GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

GOP Establishment preferred to lose?

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I think the argument could be made, re: the recent confrontation over the debt ceiling and Obamacare. Via Ed Morrissey, Sen. Cruz hints at it in his ABC News interview:

“I will say that the reason this deal, the lousy deal was reached last night, is because, unfortunately, Senate Republicans made the choice not to support House Republicans,” Cruz told ABC News. “I wish Senate Republicans had united, I tried to do everything I could to urge Senate Republicans to come together and stand with House Republicans.”

First, let’s note that eighteen GOP Senators did stand with House Republicans, leaving 27 who didn’t.

But what about the 27? Some seem clueless about the larger issues, as for example, Sen. McCain who said “The real losers [in the shutdown] were the American people,” when the reverse is true: Americans lost when government re-opened under terms of greater debt, and with Obamacare intact.

As Morrissey didn’t support the recent confrontation, he goes on to argue that “The only way to dismantle ObamaCare is to win [future] elections.” I disagree.

Since raising the debt ceiling brings America closer to its coming default, and since Obamacare is bad law that harms our economy: then patriotic lawmakers should use any legal, constitutional means available to obstruct or delay them, with whatever votes they can muster today. Yes, rock the boat!

But 60% of Senate Republicans, it seems, would rather undercut the boat rockers – or even attack them. If their problem isn’t a form of Stockholm Syndrome, then I suspect it’s the GOP’s real civil war, K Street vs. the Tea Party.

K Street, or the GOP’s Washington / Big Government wing, has won a round and now presses the advantage by trashing the boat-rockers in the media. But I say, kudos to Sen. Cruz for at least having tried to do the right thing.

As former Sen. Jim DeMint has just said, of Obamacare:

The reason [we fight] is simple: to protect the American people from the harmful effects of this law…

More and more people have had their work hours cut, their jobs eliminated and their coverage taken away..

We know that premiums are going up due to ObamaCare—Americans are getting notices in their mailboxes every day…

[Americans] shouldn’t have to wait three more years for Congress to give them relief from this law, especially when the president has so frequently given waivers to his friends. Full legislative repeal may not be possible while President Obama remains in office, but delaying implementation by withholding funds from a law that is proven to be unfair, unworkable and unaffordable is a reasonable and necessary fight.

Raising the debt ceiling is equally bad law. Would that more of the GOP had seen clearly on that as well as Obamacare, and stood up to obstruct both.

On the inevitability of default

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In recent days, I’ve ridiculed President Obama’s claim that not giving him a debt ceiling increase would somehow force him to default on U.S. debt payments. (Since current revenues cover the minimum debt service many times over, making any debt default the president’s choice.)

But over the longer term, U.S. default is inevitable – if we keep raising the debt ceiling.

If you’ve ever seen a bankruptcy, you know that the path to default is to take on ever more debt – to supposedly “pay your bills”, in Obama’s expression – as you fail to cut your spending down to what you can afford.

By raising the debt ceiling so that Obama can borrow even more, America comes closer to default. NOT raising the debt ceiling – that is, giving up the deficit habit now, and running immediate balanced budgets – would postpone or prevent America’s coming default.

Some may answer “Ah, but letting Obama borrow more will keep things smooth and buy time to fix our other problems.” All I can say is: People told me that in early 2009, some six trillion dollars ago (of U.S. debt). Bullhockey. It’s how an alcoholic or drug addict thinks: tomorrow is always the day to officially clean up; never today.

Under present leadership, a U.S. default is inevitable. The only question is what form it will take.

  • Less likely: We could yet have an ‘honest default’, where we admit that we can’t repay our creditors and we negotiate cutbacks to our debt – and to our spending.
  • More likely: We will have a ‘dishonest default’ where we borrow, spend and print money until the dollar is confetti, and we never officially default, but we pay our creditors in dollars that buy far less than the dollars they loaned us (or were promised).

Either way, it’s a default (our debt is no good; our creditors don’t get what they were promised). And it’s the road we’re on. “Thanks, Obama!”

More details:

  • Niall Ferguson on why “the fiscal position of the federal government is in fact much worse today than is commonly realized”.
  • Jim Grant on America’s past defaults – honest and dishonest – and the one that’s coming.
  • Seeing the inevitable, China has called for the dollar to be overthrown (removed) as the world’s banking reserve currency. Read about it in the IB Times, the New York Times (which twists the facts to blame the Tea Party, natch) or the LA Times.

UPDATE: Obama has just called on America to stop listening to ‘the bloggers’, by a strange coincidence!

Obama threatens to default – again!

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While hopes of a government budget deal today flicker on and off, you surely heard the latest example yesterday of President Obama threatening a default:

Talking to reporters at an event in Washington D.C. Monday, President Obama said the U.S. faces “a good chance at defaulting.”

