[normhead]

Weren't all three branches of government held by the democrats for 2 years? The same party as the President? Was a budget passed during that time? Who's fault?

What universe are you from?

I guess Obama should have submitted a budget, just so the Republicans could have voted it down. You guys are crying because you didn't get a chance to humiliate Obama, which is what most of this stuff is about. Listen I get it that y'all have an irrational need to see Obama cutting your lawn with his shirt off while your wife drools out the front window, for 5 bucks an hour... not gonna happen.

See the thing is, if all you want to do is see the guy fail, nothing anyone says to you is going to make any difference. Budgets are often a co-operative effort, based on what the other guys will pass. What Republicans are trying to accomplish here is make the US Government powerless by taking away it's ability to implelment either taxes or policy. Turn the robber barons loose, thye've been held down to long. The fact that they have neither the Senate or the Presidency and that the American people didn't give them a mandate to do that, doesn't matter to them. Make no mistake in a democracy, this is disruptive behaviour. A legal temper tantrum. "The people don't believe what I believe so I'm going to impose my will on them anyway". These aren't patriots opposing Obama. These are selfish people of the highest order saying that if fiscal policy doesn't favour their bank account, they will kill it. With the will of the people or without.

[Blue]

What universe are you from?

I guess Obama should have submitted a budget, just so the Republicans could have voted it down. You guys are crying because you didn't get a chance to humiliate Obama, which is what most of this stuff is about. Listen I get it that y'all have an irrational need to see Obama cutting your lawn with his shirt off while your wife drools out the front window, for 5 bucks an hour... not gonna happen.

See the thing is, if all you want to do is see the guy fail, nothing anyone says to you is going to make any difference. Budgets are often a co-operative effort, based on what the other guys will pass. What Republicans are trying to accomplish here is make the US Government powerless by taking away it's ability to implelment either taxes or policy. Turn the robber barons loose, thye've been held down to long. The fact that they have neither the Senate or the Presidency and that the American people didn't give them a mandate to do that, doesn't matter to them. Make no mistake in a democracy, this is disruptive behaviour. A legal temper tantrum. "The people don't believe what I believe so I'm going to impose my will on them anyway". These aren't patriots opposing Obama. These are selfish people of the highest order saying that if fiscal policy doesn't favour their bank account, they will kill it. With the will of the people or without.

The first 2 years the DNC had a majority in the house and filibuster proof Senate. That is how they got the Stim and Omnibus through for over $1.25 Trillion borrowed money.

[Parallax]

You guys are crying because you didn't get a chance to humiliate Obama, which is what most of this stuff is about.

Politics is about three things, actually; power, money, and ego. Power and money (not necessarily in that order), and ego for the politicians; and ego for their supporters. I think there's also a "My daddy can beat up your daddy" aspect to it for all of us; some more than others.

[graphicgr8s]

Blue, you know by know facts don't matter to liberals.

Meaning of compromise to the ilk of Obumma and Reid: Republicans, you give me everything I want. And we'll call it a compromise.

[graphicgr8s]

What universe are you from?

I guess Obama should have submitted a budget, just so the Republicans could have voted it down.

And I ask you almost the same question: What universe were you traversing the first two years of the Obumma presidency? While he held all three branches and Republicans couldn't stop anything?

[graphicgr8s]

A little over-reactive don't you think??? Of course many would have felt that way w/ R-money.................

Actually a little under stated if I may say so. And I may.

Dude, your chart. From the Conservative bastion of publications on an opinion page?

Bush vs. Obama: Federal Debt

U.S. Federal Debt, Source: U.S Treasury Direct, ©2011 Reflections of a Rational Republican

Nearly three years after Barack Obama became president, many liberals still insist that Bush is primarily responsible for running up the national debt. While the federal debt did increase by $4.9 trillion on President George W. Bush’s watch, it did not increase at remotely the same rate it is increasing under President Obama.
In fact, borrowing under President Obama is occurring at over 2.5x President Bush’s rate.
Yet the left continues to decry Bush’s wars and his tax cuts as the primary culprits of President Obama’s massive national debt increase. If the current President found the tax cuts fiscally irresponsible, why did he sign a bill that extended them during his first two years in office, when Democrats dominated both the legislative and executive branches?
It is time to stop pointing a finger at the last President, and start looking for solutions

.

