Power Plays

I don’t believe the failure to readily resolve the 2011 Federal budget had anything to do with the President being Black. I think it really was about Democrat versus Republican and the same thing would have happened even if a woman was elected.

In the final weekend before the debt crisis deadline, Speaker of the House, John Boehner, couldn’t get enough Republicans together to pass his own bill raising the debt limit. His co-workers said they supported him but not his bill (they thought he was giving too much away). If this was the case they wouldn’t have hindered his efforts to get the budget passed. They should have been honest with him, themselves and us and said they weren’t supporting his ideas (maybe they don’t know the meaning of support). Because of the Republican power plays within their own party there could be no focus on the final negotiations because bills pass from the House to the Senate which is controlled by Democrats. Boehner finally got his bill passed knowing that by adding a Constitutional amendment for a balanced budget that the Democrats would reject it. Right after his bill passed in the House he was loudly saying that the House did their job and now it’s time for the Democrats to put their issues on the table in order to resolve the budget crisis. I wonder what he did not hear the first time and why he was angry because they want their turn.

As the world watched months of bickering, the budget got passed and the President signed it with 10 hours and 10 minutes remaining to a meltdown. Legislators came up with: raising the debt ceiling $2.4 trillion, cuts up to $1.2 trillion over a 10 year period (includes defense and health care), and a caveat saying a new 12 person Congressional Committee would be formed to recommend an additional $1.5 trillion in cuts in cuts by November 23; Congress would vote on the recommendations by December 23, and if not passed by said date it will trigger cuts in the Pentagon and domestic programs. Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, said it was a good result with a terrible process; it allows us to put this behind us and go back to getting more people back to work and continued growth. On October 25^th the government said going to dollar coins instead of using paper would save $5.6 billion over 30 years (coins aren’t replaced like paper) and the Congressional Committee is to consider this in its recommendations. I think it’s a way of getting rid of those Presidential coins they have stored.

I don’t think the President caved in. Knowing when to fold is a good gambler’s action and if he made no effort to compromise it would have definitely put us in a worse situation. In my opinion, allowing a crash or meltdown of the US economy is never the right thing to do. It affects all people, not just those in this country. If a default did occur, we would be spending more money to borrow what we need; thus wasting more funds we don’t have. This is going to happen with the credit rating downgrade we received but it would have been worse if the default occurred.  

After the budget was passed the US House discontinued the page program due to cost cutting and increased reliance on electronic communication. I wonder if this was part of the reduction earmarked in the budget and/or it makes them feel a little bit better about themselves. 

On September 1, 2011 it was reported that it took all day for Congress to tell the President what day he could have his speech on the economy; he agreed to September 8. I’ve never heard of such a waste of time or the need to control a speech. After the President’s speech, the Republicans came out with their version of the American Jobs Act and it calls for fewer regulations and lower business taxes. I wonder what part of businesses getting too much they don’t understand. And they were at it again. The federal fiscal year runs October – September. The House passed a fiscal bill and left for a week recess. The Senate rejected the bill saying there wasn’t enough money to cover the weather related disasters. No one should be going anywhere until the job is done and all this last minute passing of bills is ridiculous. If they can’t get their job done within 30 days prior to a critical due date, I say we stop paying them until the job is done. These so called intelligent people should be able to prioritize our (and therefore their) workload. The House did come back and resolve the issue so we now have funds at least until mid-November. This redundant budget handling is wasting time and money and causing undue stress on the American people.