“This week if we don’t start making some real progress, both the House and the Senate, and if Republicans aren’t willing to set aside their partisan concerns in order to do what’s right for the country, we stand a good chance of defaulting. And defaulting could have a potentially have a devastating affect on our economy,” the president said.

Remember, default would be Obama’s choice because he has two Constitutional ways to avoid it:

  1. He could negotiate his differences with the GOP in good faith, like a leader.
  2. Failing that, he could prioritize debt service spending (the U.S. “minimum debt payment”) ahead of other government spending. Tax revenue alone is enough to cover it many times over. If there is a legal issue, he could ask Congress (Democrats) to help.

Thus, Obama talking about any serious possibility of default is Obama planning to default if he doesn’t get his way 100%. That is a very bad threat to be making; in no way fitting for a President of the United States.

In effect, Obama has put U.S. creditors on notice that he will prioritize them last in any real budget crisis. That means U.S. debt (the Treasury bond) is unsafe and unsound whether or not he defaults this time, and investors are fools to hold it (unhedged).

UPDATE via HotAir: Sen. Rand Paul agrees, and pushes the idea of a Full Faith And Credit Act to make prioritization explicit. And even liberal Cokie Roberts (NPR) admits that Obama has been trying to talk the stock market into crashing. “Thanks, Obama!”

UPDATE: Nice piece a couple of weeks ago from Jeffrey Dorfman at Forbes. Key idea: Not raising the debt ceiling means simply that the government must live within a balanced budget until these issues are worked out.

And that, to Democrats, is “a fate worse than default”. Literally. Democrats would literally rather choose default (which means, according to them, the collapse of our economy, the end of the world, yadda yadda) than a 20-25% net spending cutback to live within a balanced budget.

How to rationally discuss the ‘shutdown’ and budget

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No discussion is grownup, if the participants don’t know/acknowledge certain facts which President Obama, the Democrats and their media try to have people forget:

  1. The government is supposed to spend by a budget.
  2. Between April 29, 2009 and March 23, 2013, Harry Reid’s Democrats didn’t even bother to pass a budget. Nearly four years!
  3. Under the U.S. Constitution, the budget is supposed to originate in Congress and particularly the House of Representatives. Which means,
  4. The House IS supposed to be able to impose its budgetary will on the President, including by shutting down the government, as Democrat Houses have shut down the government many times before to successfully impose their will on GOP Senates and presidents.
  5. On a district-by-district basis (as required by the Constitution), the American people elected a GOP House in 2012. To coin a phrase, “they won”.
  6. The current so-called “shutdown” only affects 17% of the government. (83% is still open.)
  7. The current House has passed many bills to keep most of the remaining 17% open – bills which the Democrats have rejected.
  8. Obama has given us more debt than any president in U.S. history.
  9. Contra Obama, raising the debt ceiling does indeed mean raising our debt further. And it does cost taxpayers a lot of money.
  10. Contra Obama, there is no reason for the government to default on its debt, even if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. You default only if you fail to make your minimum debt payment. Our ongoing tax revenue exceeds our minimum payment by many times over, leaving lots of money for the rest of government spending after debt service. (Just not as much as Democrats want.)
  11. Which is probably why Obama and the Democrats are the only side talking about having a default happen. (They want to at least dangle the threat – and they might carry out the threat – even if it’s unnecessary.)
  12. Contra Obama, our future spending isn’t “paying a bill”. Spending that Congress has budgeted or authorized (but not yet actually spent) can be stopped or cut any time Congress says so, or under-spent if the money simply doesn’t exist for it.

The people who run GayPatriot welcome intelligent disagreement with our views. If your disagreement ignores the above facts, sorry but it’s not intelligent.

As the adage goes, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”

NB: Originally, point 2 stated incorrectly that the Senate hadn’t passed a budget since 2009. Error fixed. (thanks Kurt!)

ADDENDUM: 13. Contra Obama, borrowing money “to pay our bills” is NOT paying our bills. When you buy something on credit, have you paid you bill? No, of course not. You’ve merely changed to whom you owe the payment (and perhaps when).

Obama ups his rhetoric (much of it lies) another notch

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Now we’re being given the Nuclear metaphors. Current Yahoo! headline: Obama: Default like ‘nuclear bomb’ hitting economy.

President Barack Obama warned Tuesday that Congress would be dropping the equivalent of an economic “nuclear bomb” on the country if it failed to raise the debt ceiling, triggering a first-of-its-kind default…

Obama also described the consequences of a default as dire, quoting economists as saying it would be “insane” or “catastrophic,” spreading “chaos”…

But, as I explained yesterday, even if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, a default is entirely optional. It would be President Obama’s choice. By denying the choice, Obama effectively promises to deliver a default. That is, he threatens us with it (while pretending not to).

