Category: Budget

LATEST: BOEHNER CANCELS VOTE! EARLIER: Pizza Delivery to Boehner’s Office Could Signal an All-Nighter UPDATE: Boehner Yanks Debt-Ceiling Bill at Last Minute! Vote Postponed UPDATE: Sarah Palin Sends Cryptic Message to Republican Freshmen UPDATE: Boehner Now 2 Votes Short?

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UPDATE 10:33 p.m. ET: NO VOTE TONIGHT! Boehner couldn’t get enough Republican votes to pass the bill.

UPDATE 10:39 p.m. ET: Chad Pegram of Fox News got the word from GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy at 10:24 p.m. ET.

UPDATE 10:47 p.m. ET: The Hill:

House Republican leaders have postponed indefinitely a vote on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) debt limit bill after they could not persuade enough Republicans to support the measure.
“No vote tonight,” the third-ranking House Republican, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), told reporters after leaving Boehner’s office shortly before 10:30 p.m.

The most obvious possible prediction: The Dow Jones Industrial Average will drop at least 200 points Friday.

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UPDATE 9:45 p.m. ET: Jill Jackson of CBS News:

About 2 dozen pizzas were just delivered to Boehner’s office. It’s going to be a long one…

It is at times like this that I say to myself, “Maybe I should’ve stuck with that forklift-driver job I had when I was 25.” Who knows? I might have been loading-dock foreman by now . . .

UPDATE 10:00 p.m. ET: National Journal‘s informal count “showed that 22 House Republicans say they will vote no on the measure, four leaning no, and six undecided,” which would be 26 “no” or leaning “no,” meaning that Boehner is now three votes short of the majority 218 needed for passage.

Nobody ever asks my advice on things like this, but if I was in Boehner’s shoes, I’d say, “Damn the torpedoes: Call the vote!”

It would be better to have the vote and lose it, than to sit around until midnight begging for votes.

And if Boehner loses the vote? Offer his resignation. Immediately.

Because if you can’t get a majority on a key bill like this, your leadership is meaningless.

Call the vote. Win or lose. Go all in, Boehner.

UPDATE 8:15 p.m. ET: Another source on Capitol Hill says they’re currently in “limbo,” expecting to hear by 9 p.m. whether or not there will be a vote tonight. The latest word now is that 25 House Republicans are either “no” votes or leaning toward “no” — which would put Boehner two votes short of a majority for passage.

Getting in touch with my inner cynic, I guess this means that staff are busy putting earmarks into the bill. Somebody’s district is gonna get a new post office or a freeway off-ramp out of this deal, or else an aspiring senator is going to get an extra $20,000 for his 2012 campaign.

UPDATE 9:05 p.m. ET: Still no word on whether they’ll actually have the vote tonight. Moneyrunner comments:

I just watched Special Report with Brett Baier and both Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer – who I admire – are insisting that if Republicans pass the bill that Speaker Boehner crafted they will be in a strong position at the negotiating table.
I have to admit that I need a lot of things explained to me when something is not glaringly obvious but I kept asking: “Why?”

Let me say this: If all you know about what’s happening is what you hear on cable-TV news, you’re probably going to be surprised when you find out — tomorrow, next week, next month — what was actually happening behind the scenes.

Whatever your opinion about this bill, don’t let yourself get worked up into a tizzy by what a bunch of talking heads are saying on TV. They get paid to pretend that we’re on the verge of the Apocalypse. Nobody’s paying you to believe them, so keep your powder dry.

Linked by That Mr. G Guy — thanks!

UPDATE 9:18 p.m. ET: OK, now the word is, they’re going to vote some time tonight, but we don’t know when yet, and it is alleged that they don’t even know whether they’ve got the votes to pass the doggone thing. When they go to a roll-call without a complete whip-count — i.e., the result still anybody’s guess — that’s when the going gets weird, and the weird turn pro.