National Debt has increased more under Obama than under Bush



CBS
(CBS News) The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama's three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency. The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.
The latest posting from the Bureau of Public Debt at the Treasury Department shows the National Debt now stands at $15.566 trillion. It was $10.626 trillion on President Bush's last day in office, which coincided with President Obama's first day.
The National Debt also now exceeds 100% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services.
Mr. Obama has been quick to blame his predecessor for the soaring Debt, saying Mr. Bush paid for two wars and a Medicare prescription drug program with borrowed funds.
The federal budget sent to Congress last month by Mr. Obama, projects the National Debt will continue to rise as far as the eye can see. The budget shows the Debt hitting $16.3 trillion in 2012, $17.5 trillion in 2013 and $25.9 trillion in 2022.
Federal budget records show the National Debt once topped 121% of GDP at the end of World War II. The Debt that year, 1946, was, by today's standards, a mere $270 billion dollars.
Mr. Obama doesn't mention the National Debt much, though he does want to be seen trying to reduce the annual budget deficit, though it's topped a trillion dollars for four years now.
As part of his "Win the Future" program, Mr. Obama called for "taking responsibility for our deficits, by cutting wasteful, excessive spending wherever we find it."
His latest budget projects a $1.3 trillion deficit this year declining to $901 billion in 2012, and then annual deficits in the range of $500 billion to $700 billion in the 10 years to come.
If Mr. Obama wins re-election, and his budget projections prove accurate, the National Debt will top $20 trillion in 2016, the final year of his second term. That would mean the Debt increased by 87 percent, or $9.34 trillion, during his two terms.

© 2012 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[les3547]

Blue, you know by know facts don't matter to liberals.

Do you mean "facts" like the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority for two years? It seems you've joined the crowd who believe that if you repeat a lie enough it becomes the truth.

How Republicans have magically, mystically turned 72 days into two full years.

We’ve heard it over and over and over again. Mitch McConnell has gleefully used it as a cudgel. Congressional Republicans typically can’t wait to get their mugs on camera to tell America just how inept Congressional Democrats are in order to aid their case that they should be put back in power. After all, Democrats couldn’t get anything done even with a 60 vote, filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate during the first two years of the Obama administration. Democrats had almost complete control of the Congress to go with the newly inaugurated Democrat to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and they couldn’t manage to address the major issues of the day.

Democrats are just plain horrible at their jobs. To hear the Republicans tell it, absolutely nothing got done between January 2009 and the 2010 midterm elections. And they blame the Democrats, because after all, the Democrats were in control.

It sounds good and it surely gets the far right wing base riled up. But it has very little basis in reality. That hasn’t stopped Republicans and their official media apparatus, Fox News, from repeating the nonsense.

As recently as September 2nd, less than two weeks ago, Fox News’ Chris Wallace, conducting an interview with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, stated matter of factly in response to Villaraigosa’s comment on the deliberate Republican obstructionism that Obama and the Democrats had almost complete control of the Congress. “But in fairness,” Wallace pointed out, “the first two years, he had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a big majority in the House.”

Illinois Republican Congressman Aaron Schock earlier in 2012 went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and perpetuated the lie. “For two years,” he told the “Morning Joe” crew, “he (Obama) had complete, unadulterated control of the federal government, a 60 seat majority in the Senate, an 60 plus seat majority in the House. He got every—literally every—piece of legislation he wanted to try and quote turn around the economy…”

That’s right folks, for the first two full years of his presidency, Barack Obama had the benefit of a large majority in the House of Representatives and a filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate to work with in order to get whatever legislation passed that he wanted. Whatever his whimsy, he could get it passed at any time during the first two years of his first term. Full and complete, total control for two full years, if by two full years you mean 72 days.

Here’s what really happened: Yes, in the 2008 election, Democrats managed to widen their majorities in both houses of Congress. In the 110th Congress that served from January 2007 through January 2009, Democrats held a 35 seat majority in the House and a single seat advantage in the Senate, which included “independent” Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, both of whom caucused with the Democrats. The 2008 election saw that majority swell to 78 seats in the House and nine seats in the Senate.

How is that possible, you ask? Everybody says that the Democrats had a full filibuster-proof majority? The math doesn’t add up, you say. If there are 100 seats in the Senate, and Republicans, as of January 2009 had only 40 of them (technically the Republicans had 41 of them initially, but we’ll get to that), doesn’t that mean that the Democrats had the remaining 60, giving them the supermajority in the Senate?

No, not necessarily, because it was a very odd year in Congressional politics.

Remember that Minnesota Senatorial election in 2008? The one that pitted former SNL writer/cast member and Air America Radio host Al Franken against Republican incumbent Norm Coleman? That race dragged on forever, resulting in several challenges and recounts until the Minnesota Supreme Court finally concluded on June 30th, 2009, that Franken was indeed the winner. Franken wasn’t sworn into office until July 7th, 2009, a full six months after the 111th Congress had taken charge.

And it wasn’t even that easy. Even had Franken been seated at the beginning of the legislative session, the Democrats still would only have had a 59-41 seat edge. It wasn’t until late April of 2009 that Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter defected from the Republican Party to caucus with the Democrats. Without Franken, the Dems only had 58 votes.

But even that’s not entirely accurate, and the Dems didn’t have a consistent, reliable 58 votes. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy was terminally ill with a brain tumor, and could only muster up the energy to vote on selected legislation. His presence could not be counted on, and thus his vote in the Senate could not be counted on. During the first year of the Obama presidency, due to his illness Kennedy missed 261 out of a possible 270 votes in the Senate, denying the Democrats the 60th vote necessary to break a filibuster. In March of 2009, he stopped voting altogether. It wasn’t until Kennedy passed away in late August, 2009, and an interim successor was named on September 24th, 2009, that the Democrats actually had 60 votes.

