A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump
Republican debt limit negotiator Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, left, walks out of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s office Friday. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Democrat and Republican negotiators struggled Friday to reach a deal to raise the U.S. government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, with a key Republican citing disagreements over work requirements for some benefit programs for low-income Americans. Time is running short for Democrat President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to reach an accord to raise the federal government’s self-imposed borrowing limit and avert a potentially disastrous default.
Negotiators appeared to be nearing a deal to lift the limit for two years and cap spending, with agreement on funding for the Internal Revenue Service and the military, years while capping spending on many government programs, according to a U.S. official. But an administration official briefed on the talks said they could easily slip into the weekend. The two sides remained at loggerheads over a Republican push for new work requirements for some anti-poverty programs.
“We have made progress,” lead Republican negotiator Garret Graves told reporters. “I said two days ago, we had some progress that was made on some key issues, but I want to be clear, we continue to have major issues that we have not bridged the gap on chief among them work requirements.”
A failure by Congress to raise its self-imposed debt ceiling in the coming week could trigger a default that would shake financial markets and send the United States into a deep recession.
“We know it’s crunch time,” McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol on Friday. “We’re not just trying to get an agreement, we’re trying to get something that’s worthy of the American people, that changes the trajectory.”
Wall Street’s main indexes rose on Friday as investors hoped for progress in the negotiations. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was set to snap a five-day losing streak, while the Nasdaq touched its highest level since mid-August earlier in the session.
Even if they succeed in reaching a deal, leaders from both parties will likely have to work hard to round up enough votes for approval in Congress. Right-wing Republicans have insisted that any deal must include steep spending cuts, while Democrats have resisted the new work requirements for benefit programs. The deal under consideration would increase funding for military and veterans care while essentially holding non-defense discretionary spending at current year levels, said the official, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak about internal discussions.
A two-year extension would mean Congress would not need to address the limit again until after the 2024 presidential election. The deal might also scale back funding for the IRS, the official said.
Biden paid for his signature legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, in part by committing $80 billion in new funding for the IRS to target wealthy Americans and generate $200 billion in new tax revenue. The money was designated mandatory spending, which, like social security, protects it from the annual appropriations process. The deal being considered would shift that money to discretionary funding, making it subject to the annual appropriations process and placing its future in jeopardy, according to a U.S. official. The White House is working on a way to preserve the effort to target wealthy taxpayers, even if the money is moved, the official said.
The deal would boost military and veterans spending to levels proposed by Biden earlier this year, a second U.S. official said.
BIPARTISAN DEAL
Each side will have to persuade enough members of their party in the narrowly divided Congress to vote for any eventual deal.
“The only way to move forward is with a bipartisan agreement. And I believe we will come to an agreement that allows us to move forward and that protects the hardworking Americans of this country,” Biden said on Thursday.
The Treasury Department has warned that it could be unable to cover all its obligations as soon as June 1, but also has made plans to sell $119 billion worth of debt that will come due on that date, suggesting to some market watchers that it was not an iron-clad deadline.
The standoff has unnerved investors, pushing the government’s borrowing costs up by $80 million so far, according to Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo.
Several credit-rating agencies have said they have put the United States on review for a possible downgrade, which would push up borrowing costs and undercut the United States’ standing as the backbone of the global financial system. A similar 2011 standoff led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade its rating on U.S. debt.
Most lawmakers have left Washington for the Memorial Day holiday, but their leaders have warned them to be ready to return for votes when a deal is struck. House leaders have said lawmakers will get three days to ponder the deal before a vote, and any single lawmaker in the Senate has the power to tie up action for days. At least one, Republican Mike Lee, has threatened to do so.
President Joe Biden and top congressional Republican Kevin McCarthy on Thursday appeared to be nearing a deal to cut spending and raise the government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, with little time to spare to head off the risk of default. The deal would specify the total amount the government could spend on discretionary programs like housing and education, according to a person familiar with the talks, but not break that down into individual categories. The two sides are just $70 billion apart on a total figure that would be well over $1 trillion, according to another source.
Biden said the two sides still disagreed where the cuts should fall.
“I don’t believe the whole burden should fall back to middle class and working class Americans,” he told reporters.
The Treasury Department has warned that the federal government could run short of money to cover all its obligations as soon as June 1 – a week away – but on Thursday it announced plans to sell $119 billion worth of debt that will settle on June 1, suggesting to some market watchers that date was not an iron-clad deadline. Any agreement will have to pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Democrat-controlled Senate. That could be tricky, as some right-wing Republicans and many liberal Democrats said they were upset by the prospect of compromise.