UPDATE 7:25 p.m. ET: While we wait to find out exactly what’s going to happen tonight — will the House vote on the debt-ceiling bill or not? does Boehner have the votes to pass it? — we have a sort of cryptic message to GOP House freshmen from Sarah Palin:

Today I re-read the open letter I wrote to Republican Freshman Members of Congress in November 2010, just days after they were ushered into office in an historic landslide victory due in large part to the activism of commonsense patriots who are considered part of the Tea Party movement. I respectfully ask these GOP Freshman to re-read this letter and remember us “little people” who believed in them, donated to their campaigns, spent hours tirelessly volunteering for them, and trusted them with our votes. This new wave of public servants may recall that they were sent to D.C. for such a time as this.

What does she mean by that? Dunno. But “for such a time as this” is a quote from the Bible (Esther 4:14). Maybe it’s a code word, the secret Mama Grizzly signal or something.

And “for such a time as this,” my sources on the Hill are supposed to be answering their cell phones. IKWIMAITYD.

Please excuse the non-chronological sequence of the updates tonight, but I suppose that conveys as well as anything what a chaotic whirlwind has descended on Capitol Hill.

UPDATE 7:45 p.m. ET: Politicon links — thanks! — and also links to The Hill‘s whip count, which reports 24 Republican “no” votes. Ace of Spades notes that “some ‘long-standing’ conservative members” are reported among the “no” votes.

Linked by Mangy Redbone Hound — thanks!

UPDATE 6 p.m. ET: House Speaker John Boehner postponed the vote mere minutes before the roll call was scheduled to begin.

UPDATE 6:20 p.m. ET: It’s complete madness on Capitol Hill, folks. One GOP staffer says they got the news about the delay via an e-mail sent out by the Democrat whip team. Meanwhile, they’ve heard nothing from Republican whip, Kevin McCarthy, who is said to be still twisting arms to get votes for the Speaker’s bill.

And here’s the scary thing: McCarthy was the head of the GOP’s “Young Guns” candidate recruitment program in the 2010 mid-terms. There are freshmen who owe McCarthy big-time, so if the vote had to be delayed because he can’t promise 218 . . . Dude.

So it’s a total clusterfark in the GOP caucus at this point, although they still expect to have a vote tonight. But they’re now relying on media reports to tell them what the hell is going on with their own Republican leadership.

UPDATE 6:30 p.m. ET: Just to let you know I’m not kidding you about Republicans having to get information from media reports, one of my best Hill sources e-mailed me Major Garrett’s story from National Journal:

Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is delaying the House vote on his plan to cut the deficit, Republican and Democratic sources told National Journal on Thursday. Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s office said the vote would still take place later in the evening.
A Democratic source said only that Boehner was pushing back the vote. A senior Republican source said the House speaker, who was facing opposition in his caucus, had “delayed” the vote.
“The vote will be this evening,” said a spokesman for Cantor’s office.

You see what I’m talking about here?

A. Democrats know what Boehner’s doing before Republicans know what Boehner’s doing; and
B. Republicans don’t find out until it’s reported in the media.

Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.

UPDATE 6:45 p.m. ET: Hot Air’s got the story headlined as “BOEHNERGEDDON” — Allahpundit doing his usual “Link Everybody Except Stacy” round-up — so I’m grateful to Don Surber, Bob Belvedere, The Rhetorican and The Lonely Conservative for their linkage.

If you’re a blogger hoping to get linked at Hot Air, never bother to do any original reporting, because Allah hates bloggers who do reporting.

PREVIOUSLY (5:05 p.m. ET): (Original headline was “BREAKING: House Roll Call on Boehner Bill Expected to Begin at 5:45 p.m. ET”)

So says my source on Capitol Hill. Love it or hate it, House GOP leaders are twisting every arm to pass it. We’ll have complete updated coverage here, of course, but I wanted to share this video of Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) announcing her support of the bill:

Few freshmen in Congress can rival Ellmers’s credentials as the total Tea Party conservative, so her support of the bill is highly significant.

BTW, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped another 61 points today. I blame Harry Reid.

UPDATE 5:45 p.m. ET (Smitty): Via iOwnTheWorld, Priceless Princess Pelosi:

“What we’re trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget. We’re trying to save life on this planet as we know it today.”

Thanks, lady. Had you condescended to budget when you were running matters, your remarks wouldn’t resemble something the World’s Youngest Blogger just did.


