GOP: We’ve been lying all along

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I never thought I’d write these words, but here goes: thank you, John Boehner. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for finally admitting on national television that all the fiscal cliffs, sequestrations and budget battles you’ve created are, indeed, artificially fabricated by ideologues and self-interested politicians and not the result of some imminent crisis that’s out of our control.

America owes this debt of gratitude to Boehner after he finally came clean on yesterday’s edition of ABC’s “This Week” (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/03/17/boehner_agrees_with_obama_we_do_not_have_an_immedi ate_debt_crisis.html) and admitted that “we do not have an immediate debt crisis.”

(His admission was followed up by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who quickly echoed much the same sentiment on CBS’ Face the Nation (http://www.mediaite.com/tv/paul-ryan-tells-cbs-bob-schieffer-we-do-not-have-a-debt-crisis/)).

In offering up such a stunningly honest admission, the GOP leader has put himself on record as agreeing with President Obama,

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/18/boehners_debt_confession_reveals_gops_intentions/

Boner and Ryan agreeing with Krugman and other progressive economists! :lol

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GOP Senator: Republicans Are Open To Tax Increases In Grand Bargain (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/17/1731581/corker-gop-senator-open-to-tax-increases/)
CORKER: I think there–by the way–is a chance on a deal. I know the president is saying the right things and we have an opportunity over the next four-to-five months. I think that we’ll know when the president is serious by virtue of a process is setup where he is actually at the table or he has a designee and whether he begins to say publicly to the American people, to all Americans, that he understands that Americans are only paying one-third of the cost of Medicare and that has to change for the program to be here down the road. But look, Chris, I think Republicans — if they saw true entitlement reform — would be glad to look at tax reform that generates additional revenues. And that doesn’t mean increasing rates, that means closing loopholes. That also means arranging our tax system so that we have economic growth. And I think we’ve been saying that from day one.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/17/1731581/corker-gop-senator-open-to-tax-increases/

yeah, like $20 cuts in safety net for $1 tax increase on the 99% (none on the 1%)

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For all you Pete Peterson suckers:

Stop Freaking Out About the Debt! 5 Reasons There Is No Debt Crisis


1. We don’t ever have to actually eliminate the debt: The United States ran up a huge debt burden in World War II. More importantly, in raw dollar terms, we never repaid that debt. We simply grew the economy so that the size of the debt fell in comparison. That’s what’s happening in graphs where the debt burden drops in the post-war years. That burden is measured as a ratio of debt-to-GDP, and in ratios the denominator matters as much as the numerator.


2. The budget doesn’t actually have to balance to reduce it: If we can keep deficits under a certain threshold every year, then economic growth will overtake it, meaning our debt-to-GDP ratio will either stay the same or even drop. For the immediate future, the economic looks set to grow by about 4 percent a year. If we can keep each year’s deficit to 4 percent or less of public debt already held, debt-to-GDP will stabilize. America can, in fact, run deficits in perpetuity.


3. The debt is already as balanced as it needs to be: Federal spending involves a host of programs called “ stabilizers” — spending that automatically kicks in when the economy tanks, without any acts on the part of lawmakers, boosting GDP growth and helping Americans who have lost their jobs. These include unemployment insurance, food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, and many others. Tax revenues also naturally fall as unemployment rises.


The Congressional Budget office just released a report that stabilizers will add $422 billion to the deficit in 2013. That leaves $423 billion — out of the estimated $845 billion deficit for the year — that isn’t due to the automatic stabilizers. Publicly held U.S. debt is currently around $11.5 trillion, and $423 is less than 4 percent of that.


Take out the stabilizers, and the deficit is within the window necessary to stabilize the debt. And all we have to do to unwind the stabilizers is get the economy firing on all cylinders again. This holds true for about the next decade, before growth in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid finally begin to slowly overtake it. The country still has problems, but it has lots of time to sort them out.


4. The “debt crisis” is not a certainty: Paul Ryan may talk as if it is, but it’s merely a projection — one possible result if the CBO’s guesswork about the future proves accurate. The Center for American Progress recently dove into CBO’s methodology, and found that the projections build in a host of sometimes-dramatic assumptions about Congress’ future spending and taxation choices, as well as other factors that could very well not come to pass.

5. We don’t know how much debt actually causes crisis: Ryan and others often cite a finding that economic growth slows as debt-to-GDP reaches 90 percent. But there’s a big correlation-causation problem with this. Remember the denominator: slowing GDP, regardless of debt, could raise debt-to-GDP just as much as higher debt could. And the countries that fit with the 90 percent threshold prediction also present an apples-to-oranges problem when compared to America. Britain, Japan, and France — advanced democracies like ours, with their own currency — shouldered debt levels far in excess of 90 precent over extended periods of time in the past. No debt crisis arrived.

http://www.alternet.org/stop-freaking-out-about-debt-5-reasons-there-no-debt-crisis

[Nbadan]

America owes this debt of gratitude to Boehner after he finally came clean on yesterday’s edition of ABC’s “This Week” and admitted that “we do not have an immediate debt crisis.”

(His admission was followed up by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who quickly echoed much the same sentiment on CBS’ Face the Nation).


Been saying that all along, and so has President Obama, and getting ridiculed for it by red state America.....the debt crisis is fabricated but the consequences for the GOP will be quite real...

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http://media.salon.com/2013/02/boehner_bernstein-620x412.jpg

All y'all thought we wuz serious? ha ha ha gotcha! Drinks all around! Golf at 3PM!