“I don’t think everybody’s going to be happy at the end of the day. That’s now how the system works,” said McCarthy, who serves as House speaker.
His office did not respond to a request for comment about the possible agreement with the president. The deal would only set broad spending outlines, leaving lawmakers to fill in the blanks in the weeks and months to come. It would specify the total amount of military spending, which would a key sticking point in the talks, one of the sources said.
Biden has resisted Republican proposals to stiffen work requirements for anti-poverty programs and loosen oil and gas drilling rules, according to Democrat Rep. Mark Takano.
Rep. Kevin Hern, who leads the powerful Republican Study Committee, told Reuters a deal was likely by Friday afternoon.
Even as Republicans tout progress, McCarthy is preparing to possibly let lawmakers leave Washington on Thursday for a week-long holiday recess, with the proviso that they need to be ready to return for a vote. The Senate is currently out but on similar orders to be ready to return.
A U.S. default could upend global financial markets and push the United States into recession.
POSSIBLE DOWNGRADE
Credit rating agency DBRS Morningstar put the United States on review for a possible downgrade on Thursday, echoing similar warnings by Fitch, Moody’s and Scope Ratings. Another agency, S&P Global, downgraded U.S. debt following a similar debt-ceiling standoff in 2011. The months-long standoff has spooked Wall Street, weighing on U.S. stocks and pushing the nation’s cost of borrowing higher. The yield on U.S. Treasury bills maturing in early June climbed in early Thursday trading, in a sign of investor unease.
Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said concerns about the debt ceiling had pushed up the government’s interest costs by $80 million so far. Lawmakers regularly need to raise the self-imposed debt limit to cover the cost of spending and tax cuts they have already approved.
House lawmakers will get three days to read any debt-ceiling bill before they have to vote on it. In the Senate, Republican Mike Lee said he would block a quick vote if he did not like the deal, which could delay action for days. McCarthy has insisted that any deal must cut discretionary spending next year and cap spending growth in the years to come, to slow the growth of the U.S. debt, now equal to the annual output of the economy.
He also said he had briefly spoken about the negotiations with former President Donald Trump, who has publicly urged Republicans to allow a default if they fall short of their goals. Biden has offered to freeze spending at current levels next year and proposed several tax increases to help curb the debt.
Lawmakers on the parties’ right and left flanks are growing frustrated by signs of compromise. Republican Representative Chip Roy, a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, has insisted that any deal must include the sharp spending cuts they passed last month.
Some Democrats, meanwhile, say Biden has not been vocal enough about the downsides to Republicans’ proposed spending cuts, in contrast to McCarthy who has been briefing reporters multiple times per day.
“I would urge the president to use the power of the bully pulpit of the presidency,” said Democrat Representative Steven Horsford.
A majority 60% of Americans say spending cuts should accompany a debt ceiling increase, according to a CNN poll. Additionally, 24% said Congress should raise the debt ceiling “no matter what” while 15% said lawmakers shouldn’t raise it and “allow the U.S. to default on its debts.”
Talks between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and the Biden administration have stalled as Republican negotiators say there is a “significant gap between where we are and where they are.”
“Unless and until the White House recognizes that this is a spending problem, then we’re gonna continue to have a significant gap,” Rep. Garrett Graves, R-La., told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday.
Graves is a top proxy for McCarthy in the talks.
The White House has discussed reducing the deficit by closing tax loopholes and raising taxes on billionaires, a suggestion rejected by Republicans.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday said default isn’t an option and insisted that the talks have been productive.
“We believe there is a space and an opportunity here to have a bipartisan, reasonable … budget agreement,” she said.
The CNN poll, conducted May 17-20, surveyed 1,227 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday said “everybody needs to relax” about the possibility of a debt default, insisting that the United States will not default on its payments.
“The last 10 times we raised the debt ceiling, there were things attached to it,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters in his home state, reported The Hill. “This is not that unusual. It is almost entirely required when you have a divided government.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that the country could go into default on its debts by June 1, but McConnell insisted that President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will reach an agreement.
“Regardless of what may be said about the talks … the president and the speaker will reach an agreement,” said McConnell. “It will ultimately pass on a bipartisan vote in both the House and the Senate. The country will not default.”