House Will Vote Today on Revamped Debt-Ceiling Bill; Senate Dems Say ‘No’

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Despite the fact that 53 Senate Democrats have signed a letter vowing to vote against it, John Boehner is pushing ahead to bring his budget bill to a vote today in the House of Representatives:

The new measure depends on caps on agency budgets to cut more than $900 billion from the deficit over the coming decade while permitting a commensurate increase in the nation’s borrowing to allow the government to pay its bills.
Boehner acknowledged that the measure was hardly perfect but represented “the best opportunity we have to hold the president’s feet to the fire. He wants a $2.4 trillion blank check that lets him continue his spending binge through the next election. This is the time to say no.” Boehner made the comments Wednesday to conservative radio host Laura Ingraham.

The vote won’t come until late this afternoon — they don’t want to risk scaring Wall Street with a failed vote before the markets close — and Boehner is expected to have to do some serious arm-twisting to get the 218 votes needed to pass the bill in the House. Jim Antle at The American Spectator lays out Boehner’s problems with his own caucus:

Bamboozled time and again by Democratic presidents and their own leadership, many rank-and-file conservatives . . . are unwilling to raise either taxes or the federal debt limit in exchange for phantom spending cuts.
Late Wednesday, there were signs that the speaker was quelling this conservative rebellion. Boehner revised the plan to include $22 billion in deficit reduction in the first year and to cut and cap spending by an amount that exceeds the debt ceiling increase by $17 billion, according to the updated CBO score circulated by the speaker’s press office. “Get your ass in line,” Boehner reportedly told wavering members.
They may be complying. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who has at times seemed to be positioning himself to Boehner’s right in the debt ceiling debate, pronounced himself “150 percent” in the speaker’s corner. According to press reports, Cantor exhorted members to quit their “whining” and vote for the Boehner plan. “The debt limit vote sucks,” Cantor is said to have admitted, but it was time to “call the president’s bluff” by passing spending cuts and a short-term debt ceiling hike.

Molly Hooper of The Hill reports:

Thursday’s vote on the House Republican debt-limit bill has quickly become a referendum on Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
It is, without question, the biggest vote of Boehner’s reign. Some are even speculating that Boehner’s Speakership is on the line.

Of course, any bill acceptable to 218 House Republicans may be impossible to get approved by Harry Reid’s Democrat majority in the Senate. All 53 Senate Democrats signed a letter to Boehner yesterday, saying the House GOP’s bill is not “responsible” and “will do America more harm than good.” Allahpundit at Hot Air comments:

So that’s how this story ends. With the party of endless spending and entitlements unto death lecturing fiscal conservatives on how they’re leading the country into a credit downgrade. Perfecto.

Harry Reid has his own plan, but hasn’t brought it to the Senate floor yet and, as Alison Acosta Frazier of Heritage explains, Reid’s plan hands Obama an immediate $2.75 trillion blank check in return for . . . uh, not much. Never mind the CBO scoring. Reid’s proposal employs a typical D.C. budget gimmick: “We’re going to cut X, Y and Z in year 7, 8 and 9 of this 10-year plan — and you can trust us to keep our promises, right?”

Yeah, Mom, I promise I’m gonna eat that broccoli casserole tomorrow. Now can I have some ice cream?

But this is all hypothetical anyway, because even if a compromise can be worked out between the House and Senate — and the Senate has so far passed absolutely nothing — Obama has promised a veto.

So expect a lot of hooplah on the cable-news networks, making the grand kabuki dance seem like a world-historic event, but passing the Boehner plan in the House will really be just the first tiny step toward bringing this mess to a conclusion.

Dear Rich Liberals …

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. . . given that you keep demanding higher taxes to deal with the debt-ceiling crisis, Don Surber offers this helpful suggestion:

Write a big fat check to the Treasury and mail the check to:

Bureau of the Public Debt
P. O. Box 2188
Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188

This money will be used to pay down that debt.

Which is an excellent suggestion for rich liberals like Nancy Pelosi. And as for you greedy rich right-wing capitalists . . . It’s for the children!





. . . . . .

