehnerâs final screw you to the RWNJs in the House as he waves goodbye.