In the let’s-break-the-irony-meter department, we also have this:

Obama also pressed Republicans to reopen the government without conditions…

But Obama is the one pressing for conditions: He demands that the Republicans give away every bit of their negotiating leverage, before he’ll sit down with them.

I haven’t seen a full review of Obama’s press conference today, but I’ll bet lunch money that he also couldn’t resist repeating his outright lies about the debt ceiling (that raising it somehow doesn’t increase our debt, or cost us anything). And about future spending (that future spending is somehow all-or-nothing and unchangeable, like “paying our bills” for past spending).

UPDATE: They’ve added to the Yahoo! article.

“I’m not budging,” said the president…

Boehner reiterated his call for the president to negotiate…“The long and the short of it is, there’s going to be a negotiation here. We can’t raise the debt ceiling without doing something about what’s driving us to borrow more money and live beyond our means,” Boehner said. “The president’s position that we’re not going to sit down and talk to you unless you surrender is just not sustainable. It’s not our system of government.”

Good on Boehner!

UPDATE: Transcript here. Obama did keep up his lies about his profligate spending somehow being the equivalent of “paying bills”, and his debt -ceiling- increase somehow not meaning a debt increase. Here, he twists them together:

…it’s called raising the debt ceiling, I think a lot of Americans think it’s raising our debt. It is not raising our debt. This does not add a dime to our debt. It simply says you pay for what Congress has already authorized America to purchase…Whatever it is that Congress has already authorized, what this does is make sure that we can pay those bills.

Lie, lie, lie.

  1. The whole reason Obama wants a debt ceiling increase is precisely so he can add to our debt.
  2. He will add A LOT of debt (hundreds of billions) within days of the ceiling increase, costing taxpayers a lot of money.
  3. Budgets, made by Congress or otherwise, are not “bills to be paid”. They’re future spending plans. It would be right to under-spend our budget from this point forward, and we badly need to.

ZH is right: This never gets old

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This graphic was probably constructed for fun – except that the words, from then-Senator Obama, are quite real:
Senator Obama opposing a debt ceiling increase, from the Congressional Record

h/t Zero Hedge. Obama’s longer, original speech is here in the Congressional Record, 3/16/06, p. S2237.

FROM THE COMMENTS: EH tips us off to some info at Fraters Libertas and Powerline. It appears that, while Senator Obama carefully inserted his fiscal-responsibility speech into the Congressional Record, he never said it out loud to his colleagues. Yet he began it with a flourish to make it sound like he had: “Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem…”

Obama threatens America with harm – while pretending not to

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Today from CBS:

Mr. Obama…called on Congress to extend the nation’s borrowing authority beyond the current $16.7 trillion limit. Republicans have asked for negotiations…Mr. Obama reiterated a promise to negotiate…only after the government is reopened and the debt ceiling increased.

“We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of further harm to our economy,” he said.

But who is the one actually harming, or threatening to harm, our economy? Answer: President Obama.

First, there’s Obamacare which, as is widely discussed/known, is presently killing people’s insurance plans, job hours, and more. The GOP should refuse to negotiate under the continuing threat of economic harm from Obamacare.

Second, Obama and his minions are fond of warning of ‘disaster’ if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. As Obama said last week:

“As reckless as a government shutdown is … an economic shutdown that results from default would be dramatically worse…”

So, in Obama’s mind, hitting the debt ceiling means automatically that the U.S. shall default on its national debt. But, in reality, default is a choice. You are only in default when you stop making your minimum debt payments. Our ongoing tax revenues of about $2.3 trillion per year are many times greater than needed to make our minimum debt payments.

The deficit is now about $700 billion per year, or roughly 23% of spending. Obama can avoid default by simply under-spending the budget that much. That percent less on federal salaries, Social Security, Medicare, defense, discretionary items and Obamacare all together.

It would be painful for some, but as far as the laws of the Universe are concerned, it’s entirely possible. It could be done. If Democrats are as constructive and helpful as they want the rest of us to believe, they could help minimize or remove the obstacles.

So let’s be clear: When Obama or his minions talk about the dangers of default, they’re actually threatening America with the optional default that they would choose to impose – because they are so far opposed to under-spending any part of the federal budget.

In doing so, they signal the world that U.S. credit is not trustworthy. They signal that, if the U.S. ever has a serious budget crisis, U.S. debt holders will be screwed first of anyone; that Obama & co. intend to hold U.S. bond owners in lower priority than anyone or anything else in the federal budget.

That damages our economy. Conclusion: The GOP should refuse to negotiate under Obama’s (needless) threat of default.

I know that refusal is not going to happen; the GOP feels it’s best to stress their willingness to negotiate. But if the world were more sane – or, at the very least, if the GOP were something more like Obama and the Democrats are – it would happen.

