Friday, June 17, 2011

Another useless debt commission

After ignoring the advice of his own blue-ribbon debt panel, President Obama outsourced the job to Joe Biden who, after eight days of meeting with Republicans, has done close to nothing:
Biden said that both sides have signaled what they might be willing to accept as part of a larger agreement but that they haven't tackled really tough decisions on health care or new revenues. He spoke to reporters after the eighth in a series of meetings aimed at producing an agreement on budget cuts that would accompany must-pass legislation to allow the government to keep borrowing to avoid a default on its obligations.
Eight days and they haven't even started discussions on runaway entitlement spending which is poised to consume the entire federal budget. Instead, they've been jerking around with the 12% of the budget dealing with park rangers and Pell grants. This past week the Senate voted to end ethanol subsidies which account for $5 billion - almost as much as the federal government is borrowing every day - and the White House threatened a veto of even this.

Meanwhile, the IMF is warning the U.S. on its humongous budget deficit and estimating lower growth rates because of debt, meaning less opportunity and fewer jobs for Americans. But, by all means, let's blow another $80 billion on "green" jobs which do not exist.

Extra - From Doug Ross.

More - Sheriff Joe gets tough: "Time to 'get real' in deficit talks." Yeah, sure, whatever.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Default.

As I have maintained, there is no other option.

As a wise man says, "Debts that can't be paid, won't be."