On a vote of 63 to 36. Again, in spite of all the media hype and hysteria, the vote was not even close.
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In reality there was no leverage to renegotiate or cut the budget.
The dems knew they’d have to entertain this. Instead we got the grid act in there probably can safely assume the few small cuts go de facto to the smart grid.
This was all demand side economics which also demands a few nip and tucks as economic conditions require. This was in no way supply side economics which just sells out the nation.
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Would you lower the credit limit on your credit card? Would you lower your credit rating score? The drama is as real as a TV soap opera.
Bridges on sale to all destinations
Inquire at
The Captain’s
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Of course not. But in America we celebrate racism, ignorance and innumeracy. The drama of the last few weeks was necessary to molify that 35% of the electorate.
intercst
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I have been griping, for several years, about how the Shiny media is more interested in stoking hysteria, than in informing the population. All news is “BREAKING”. All weather is “SEVERE”. I watch with amusement the descriptors they use, and the rotation. For a few years everything was “SHOCKING, ALARMING, SCARY, WILD”. Their latest one is “emotional”, everything is “emotional” now. And, of course, the constant fawning over British royals and “celebs”.
The “debt limit crisis” is clearly more media hysteria. The pols did what they are actually supposed to do: work out a workable compromise, so the government can carry on functioning.
Steve
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I donno the critters had to negotiate so hard lines were drawn.
The press is not well educated. Yeah they can write that does not mean they are lawyers or economists. The press gets used by a lot of people. Especially the people who own the individual press outlets.
Americans refuse education. That is not anyone else’s fault.
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It certainly had a lot of people here going.
DB2
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Yep a few people came in with politics instead of economics. Their positions if delineated as economics would have been totally foolish.
That is the fundamental problem with Shiny media. Because they are constantly stoking hysteria, we don’t know when to take their “reporting” seriously.
I have a theory: remember when a previous regime would raise the “terrorist threat level”, and get everyone wound up with “unspecific, but imminent threat of terrorist attack”? Then the regime would quietly back the “threat level” down, then ramp it up again and set off another wave of hysteria? I think the media learned something: hysteria attracts eyeballs. So now it is all hysteria, all the time.
…I forget where I saw it, might have been in “Fahrenheit 9/11” where a former Senator was talking about how the media was being used to repeatedly “stimulate” the mob with waves of “terrorist threat” hype, with the result being the mob becomes constantly agitated. Correlate that with the increasing levels of violence we see in Shiny-land, where simple disagreements quickly escalate to shoot-outs.
Steve
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What is a credit card? Buy now, pay now. And I need a cash discount from the “credit card price”.
Again you confuse “what was happening” with the reporting on what was happening. A serious number of House representatives said they would not vote for the bill. That included a large number of the (so-called) Freedom Caucus, representing about 50 of the most hard core, some number of the same party sympathetic to those arguments, and a reasonable number (46) of Democrats as well (in the Senate, for instance, Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren, John Fetterman, Markey and Merkley). In a closely divided House it could have been beat. It was only because Biden and McCarthy agreed to negotiate - and both sides give (which they had publicly declared they would NOT do) that the deal happened.
The outcome was never in doubt in the Senate, it is in the House where the most radical have the loudest voices.
It wasn’t “the media”. It was “the situation” which was resolved. There was a reasonable chance it wouldn’t be, because polls showed the electorate would be evenly split over “who was at fault”, unlike the similar close call when Clinton was President when voters overwhelmingly blamed Republicans. That current day polling emboldened the Freedom Caucus and sympathizers to accelerate their demands, which could have ended in the nightmare scenario otherwise avoided.
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Republicans got the one thing they really cared about. Tax cuts for billionaire tax cheats - in the form of cutting the IRS budget.
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The IRS was getting $80 Billion over 10 years. They wouldn’t be able to spend all that money in a year or two. There’s plenty of time to have the GOP’s $20 Billion cut restored.
And who knows? AI may make it easier and cheaper to find tax cheats in the future.
intercst
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Actually the President won power to build out the grid which is preeminent. The GOP may have won 1% budget cut next year. I do not know the details yet but if things are not hammered out this year I just heard there will be 1% cut next year.
There is more to this than the public and possibly much of the press knows.
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And there are 435 members of the House, so the nutters, on both sides, combined, are a small minority.
Steve
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I think that’s right. Overall, the president got much of what he needed to rebuild the country, and the Republicans got some tax cuts for the billionaire tax cheats who aid in their elections in their gerrymandered districts. I am a nutter on the left with Liz and Bernie, but Biden is more of a pragmatist and did pretty well here.
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I did not see tax cuts. Some budget cuts possibly.
I was cynically characterizing the irs cuts as tax cuts for billionaire tax cheats.
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That does not depend much on the exact amount spent on the agency. It depends on how the money is spent. If IRS lawyers are allowed to prosecute multi millionaires or not.
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