McConnell, who has strongly supported McCarthy, R-Calif., through the negotiations, has said repeatedly that Biden must reach a deal with McCarthy.
McConnell had been expected to play a role in the talks but instead has maintained a supporting role, saying that any deal must come between the White House and the House Republicans. As a result, the Democrat-controlled Senate has not played a large role in the discussions.
McConnell has joined McCarthy at the White House for some of the talks, but most of the discussions are now between teams; Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., and Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., lead the GOP; while Democrats are headed by White House counselor Steve Ricchetti, Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young, and White House Director of Legislative Affairs Louisa Terrell.
Republican negotiators Tuesday said the White House is showing little urgency in the discussions, considering that the House 72-hour rule means a deal much be reached by later this week so a bill can be passed before Yellen’s June 1 deadline.
Top congressional Republican Kevin McCarthy said talks over raising the U.S. federal government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling were “on the right path” ahead of a meeting with Democratic President Joe Biden. The Democratic president and Republican speaker of the House of Representatives have just 10 days to reach a deal to increase the government’s self-imposed borrowing limit or trigger an unprecedented default. Biden and McCarthy will meet at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2130 GMT), the White House said, after their negotiating representatives met for more than two hours on Monday.
“I firmly believe what we’re negotiating right now, a majority of Republicans will see that it is a right place to put us on the right path,” McCarthy told reporters.
Any deal to raise the limit must pass both chambers of Congress before Biden could sign it into law. The U.S. Treasury has warned it could be unable to pay all its bills as soon as June 1.
A failure to lift the debt ceiling would trigger a default that would shake financial markets and drive interest rates higher on everything from car payments to credit cards. Ongoing uncertainty is already weighing on investors and stocks.
U.S. markets rose on Monday as investors awaited updates on the negotiations.
McCarthy’s Republicans control the House 222-213, while Biden’s Democrats hold the Senate 51-49, making it difficult to reach a bipartisan deal that would secure enough votes to pass.
It will also take several days to move legislation through Congress if and when Biden and McCarthy come to an agreement. McCarthy said that a deal must be reached this week for it to pass Congress and be signed into law by Biden in time to avoid default.
“We can get a deal tonight. We could deal tomorrow but you got to get something done this week to be able to pass it and move it to the Senate,” McCarthy told reporters.
A White House official on Monday said that Republican negotiators had proposed additional cuts to programs providing food aid to low-income Americans, adding that no deal could pass Congress without support from both parties.
CUTS AND CLAWBACKS
Republicans are pushing for discretionary spending cuts, new work requirements for some programs for low-income Americans and a clawback of COVID-19 aid approved by Congress but not yet spent in exchange for an increase, which is needed to cover the costs of lawmakers’ previously approved spending and tax cuts.
Democrats want to hold spending steady at this year’s levels, while Republicans want to return to 2022 levels. A plan passed by the House last month would cut a wide swath of government spending by 8% next year.
Biden, who has made the economy a centerpiece of his domestic agenda and is seeking re-election, has said he would consider spending cuts alongside tax adjustments but that Republicans’ latest offer was “unacceptable.”
The president tweeted that he would not back “Big Oil” subsidies and “wealthy tax cheats” while putting healthcare and food assistance at risk for millions of Americans.
Both sides must also weigh any concessions with pressure from hardline factions within their own parties.
Some far-right House Freedom Caucus members have urged a halt to talks, demanding that the Senate adopt their House-passed legislation, which has been rejected by Democrats. Former President Donald Trump, a Republican who is seeking another term after losing to Biden in the 2020 election, has urged members of his party to force a default if they do not achieve all their goals, downplaying any economic consequences.
Liberal Democrats have pushed back against any cuts that would harm families and lower-income Americans, with some urging Biden to act on his own by invoking the Constitution’s 14th Amendment — an untested move which the president said on Sunday would face constraints.
The amendment states that the “validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned,” but the clause has been largely unaddressed by the courts.
Biden is racing for a solution after refusing for months to negotiate on the debt ceiling and insisting that Republicans should pass a “clean” unconditional increase before he would agree to any spending negotiations.
In Japan on Sunday, he acknowledged the political implications, saying some far-right House Republicans “know the damage that it would do to the economy” if there was a default but hoped the blame would fall to him and thwart his re-election.
