And a house divided is united, ever so briefly, as Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) made a surprise appearance tonight during the U.S. House vote on the contentious debt ceiling agreement. The dramatic appearance on the floor to cast her vote in favor, was her first since being shot in the head in Tucson on January 8th. The chamber erupted into applause.
“I had to be here for this vote,” she said in a statement. “I could not take the chance that my absence could crash our economy.”
Giffords voted against raising the ceiling previously, in December of 2009 and February of 2010, but voted in favor of it today, as her staff noted that “this vote was substantially different, with the strength of the U.S. economy hanging in the balance.”
The measure passed in the House following Giffords’ appearance, by a vote of 269 to 161, with most of the 74-person Progressive Caucus, the largest in the House, voting against it. Democrats ultimately split their vote 95 to 95 on the controversial bill brokered by President Obama and Republicans, featuring the largest spending cut in the nation’s history. GOP members voted overwhelmingly in favor of passage, 176 to 66.
The U.S. Senate is scheduled to take up the bill tomorrow, prior to the August 2 deadline when the U.S. Government is said to be no longer able to pay all of it’s obligations unless the debt ceiling is raised. Both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have already expressed their support.
UPDATE 8/2/11, 11:03am PT: Debt ceiling agreement has passed in U.S. Senate by a 74 to 26 margin. 19 Republicans and 7 Democrats voted against it. The President signed the bill, promising some $2 trillion in spending cuts, just moments ago, privately in the Oval Office. Mission Accomplished.
Congresswoman Giffords showed tremendous courage in voting today and helping rouse some semblance of unity with our government officials. We may never know why Jared Loughner opened fire in his rampage several months back, when she was taken from her duties. He’s been found unfit to stand trial so we may never get answers but I still see him holding Sarah Palin’s hand at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot....-me-do-it.html
As much as I hate this “deal” our illustrious president made, it still beats sparking the Second Great Depression. Without the debt ceiling raised, that’s exactly the outcome we would get. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block? Any challenger among the Dems to Barry Hussein? No? Then the Socialist Party is looking better and better to me…
A rainbow in a shit storm.
What a bummer. Now my friend the rightwing political operative will have to stop insisting that Gabby Giffords be removed from office for the crime of taking the time to recuperate from being shot and almost killed. I have no doubt he’ll find tons of new hobby horses just as bogus as this one. Of course, I’m not so sure that Rep. Giffords didn’t just cast a vote to help crash our economy, but that’s still to be seen.
That heroics are required anymore in congress to do a common financial function has nations in the world calling once again for removal of the U.S. Dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Which could have a significant impact on all of us.
MrBlueSky @2 said:
Just FYI, that was not the only other alternative option. Obama had a number of them, including invoking the 14th Amendment. But the point seems to be moot now, unfortunately.
I think there would have been a legal challenge to “invoking” the 14th amendment but with the left wing courts he likely woulda won that battle anyway. I don’t see anything in the 14th amendment which says the president has the power to increase borrowing however the hell he sees fit. Yay! More debt!
WingNutSteve @ 7 said:
Um, “left wing courts”? Seriously? Yes, a challenge to the President’s use of the Constitution to pay bills already approved by your tax-cut and spend Republican friends in Congress would definitely have had an easy time sailing through the “left wing” U.S. Supreme Court.
When you’re ready to join us back here on Earth, we’ll be glad to see ya, Steve.
That debt was already approved when Congress (most of the time, a Republican Congress and a Republican President) approved the spending and tax cuts that led to the debt. You do understand that raising the debt ceiling had nothing to do with increasing the amount of either spending or debt, right? The President of the United States has a legal (and Constitutional) obligation to pay the bills that were long ago approved by Congress.
That debt, if you bother to read your Constitution, “shall not be questioned.”
Or has none of those facts yet reached you up on Mars or whereever it is that you currently reside?
Increasing our debt by up to $2.4 trillion has nothing to do with increasing our debt? That was a redundantly stupid thing to say.
So much theatre.
And where, WingNutSteve, do you think the $2.4 trillion deficit came from. The greatest deficit spender in history was George W. Bush, followed closely by Reagan and Bush I.
We are in a giant hole because of (a) Massive spending on the military-industrial complex over the past 65 years; (b) the maintenance of over 787 overseas bases that serve to protect the corporate Empire; (c) bailouts, subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare for Wall Street and corporate America; (d) a so-called bipartisan policy of “free trade,” starting with NAFTA, which has permitted the billionaire class to outsource the U.S. mfg. base in search of $2/day sweatshop foreign labor; (e) massive tax cuts for the billionaire class under Reagan/Bush/Bush.
The GOP (Greedy Old Plutocrats) have never been concerned about fiscal responsibility — not if it means forcing the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes (or in the case of a growing number of multinational corporations, any tax whatsoever).
The manufactured debt ceiling “crisis,” like the 2008 doctored Wall Street crisis, was engineered in order to hold an economic gun to a weak and ineffectual Democratic President as part of a 45 year old class war designed to destroy democracy and replace it with an authoritarian, feudal plutocracy.
WingNutSteve @9:
Increasing our debt by up to $2.4 trillion has nothing to do with increasing our debt? That was a redundantly stupid thing to say.
Try reality: increasing our future debt has nothing to do with paying our existing, already due, debt.
You said it all Steve, you explained the wingNut problem, which is not knowing the difference between INCREASING debt (future) and PAYING an existing debt (past).
Parts are parts to wing nuts.
Interpret how you wish. I did this quickly so check my work.
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/...division_2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png
http://i55.tinypic.com/34zlj7b.jpg
Look at the image first. Supporting data in the other links.