Hey, If You Listened to Glenn Beck …

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. . . and bought gold when it was still trading under $1,200 an ounce, you may be asking yourself now: “Should I sell at $1,600+ and cash out the 33% profit I’ve made in the past 14 months?” If you’re in such a mood, Adrian Ash at Forbes says, “Buy real estate!”

After this week’s poor U.S. housing data, might the average home be nearing its low? Priced against gold it might be.
Dropping hard as the gold price doubled and more since 2006, the average U.S. home is now priced at 103 ounces of gold . . .
Housing has only been cheaper against gold . . . in 26 of the last 121 years. It’s currently priced around half the long-run average of 201 ounces.

Look at this chart that Ash provides at Forbes:

There are no guarantees, of course: It may take a couple of years — and the defeat of Obama in 2012 — before we see any meaningful recovery in the housing market. And the gold boom may not be nearly over yet. But if you’ve been reaping gains from gold, and are looking for some place to put your profits, this looks like a great time to start bargain-hunting for cheap real-estate deals.

BTW, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 200 points today at 12,302.55 — that’s about 380 points down from Friday’s close of 12,681.16.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And while we’re talking economics, let’s look at this headline from Jane Hamsher:

Standard and Poor’s Should Not Be Able
to Play Kingmaker in the 2012 Election

Hamsher writes: “Standard and Poors is evidently meeting with high-stakes gamblers and letting them know where to place their bets as they manipulate the global economy,” and much other laughably misguided gibberish.

Dear Ms. Hamsher: If you don’t know what you’re talking about, would you please at least stop misinforming your readers? Because there is enough economic ignorance in the world already, thank you.

While I have neither the time nor inclination to turn this post into an introductory economics course (“What is the function of the bond market? What do bond rating agencies do? To whom are the rating agencies responsible?”), the least I can is to point out obvious facts, such as: Jane Hamsher doesn’t know jack shit about economics.

UPDATE: Professor William Jacobson says it’s a rare thing when he agrees with Jane Hamsher — and it’s a rare thing when Professor Jacobson is so clearly wrong. Let me quote this part of Hamsher’s argument:

[T]here is a very serious chance that a ratings downgrade will trigger an economic downturn that would cause unemployment to rise dramatically. And everyone on all sides knows that Obama would most certainly pay the price for that in 2012.

Well . . . duh.

But forget the politics. It is the underlying economic reality that would cause the downgrade, not the whim of S&P’s executives. And everything else that Hamsher writes about this subject is premised on the conspiratorial idea that S&P is acting on a political motive, rather than attempting to offer investors an honest assessment of the value of U.S. bonds.

Do we or do we not have a crisis that could affect U.S. creditworthiness? That is the only question, and the people who buy bonds are entitled to an honest answer. I think we can expect more honesty from S&P than we can from President Obama, or Tim Geithner, or Ben Bernanke.


‘F*** JOHN McCAIN!’

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That was the complete text of a Twitter message — except I spelled out the first word — I sent when I heard about this:

Mr. McCain mocked Tea Party-allied Republicans in the House for believing — wrongly, he said — that President Obama and Democrats will get the blame for a default if Republicans refuse to increase the nation’s debt ceiling.
By that flawed logic, “Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform entitlements and the Tea Party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth,” he said, quoting a Wall Street Journal editorial.
“This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into G.O.P. nominees,” he jeered, referring to two losing Tea Party candidates for the Senate in 2010.

(Video via Eric Scheiner at CNSNews.com.)

If there were any justice in the world . . . Well, it probably wouldn’t be wise to finish that sentence. But I think you see why I supported J.D. Hayworth in last year’s Arizona primary, and why I bragged on Election Day 2008: “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Bob Barr.” However, I felt it necessary to apologize to my Twitter followers today:

And this seems like a good time to remind readers that I’m raising money for a shoe-leather trip to Iowa.





UPDATE: Ed Morrissey offers a Tolkienesque rejoinder:

By the way, just in case in you don’t recall … the hobbits win in Lord of the Rings. They got a lot of ridicule from the elite and the powerful along the way, but they end up saving the West from ruinous destruction.