Congress three times raised the debt limit under Trump, without a similar demand from Republicans for sharp spending cuts.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., blasted President Joe Biden for being disingenuous and failing to negotiate on the House-passed debt ceiling package, saying time is running out and Biden wants debt default more than a deal.
“I still think it’s far apart,” McCarthy told a reporter Monday while walking through the Capitol Building. “It doesn’t seem to me yet they want a deal. It just seems like they want to look like they are in a meeting, but they aren’t talking anything serious.”
McCarthy cited the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report released recently that was forced to raise the debt estimates from the February report.
“In the meantime, we just watched the CBO come out and say we’re $100 billion further in debt,” McCarthy said. “It seems more like they want a default than a deal to me.”
Time is running out to reach a deal before the June warning of surpassing the debt limit and sending the U.S. into debt default for the first time.
“I think we’ve got to have a deal done by this weekend to have a timeline to be able to pass it in both houses,” McCarthy said.
President Joe Biden slammed Republicans for not helping Democrats raise the debt limit on Monday and warned that he can’t promise the country won’t reach the ceiling in a few weeks time.
“Not only are Republicans refusing to do their job, but they’re threatening to use their power to prevent us from doing our job – saving the economy from a catastrophic event. I think, quite frankly, it’s hypocritical, dangerous and disgraceful,”the president said at the White House.
The administration is in the midst of juggling multiple crises – the president’s bipartisan bill and his Build Back Better agenda is stalled amid Democratic infighting, Congress is nearing it’s Oct. 18 deadline to raise the debt ceiling and Panama is warning of another possible influx of migrants heading to the U.S.
WATCH:
Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Democrats should use reconciliation to raise the debt ceiling. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are against this measure, though Schumer at first noted it’s “one option” that’s “on the table.”
“There is no chance, no chance the Republican conference will go out of our way to help Democrats conserve their time and energy so they can resume ramming through partisan socialism as fast as possible,” McConnell previously said.
Biden said that “raising the debt limit is usually a bipartisan undertaking” and said it’s only needed now “in part because of the reckless tax and spending policies under the previous Trump administration.”
“In four years, they incurred nearly $8 trillion – in four years, $8 trillion in additional debt and bills we have to now pay off,” Biden declared. “That’s more than a quarter of the entire debt incurred now outstanding after more than 200 years. And Republicans in Congress raised the debt three times when Donald Trump was president, and each time with Democrats’ support. But now they won’t raise it even though they’re responsible for more than $8 trillion in bills incurred in four years under the previous administration.”
“That’s what we’d be paying off,” he continued. “They won’t raise it even though defaulting on the debt would lead to self-inflicted wound that takes our economy over a cliff and risks jobs and retirement savings, social security benefits, salaries for service members, benefits for veterans and so much more.”
Biden voted against increasing the debt limit in 2006 during former President George W. Bush’s time in office. This vote came amid warnings from that administration that defaulting would negatively affect the economy, The New York Times reported.
“White House officials say Mr. Biden’s vote was symbolic, noting that the ability of Republicans to raise the debt ceiling was never in question,” The Times added.
When pressed by a reporter on the likelihood of reaching the debt limit, Biden issued a warning that he can’t guarantee it won’t happen.
“I can’t believe that will be the end result because the consequence is so dire. I don’t believe it. But can I guarantee it? If I could, I would, but I can’t,” the president said, adding that it’s “up to Mitch McConnell.”
The president noted he had received and read a letter sent by McConnell regarding the debt ceiling. McConnell remained steadfastly opposed to helping with the process and told Biden it’s “time” for him “to engage directly with congressional Democrats on this matter.”
“Your lieutenants in Congress must understand that you do not want your unified Democratic government to sleepwalk toward an avoidable catastrophe when they have had nearly three months’ notice to do their job,” McConnell wrote according to Politico.
McConnell noted Biden’s own past opposing raising the debt limit and declared “your view then is our view now.” Biden told reporters he plans to speak to McConnell regarding the letter.
The Treasury Department will conduct emergency cash-conservation measures starting Monday to avoid busting the U.S. debt ceiling after a two-year deal to suspend the federal borrowing limit lapsed at midnight Sunday.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a letter July 23 that the Treasury would invoke the “extraordinary measures” if Congress didn’t raise the debt ceiling. Yellen noted that trillions in federal spending and COVID-19 response laws made it difficult to estimate how long the Treasury would sustain its measures.