Dredd, why didn’t I see that before? Damn, you brilliantly explained.. uhhh, something I suppose… thank you so much for shedding light on…
And Ernie, predictable Ernie.. SquawkBush! SquawkMilitaryIndustrialComplex! SquawkCORPORATIONS!
Thanks for the graphics, Davey! Yes. Fancy that, your “work” shows that our public debt seems to rise and fall with no particular correlation to whether Ds or Rs are in control Congress. Impossible to figure out who to blame there.
Here’s another graphic from your set which offers Debt as a fraction of GDP (a fairer measure, in truth, of the public debt):
Hmmm…Still no easy correllation for who we should blame, Rs or Ds in Congress, for debt increases.
Gosh, I wonder if maybe there is another way we could look at the very same data, but come up with a conclusion that actually tells us something useful about which party in power tends to increase national debt. Maybe this?…
Ah! Whaddaya know?! Look at that! Debt shoots up under every Republican President since Reagan and the tax-cut revolution, and down under every Democratic President (with the exception, so far, of Obama who inherited Bush II’s crushing and insanely increasing debt and has been disallowed ever since, unlike Clinton, to be able to raise revenues to get a handle on it… for the moment.)
Thanks for the “work”, Davey! Good to have someone to blame. Sorry you didn’t keep Googling until you found the answer. Happy to help!
Brad,
First of all…I know you love me…so I am not offended by your brash behavior.
You are the constitutional scholar on this blog. What does it say about appropriating money? Is that the President’s job?
BTW, I could consult Britannica since I own a set…and also World Book, but I can type so fast, it easier to Google 🙂
Also, I created the graph (combining the wiki and other data–as should have been obvious) I posted…actually did some work using my uber-graphic skills…did you gen up that graphic on your own…or was a a Google Ctrl-C Ctrl-V?
Seriously, you gotta look at the congress for spending. I posted a graphic showing the years when the Ds controlled both houses of congress (that would be 2/3 of government).
I tell you one thing though…you got this html stuff figured out. My graph did not show as yours did. So, I am going to try again and kill two birds with one stone. Here is your preferred graph with the congress data overlayed:
I am crossing my fingers…
Crap…it didn’t work. My uber skills failed!
Argh!
Davey Crocket @ 16:
Actually, while it’s the Congress’ job to approve spending, the President, by law, must first present his budget to Congress. Budget’s that eventually pass are generally based on that budget first presented by the President.
Now, if your graph — even your updated one — showed some particular correlation of increases/decreases in public debt by Ds or Rs in Congress, that would be one thing. But neither your original or your second graf shows that. It goes up and down under both D and R and mixed Congresses.
On the other hand, as I showed you above, there is a VERY specific correllation to debt increase/decrease under R and D Presidents. You would have to be intellectually dishonest to conclude otherwise looking at those grafs.
Now, if you’d like to contend that it was Democrats who went on a tax-cut binge in the 1980s, that Reagan had nothing to do with the first major tax cuts in years (he also raised taxes, btw, about 14 times, but Republicans like to not notice that), that’s fine. But I’m fairly certain that most Republicans credit Reagan with the enormous tax-cuts in the 80s, just they rail against Carter and Clinton (as opposed to a mixed or R Congress) for raising taxes, etc.
To summarize: Your wishful thinking charts show nothing. The charts based on debt increases/decreased based by Presidential, which match each President’s fiscal theories/mandates (Reagan wanted to cut taxes and increase spending on the credit card, just as GWB did, back when Cheney said “deficits don’t matter, etc), show an indisputable pattern — whether you like the pattern they clearly show or not.
Sorry, chief. But thanks for giving me the opportunity to point that out to folks here.
P.S. My apologies for marginalizing your “work” in my initial reply to you. I didn’t realize you actually created that final graphic — the one with the control of Congress overlaid on the debt chart. I thought you were just linking to someone else’s work somewhere. Snark, on that point, retracted.
I suppose we could argue ’till the cows come home but the pres can submit whatever he wants for a budget but the house does what it wishes. No complaints here…I think it is a good system.
It would be interesting to do some statistical analysis to determine what the bigger factor on budget might be, pres, house, or senate. Surly somebody has done this.
Brad, I think that I am gonna come to LA next year and buy you a steak dinner…too busy this year. By then I will have my hair cut and won’t look like a hippie/ pan handler–I am serious…maybe in February.
Davey Crocket –
There are no muddy waters here. This isn’t a “we could argue ’till the cows come home” debate. There is a clear, cut and dry answer to the issue you posed. You just don’t like the answer.
There is no need for “some statistical analysis to determine what the bigger factor on the budget might be.” Your own chart, and the one I added, show that quite clearly. The debt very clear moves in one direction during modern Republican Presidencies and in the other direction during Democratic Presidencies, where Congressional correlation has nothing to do with it.
Presidents set the spending/taxing agenda. Congress makes changes, and has final approval, but unless you wish to argue that Democrats cut taxes and built up our military in the 80s, and that Ronald Reagan was just an innocent bystander (an absurd argument, as you know), and that Democrats’ tax-cutting agenda of the ’00s put us into the mess we’re currently in, your case is simply wrong and there are all sorts of measures to bear that out.
If you’ve been misinformed or in denial up until now, I’m sorry about that. But it doesn’t change the facts. And neither does it make your case any more correct to argue “well, there’s just so many factors, who knows who’s right and who’s wrong.”
You. Were. Wrong. Sorry, amigo. Try again on something else if you like. But you’d impress a lot of folks here if you just admitted that you blew it on this one.
WingNutSteve @14 wrote:
Truth’s a bitch, ain’t it Steve!