As if recent events haven’t created enough cause for #PANIC already, I’ve recently seen a couple of charts of economic data that really put things into (scary) perspective. One is the “real” monthly employment picture since 2009, subtracting out the 150,000 jobs that must be added per month just to keep up with population growth: Yikes. The other requires a… Read more »
Doug Mataconis’s post on the infuriating FAA situation got me all fired up, and inspired me to do something I rarely do: write to my congressperson. Congresswoman DeGette, I am writing to express my absolute disgust with the ongoing situation surrounding the FAA’s lack of funding. I do not know your position on the issue, and thus do not presume… Read more »
“One of the most important things about this piece of legislation is that never again will any president, of either party, be able to raise the debt ceiling without being held accountable for it by the American people.” –Mitch McConnell, just now. Translation: henceforth, members of Congress, of both parties, will feel even more freedom to pass irresponsible budgets, pretending… Read more »
President Obama, Speaker Boehner and Senate leaders in both parties have agreed to a deal that would effectively raise the debt ceiling through 2012 while enacting a mostly Republican-friendly package of spending cuts (and no new revenues). It would also set up a likely showdown in December over a second wave of deficit-reduction measures as recommended by a bipartisan congressional… Read more »
Well, the House GOP has finished wasting the better part of a week on fantasy-land legislation so unrealistic and irrelevant to the final (necessarily bipartisan) resolution of this crisis, they might as well have tied a debt-ceiling increase to Frodo casting the Ring into the Fire. Obviously, the Senate immediately voted down the House’s non-starter of a ridiculous, designed-to-fail bill…. Read more »
Seriously? Seriously? We’ve wasted three whole days, with national default* on our legal obligations mere days away, for this?!? House Republicans will link passage of a balanced-budget amendment to Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) last-ditch debt-ceiling plan, which GOP lawmakers said would move the measure to passage in a high-stakes vote later on Friday. … Republican lawmakers say the Boehner framework… Read more »
As if the increasing odds of a debt-ceiling disaster weren’t bad enough, now there’s this: The U.S. economy came perilously close to flat-lining in the first quarter and grew at a meager 1.3 percent annual rate in the April-June period as consumer spending barely rose. The Commerce Department data on Friday also showed the current lull in the economy began… Read more »
Today’s debt ceiling developments, summarized in a single tweet: Standard & Poor’s downgrading US credit rating to WTF.Fri Jul 29 03:05:50 via TweetDeckpourmecoffeepourmecoffee Oh, and I also had a little (more) fun with a Drudge mockup:
The Republicans are feverishly rounding up supporters ahead of this afternoon’s dramatic Boehner-bill vote on the House floor. The Speaker is cautiously optimistic his bill will pass. (We’ll know he’s really confident if he schedules a vote before the markets close.) Oh, and there’s a Notre Dame angle: Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), a bulky former Notre Dame football player, gave… Read more »