CNN Breaking News:
House Speaker John Boehner has ended debt talks with President Barack Obama, telling fellow Republican House members in a letter that he will “begin conversations with the leaders of the Senate in an effort to find a path forward.”
The president said his administration had offered “an extraordinarily fair deal” to cut expenditures and raise revenues, in return for Congress agreeing to hike the nation’s debt ceiling. [Per a Washington Post breaking-news alert, Obama added that “if it was unbalanced, it was unbalanced in the direction of not enough revenue.”] But he said that Boehner “left (him) at the altar.”
Obama says he called congressional leaders from both parties to the White House on Saturday morning to “explain to me how we are going to avoid default” on the nation’s debt.
“We have run out of time,” Obama said.
We are so screwed.
P.S. Couldn’t the talks have broken down before the markets closed for the weekend? A drop of, oh, I don’t know, 500 points in the Dow in the final hours of trading on a Friday might have gotten Congress’s attention heading into the weekend…
We have two more Tuesdays to go until Armageddon, so why should the markets react so far in advance? Even if you are right (and I am wrong) that “we are so screwed”, it’s simply too early for the markets to panic. So here’s a question: If we get to 8/2/11 without an agreement, what can we agree on as being the market-based metric that we indeed have initiated Armageddon? A 5%, 10%, or worse drop in the DJIA? A rise in short-term Treasury yields to above 5%, 10%, or worse? And once we decide on the metric, and it actually happens, will you admit you’re wrong if the GOP holds firm and extracts major concessions from Obama, a debt deal is eventually reached (let’s say around Labor Day), and the markets rebound to wherever they were before 8/2/11?
Why no panic when the Democrats wouldn’t even allow the Senate to debate the House debt bill?
Having listened to both conferences, this did sound like an Obama boner to me. I guess he tacked on an extra $400 bil in taxes at the last minute. Granted, I think he was conceding too much to begin with. But if you’re going to cave in, go all the way, you know? Don’t grow a spine at the last minute.
Of course, though Republicans probably won the day (even if media don’t reflect this), the fact that they are holding the country hostage for political purposes means that they’ve already lost the war.
You say holding the country hostage. I bet there are, oh, about 55-70 Congressional districts that will consider this “adhering to principles” come next election. I’m still thinking that unless this goes south in the, “Chinese paratroopers landed in the Rose Garden today to take their money out of Secretary Geithner’s a**…”-kind of way the same folks who elected the current GOP majority will send most of their Congress critters back. President Obama, on the other hand, might want to think about just whom the people are going to be most pissed at.
This just mind end up like a thermonuclear exchange circa 1985: Lots of mushroom clouds, lots of fallout, no real winners. Oh well, time to go stock up on water and ammo for the basement.
@James Young – Last I checked our country wasn’t run by those 55-70 congressional districts and I wonder how happy they will be when the economy tanks because their representatives adhered to principles.
Standing by ones principles can be a noble thing, but typically less so in the face of evidence that shows your principles are dangerous and ill concieved. When you take it that far, especially when the consequences are severe it goes into being obstinant, pigheaded and wrong territory.
Seriously? The desire to spend only as much as you take in, and pay off your debt is “dangerous and ill-conceived’?
gahrie #6 – it is to the D-list folk ! Sadly, that now seems to include BrenDan …
James Young #4 – it seems that our resident D-list exemplar doesn’t realise that you are talking about 55-70 *additional* House seats likely to swing GOP/Tea Party-wards … and likely to bring Senate seats and a White House with them …
David, before you talk out of your own ass (as you’re wont to do), you might want to consider just how many people on your own side of the aisle want to see any meaningful compromise fail. We’re about to see whose “principles are dangerous and ill concieved”.
(Also, didn’t anyone ever teach you the “i before e except after c” rhyme?)
Well I fully expect that the current “Tea Party” (read: GOPers who do what they say they are going to do as opposed to the vast majority of them) seats will mostly stick regardless of the economic outcome. People are fed up with paying taxes, and at the end of the day no matter how mad folks are with Congress they tend to stick with their own Congressman/woman. Which is just odd, but I digress.
David K–last I checked we have mid-term elections for a reason. Don’t like it? Plenty of other countries to move to where they have multiple parties as opposed to our quite imperfect binary system. Boehner realizes if he votes for tax cuts he’s done as Speaker and likely done period via primary. So yeah, just like Nancy Pelosi’s liberal core was able to get the Blue Dogs to commit Seppuku (strange how no one was screaming about a minority running things then) on the Health Care bill, the Tea Party is able to make things happen because they vote as a bloc.