Obama lies outright, about the debt ceiling

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A lie is: A false statement, made with intent to mislead people. Deceptive intent is required, or else it’s just an honest mistake.

Intent is often hard to know. But sometimes, a falsehood is so outlandish that there is little room for the honest mistake; your only other choice is to think the person is an imbecile, or delusional.

Regarding the debt ceiling, President Obama said this on Oct. 3:

I want to spend a little time on this. It’s something called raising the debt ceiling. And it’s got a lousy name, so a lot of people end up thinking, I don’t know, I don’t think we should raise our debt ceiling, because it sounds like we’re raising our debt. But that’s not what this is about.

*It doesn’t cost taxpayers a single dime. It doesn’t grow our deficits by a single dime. It doesn’t allow anybody to spend any new money whatsoever. So it’s not something that raises our debt.*

Emphasis added. The emphasized part is 100% false. It isn’t political spin; it is a set of total falsehoods.

The whole point of raising our debt ceiling is precisely to spend more money and raise our debt. It will authorize the Treasury to borrow beyond the current ceiling, which they mean to do instantly upon getting the authorization (the debt ceiling increase).

Within maybe two weeks of raising it, they will add hundreds of billions to our debt. Aside from the debt principal, the added ongoing interest costs will indeed grow our deficits.

There is no way Obama could not know, unless he were mentally incompetent. Isn’t it more respectful to say he’s lying? Because that at least credits him with a normal-functioning brain.

Obama continued: [Read more…]

Obama in desperate denial

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Via The Corner (and others):

President Obama contended that the United States would become reminiscent of a banana republic if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling and provide funding for Obamacare in upcoming budget negotiations.

“This is the United States of America — we’re not some banana republic, this is not a deadbeat nation, we don’t run out on our tab,” the president said during a speech at a Ford plant in Liberty, Mo., on Friday afternoon. “We can’t just not pay our bills.”

Just in case a leftie reads this, I’ll spell it out.

  1. Thanks in part to President Obama, the U.S. is indeed more like a banana republic every day. Think of a government that lies to its people (Obama administration – check) and impoverishes them (Obama spending, deficits and money-printing – check) to benefit its favored cronies (Big Banking, Big Labor, Big “Green” – check).
  2. We raise the debt ceiling, precisely because we are “just not pay[ing] our bills.” The debt ceiling is the nation’s credit card limit. You get your limit raised when you’ve maxed it out. Rather than wait and pay down your card, you want to pile on still more debt. It’s not a virtuous sign of your intent to pay your bills; it means, actually, that you’re failing to pay them.
  3. Which means, We are indeed a deadbeat nation, running out on our tab. If we were going to pay our tab, we would (if anything) reduce the debt ceiling, or at least stop raising it. Raising it makes us “a deadbeat nation.” To not be “a deadbeat nation”, we’d have to cut spending – enough to pay down our debt; and that would include (but not be limited to) a full and immediate repeal of Obamacare.

In short, Obama denies that which has already come to pass – and was brought about, at least in part, by him.

NB: Some language tweaks, after publication.

UPDATE: V reminds us of what Senator Obama had to say in 2006, about his future self:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

UPDATE: I realized that what Obama and the Left are up to in 2013, is: Trying to confuse people about “paying bills”. They’re all about government-as-Santa Claus. They want to spend, spend, spend. So, they are trying to spread a (false) concept that their wild spending is “paying bills”; that, when the government budgets for some crazy thing we can’t afford, the spending itself should be considered a ‘bill’ to be ‘paid’. That is what Obama is trying to put over on people, now.

But of course it’s nonsense. A really lame, crazy shopaholic might try it on you, if you cornered him. “Oh, but I promised to buy my daughter that expensive pony. You want me not to? But my crazy promise is a ‘bill’ that I have to pay now! That is why it’s up to you to keep letting me borrow ever-more money, so that I can buy people all the crazy gifts I’ve promised them.”

IRS targeting the Tea Party: really a surprise?

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For years, the Left has been trying to link the Tea Party with terrorism. Examples include:

Given the climate of bias, hate and fear that our top leaders and media have sought to foment against the Tea Party for years, is it any wonder that self-important IRS bureaucrats would act unethically toward it?

UPDATE: As long as my list is, I know that I’ve missed some juicy examples of our top leaders and media fomenting bigotry against the Tea Party. Please feel free to add more in the comments.

UPDATE: Rick Santelli points out the logical endpoint of the IRS’ approach – namely, your Obamacare death panel Accountability Board saying “No stent for you!” based on your politics – and predicts that Obamacare will be altered partly to prevent such a nightmare.

UPDATE: How could I not mention how they’ve also tried to link the Tea Party with racism? Latest example: a top NAACP leader claims that America’s racist Taliban deserved the IRS scrutiny.