“The period of time that extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty due to a variety of factors, including the challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the U.S. government months into the future, exacerbated by the heightened uncertainty in payments and receipts related to the economic impact of the pandemic,” she wrote.
The debt ceiling prevents the Treasury from issuing new bonds once a certain limit is reached. Congress had suspended the debt limit for two years as part of a budget deal in August 2019, when the ceiling reached $22 trillion, according to Bloomberg. A new debt ceiling would include additional borrowing since, reaching $28.5 trillion according to the Congressional Budget Office.
President Joe Biden sits alongside Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as he holds a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House February 9, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Yellen’s cash-conservation measures would allow the Treasury to redeem certain investments in federal pension programs and halt new investments in order to generate revenue, CNBC reported. But payments on entitlement programs and interest on federal debt, among other things, would stop unless the federal government floats new Treasury bonds.
Economists said the measures allow the Treasury to pay off federal government obligations without accruing new debt for two to three months, CNBC reported. But Congress must raise or suspend the debt ceiling or risk the U.S. defaulting on its debt.
The federal government has never defaulted, as such a move would have far-reaching consequences for the economy. Although economists said they’re optimistic Congress will reach a deal on the debt ceiling, the prospect appears less certain in Washington.
An aide to House Democratic leadership told CNBC that discussions about the ceiling are ongoing and congressional leaders do not want to risk the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government.
President Joe Biden’s administration, on the other hand, may not get involved in discussions about the debt ceiling. A White House official told CNBC that “it is Congress’s responsibility to raise or suspend the debt limit in order to pay for the spending it has already authorized over the years.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told conservative radio host Mark Levin on Thursday evening that establishment GOP politicians will “never” listen to the American people.
“If we wait on the entrenched politicians in Washington, hell will freeze over before that happens,” Cruz answered when Levin asked whether Republicans will ever listen. “This is nothing new. The answers come from America, from millions of people standing up and holding elected officials accountable.”
Cruz, who coined the Twitter hash tag #MakeDCListen during the government shutdown episode, has often returned to a theme of forcing Washington D.C. insiders to listen to the public.
He noted that in the prelude to the shutdown, many Republicans preferred to push for spending cuts with the debt ceiling as leverage.
“A few months ago, when we were fighting trying to stop the disaster that is Obamacare, where a lot of Washington gray beards said, ‘we are going to fight on the debt ceiling. That’s where the fight will be,’” Cruz said. “It’s like they think the American people are a bunch of rubes, we don’t remember what they say.”
Wednesday, Cruz forced a procedural roll call requiring a 60-vote majority on the “clean” debt ceiling bill, despite Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s forceful urging he allow the legislation to go through with only a bare-majority vote. Cruz said Republicans should have united against the cloture motion, preventing the debt ceiling from being raised.
“If 41 Republicans had stood together and just voted no, the clean debt ceiling, the blank check for President Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi want would have been denied,” Cruz said. “And for all of them who say I am just a crazy rebel, the last 55 times the debt ceiling has been increased, Congress has attached meaningful conditions to it 28 of those times. It’s the only leverage point that has ever been effective.”
Cruz said earlier in the interview that many Republicans in the U.S. Congress wanted to increase the debt ceiling. “Make no mistake about it,” Cruz said. “This was their desired outcome. An awful lot of Republicans wanted exactly what Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid wanted, which is to raise the debt ceiling. But, they wanted to be able to tell what they view as their foolish gullible constituents that they didn’t do it, and they’re mad because by my refusing to consent to [a bare-majority vote] they had to come out in the open and admit to that.”
Cruz’s move to force the 60-vote procedural tally forced a dramatic, hour-long vote in which McConnell and GOP Whip John Cornyn scrambled to find enough Republicans to join Democrats and invoke cloture. During the vote, the clerk abstained from a decades-long practice of announcing each vote into a microphone as it was cast, preventing the public from knowing who had already voted and thus, who was switching their votes. McConnell and Cornyn ultimately joined in voting for cloture, after which six of their GOP colleagues switched to join them, providing additional political cover.
Hear the conversation Mark Levine had with Senator Cruz here;
If I went to my bank and asked for a loan without the equity to back it up and the ability to pay it back, I would not get the loan. If I told them that I could print some money to help with the pay down of the loan, they would most likely have called the police on me.
When you’re a politician, you’re almost legally untouchable. When you get elected to office at the federal level, there’s almost nothing you can’t do if you can get enough people to agree with you. It’s a matter of taking a vote. It’s that simple.