And even then the 60 vote supermajority was tenuous at best. At the time, then 91 year old Robert Byrd from West Virginia was in frail health. During the last 6 months of 2009, Byrd missed 128 of a possible 183 votes in the Senate. Byrd passed away on June 28, 2010 at the age of 92.

In all, Democrats had a shaky 60 vote supermajority for all of four months and one week; from the time Kennedy’s interim successor Paul Kirk was sworn in on September 24th until the time Republican Scott Brown was sworn in as Kennedy’s “permanent” replacement after his special election victory over Democratic disappointment, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. In a state that is heavily Democratic, it seems that Coakley figured she didn’t have to actually campaign for the Senate seat; that Massachusetts voters would automatically elect the Democrat to replace the legendary Kennedy. No way Massachusetts would send a Republican to replace Ted Kennedy. Brown took the election seriously, Coakley did not, and Brown won (he will, however, lose this November to Elizabeth Warren, and all will be right with the world again).

During those four months and one week, Congress was in session for a total of 72 days. So for 72 days the Democrats held a 60 seat, filibuster-proof supermajority in the United States Senate. But wait! There’s more! As Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn points out, even that was unreliable. “Even in this window Obama’s ‘control’ of the Senate was incomplete and highly adulterated due to the balkiness of the so-called Blue Dog conservative and moderate Democratic Senators such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Evan Bayh of Indiana, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.”

Zorn continues:

The claim that Obama ruled like a monarch over Congress for two years — endlessly intoned as a talking point by Republicans — is more than just a misremembering of recent history or excited overstatement. It’s a lie.

It’s meant to represent that Obama’s had his chance to try out his ideas, and to obscure and deny the relentless GOP obstructionism and Democratic factionalism he’s encountered since Day One.

They seem to figure if they repeat this often enough, you’ll believe it.

Seventy-two days. That’s it. That’s the entirety of absolute Democratic control of the United States Senate in 2009 and 2010. And yet Republicans want America to believe that Obama and the Democrats ruled with a tyrannical zeal to pass every piece of frivolous legislation they could conjure up. They think that the voters are dumb enough to believe it.

Given the mendacity of the Republican presidential ticket this year, it appears that they think very little of the intelligence of the American electorate, and are merely perpetuating a disturbing pattern of behavior on the part of Republican lawmakers, who have a very loose relationship with truth and the real world. And that includes their official PR apparatus, Fox News. We’ll find out on November 6th if they’re right.

All of this and we didn’t even talk about the unprecedented, deliberate, methodical obstructionism on the part of Republicans via the filibuster.

[magkelly]

The *#*^%$##@$** campaign is over!

It's 4 days later FL is done holding things up as usual, and NOW it's over. But we are still chewing on it in several threads so I ask you does it even matter if it's technically done if we never stop talking about it?

[jeffkrol]

"Reagan," Vice President Dick Cheney famously declared in 2002, "proved deficits don't matter." Unless, that is, a Democrat is in the White House. After all, while Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and George W. Bush doubled it again, each Republican was rewarded with a second term in office. But as the Gallup polling data show, concern over the federal deficit hasn't been this high since Democratic budget balancer Bill Clinton was in office. All of which suggest the Republicans' born-again disdain for deficits ranks among the greatest - and most successful - political double-standards in recent memory.

Reagan Proved Deficits Don't Matter* | Crooks and Liars

[jeffkrol]

Study: Bush Tax Cuts Cost More Than Twice As Much As Dems' Health-Care Bill

These figures make clear that costs cannot be the real concern of lawmakers who oppose the House health care legislation and yet supported the Bush tax cuts. Their position seems to be that showering benefits on the wealthiest five percent of taxpayers and leaving the bill for future generations is preferable to making health care available for all at a much lower cost and paying that cost up front. That demonstrates a different set of priorities than most Americans have, but it doesn’t demonstrate much concern about costs.

Study: Bush Tax Cuts Cost More Than Twice As Much As Dems' Health-Care Bill | Crooks and Liars

[jeffkrol]

Amazing that this wasn't a concern once during the Bush administration, but we all know that the expectations don't matter when you're a Republican. I'm all for exercising fiscal responsibility, but not at the expense of the social safety net or through austerity measures that we can already see are not working in Europe.

And so therefore, it is now that the real fight begins and I'm look to all of you to join me in the battle for progressive values.

Are you ready to fight?

Sunday Morning Bobblehead Thread | Crooks and Liars

[Ratmagiclady]

It's 4 days later FL is done holding things up as usual, and NOW it's over. But we are still chewing on it in several threads so I ask you does it even matter if it's technically done if we never stop talking about it?

Who told you the florida results were relevant to the outcome? Or was the point pretending they were?

[magkelly]

Relevant only that they were the last to still be counting the presidential vote, as usual, I think? Last two election it's always been FL messing around long after they should be done, that's what I meant...