Backing down from their hard-line stance, House Republicans said Friday that they would agree to lift the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit for three months, with a requirement that both chambers of Congress pass a budget in that time to clear the way for negotiations on long-term deficit reduction.
via megalextoria.com
In a renewed attempt to force President Barack Obama’s hand on the debt limit, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul is pushing legislation that would ban federal spending on anything but interest payments on the national debt, Social Security checks, and military salaries.
Paul, who is traveling through Israel this week, told Business Insider here Thursday that he believes the GOP should take a more pro-active approach to the coming fight over raising the debt ceiling. Rather than march the country toward a government shutdown — and spook markets with possible default — Paul argued that Republicans should pass a bill that would force the government to prioritize payments to bondholders.
“The only real way to have leverage with the debt ceiling is to convince people that we are not going to default on our debt,” Paul said. “We could actually direct the President to pay our interest, make Social Security payments, pay soldier salaries, the basic functions that could keep government going. That way we take default off the table. They always scare us into raising the debt ceiling by saying that the stock markets will tank, everyone will go crazy if we default. I don’t think we should default — but I don’t think we should raise the debt ceiling either.”
As Paul points out, this would automatically force the federal budget into balance, a position he argues would give Republicans leverage to push through a comparatively gradual balanced budget amendment, similar to the “Cut, Cap and Balance” amendment that House Republicans passed in 2011.
“We have tax receipts to pay for about 70 percent of the government and we’re running deficits of about 30 percent, so what I would say is pay for the 70 percent we would all keep going and stop paying the other 30 percent until we come to an agreement,” Paul said. “That agreement would include an amendment to gradually balance the budget over five years. The only thing the debt ceiling would do is force us immediately to have a balanced budget.”
Full article: http://www.businessi … bama-spending-2013-1
With the fiscal cliff deal signed into law, the nation’s attention now turns to the debt ceiling debate, scheduled to hit in the next two months. As America reaches the debt ceiling yet again – an unbelievable $16.4 trillion debt ceiling needs another increase in order to allow us to borrow more cash to pay our bills – Republicans insist that we finally begin dealing with our spending problem. That, of course, was the purpose of the fiscal cliff deal in the first place: to preserve as many of the Bush tax rates as possible, consider tax rates a finished issue, and move on to spending cuts. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on ABC’s This Week, “The tax issue is finished, over, completed. That’s behind us. Now the question is: what are we going to do about the biggest problem confronting our country and our future? And that’s our spending addiction.”
Not so fast.
The bullies in the Democratic Party have no intention of cutting a single dollar. Instead, they want to tighten their stranglehold on the windpipes of job producers and entrepreneurs. This morning, virtually every Democrat on virtually every Sunday show said the same thing: no cuts, more taxes. So much for the Republican attempt to take the tax discussion off the table.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi led the way, telling CBS’ Face the Nation that the historically enormous tax increases just enshrined in law aren’t enough: “The President had originally said he wanted $1.6 trillion in revenue. He took it down to $1.2 trillion as a compromise in this legislation. We get $620 billion, very significant, high-end tax, changing the high-end tax rate to 39.6 percent, but that is not enough on the revenue side.” Pelosi said that the Obama regime had already made cuts to social programs like Medicare – a position the Obama re-election campaign denied repeatedly. She added that there would be no change to Medicare’s eligibility age, and wouldn’t allow cost of living adjustments to Social Security payments. And she concluded that any link between raising the debt ceiling and cutting spending wouldn’t happen: “I don’t think those two things should be related.” She went so far as to say that she’d unilaterally raise the debt ceiling in violation of the Constitution if she were president.
Full article: http://www.breitbart … ations-tax-increases