We’re seeing President Obama sidestepping the Constitution by threatening to issue 19 executive orders that would further restrict law-abiding Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
If you don’t like what the Constitution that you took an oath to uphold, ignore it and legislate like a dictator. If you don’t have enough money; just print some more. If you want to take control of the healthcare of every person in America, pass a law based on 2700 pages that few congressmen or the president ever read. It doesn’t matter what it says since bureaucrats will eventually write the rules. It’s all for our good, don’t you know.
If you want to make sure every person in America gets to participate in the American dream, force banks to loan money to people who don’t have the means to pay it back. No problem. Create agencies for people who can’t repay them. When these government agencies go belly up, print more money.
This can all be done because there are few boundaries when it comes to government.
There’s a particular scene in the 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives[1] that stars Frederick March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, and Teresa Wright that demonstrates the problem of feel-good economics.
March’s character, Al Stephenson, is a loan officer at a bank. Stephenson gets his job back at the back. He greets a customer who turns out be a returning solider like him. The would-be farmer wants a loan:
“[March’s character] asked him what kind of collateral he can provide. The young veteran looks back with a blank stare; he has no collateral. Al explains the bank needs to have some kind of security, a guarantee of sorts so they know they can get their money back. Dejected, the vet still could not understand why he was being refused. Al is painfully uncomfortable telling the young vet all this.
The bank officials are made to look like money grubbers for not loaning money to this genuinely sincere ex-G.I. The bank was right. Al, as much as he believed in the would-be farmer, was wrong. If he really believed in the man’s abilities and the soundness of the business venture, then he should have loaned him some of his own money. It was easy for Al to loan money that wasn’t his. There was no risk to him.
Congress and the President don’t care about debts and deficit spending. It’s not their debts and deficits. All they have to do is raise the debt ceiling. Some in the liberal brain trust are saying that there is no need for a debt ceiling. The sky’s the limit.
Try that at your bank and let me know how far you get. I bet you either get laughed out of the building or men with white coats are called to drag you out.
Notes:
The film won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director (William Wyler), Best Actor (Fredric March), Best Supporting Actor (Harold Russell), Best Film Editing (Daniel Mandell), Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Sherwood), and Best Original Score (Hugo Friedhofer). [↩]
In case there is still anyone out there that continues to believe that the 2008 campaign lines that Barack Obama gave about changing the way Washington works, stopping “politics as usual,” and providing more transparency in government are true, then get a load of this. On Wednesday, Obama demonstrated just how partisan and how much of a power grabber he is. He indicated that if he were not given unlimited powers to raise the debt ceiling, apart from Congressional approval, that he might just veto his own tax hike proposal should it come to his desk.
As Obama addressed corporate CEOs at the Business Roundtable, he told them that business leaders “should not accept going through” another debt-ceiling crisis like the one that occurred in 2011, which caused stocks to fall and ended with the first U.S. credit rating downgrade.
He said that the Republicans using the debt ceiling as leverage, in order to get more spending cuts, is not only a “bad strategy for America,” but he was adamant that it was a game he would not play.
The president told the CEOs that a fight over the debt ceiling would cause more uncertainty for business. “We can’t go there again,” Obama said.
He also quoted Business Roundtable President John Engler, the former Republican governor of Michigan, who said the debt ceiling was “not a good weapon for anything except destroying our own credit rating.”
Obama’s comments drew a sharp rebuke from Republicans, who argue Congress’s role in raising the debt ceiling serves as a key check on excessive government spending. GOP leaders noted proudly they were able to force some $2 trillion in cuts during the debt-ceiling showdown last year.
“The president wants to have the ability to raise the debt ceiling whenever he wants, for as much as he wants, with no responsibility or spending cuts attached,” said spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Don Stewart. “This is an idea opposed by Democrats and Republicans alike; it’s a power grab that has no support here.”
We already know that Obama and the Democrats are not willing to compromise on anything. They even rejected House Speaker John Boehner’s proposal on Tuesday, which was blasted by conservatives. Obama is going to play hardball and the Republicans had better wake up to that. You’ve been dealing with the man for four years now.
Consequently, Obama’s own proposal could not pass either the House or the Senate, but apparently he wants to be the “Buzz Lightyear” of debt and demand the power, given to Congress in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, and go from $16 trillion to “infinity and beyond!” Congress must keep him in check or it will most certainly spell the end for the U.S. economy.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
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