And just in case anyone’s discouraged by these RINO gestures from twerps like Crazy Cousin John, remember that the Democrats don’t have their act together, either:

Dem lawmaker: ‘Nobody I know’ has seen Reid plan

UPDATE II: This is the fun stuff:

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he ordered GOP lawmakers to “get your ass in line” behind his debt proposal during an interview Wednesday on a conservative radio show.
“My goal is to continue to work with all our members so we get them to the point where they say ‘yes,’ ” Boehner said on Laura Ingraham’s radio show.

UPDATE III: As of this writing (3:18 p.m. ET) the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down nearly 200 points. I blame John McCain.

UPDATE IV: Ace of Spades has some good stuff.

Nancy Pelosi’s Class-Warfare Rant: ‘We Get the Sacrifice, They Share the Wealth’

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San Francisco multi-millionaire populism:

“The budget deficit is an excuse for the Republicans to undermine government plain and simple. They don’t just want to make cuts, they want to destroy. They want to destroy food safety, clean air, clean water, the department of education. They want to destroy your rights. . . .
“[House Speaker John Boehner] has said that between him and the president they have a different vision of America and that’s how come their budget proposals are different. Quite different . . . We get the sacrifice, they share the wealth.”

“We”? We? And “sacrifice”? Sacrifice?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s net worth skyrocketed 62% last year, to a jaw-dropping $35.2 million, according to financial disclosure forms released [June 15].

What a transparent phony! The great comfort is that she will never — never — be House Speaker again.

Obama Kabuki Wrecking Your 401(k)

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Let’s see: Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped another 91 points Tuesday, down to 12,501.30, having lost 223 points in the past three sessions. If stocks are down, then bonds are up, right? Nope:

Treasuries fell [Tuesday], eroding a gain from [Monday], as President Barack Obama threatened to veto House Speaker John Boehner’s plan to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and reduce spending by $3 trillion.
The U.S. may have its top-level credit rating cut as politicians struggle to reach an agreement on how to increase the federal borrowing limit, a step needed to keep paying its debts, according to BlackRock Inc. and Loomis Sayles & Co. The Treasury is scheduled to sell $35 billion of five-year debt today, the second of three note auctions this week.

Hmmmm. Stocks down and bonds down. So . . .

Gold futures rose for the third straight session as the prolonged U.S. debt stalemate boosts demand for the precious metal as a haven. . . .
Gold futures for December delivery rose $4.90, or 0.3 percent, to settle at $1,619.30 an ounce at 1:48 p.m. on the Comex in New York. Earlier, the price fluctuated between gains and losses. The August contract reached a record $1,624.30 yesterday.

You should have listened to Glenn Beck!

UPDATE: And gold goes even higher:

Gold forged a record high above $1,625 per ounce (in London) on Wednesday, as investors parked their cash in the precious metal in the face of heightened concerns over a potential US default.
The price of gold struck $1,625.70 an ounce at about 0600 GMT on the London Bullion Market, beating the previous record of $1,624.07 that was hit on Monday.
“The threat of default by the world largest economy has led gold to a fresh peak above $1,625 this morning,” said FastMarkets analyst James Moore.

(Hat-tip: Don Surber.)

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Going-In Position: The Opposite Of Jim Moran’s Ideas Are Good Ones

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by Smitty (via Lee Hernly)

VA-8’s Clown Prince of Goofballs, “Gentleman” Jim Moran, can be relied upon to touch his forehead to the deck whenever required for the President:

Rep. Jim Moran sounded a similar warning Friday. The Virginia Democrat said the McConnell proposal “is not about what’s in the best interest of the country” but about “weakening the Democratic Party for the next decade.”

“We’re dealing with people who care first about making sure that President Obama is not reelected,” Moran said.

“This is a much more defining vote than many have accepted,” he added, referring to Democratic leaders.

Moran said the leaders’ desire for a quick debt-ceiling hike is understandable, as several powerful finance agencies have warned this week that the United States’ sterling triple-A credit rating is in jeopardy if Congress doesn’t act soon.

“They’re figuring we’ve got to raise the debt ceiling, so we don’t have any choice but to do it on [Republicans’] terms,” he said. “That’s why we’re at a disadvantage.”

Mr. Moran, sir: no one cares about these sad, legacy political parties. What a shame your intellectual state doesn’t permit you to see beyond partisan crap and the beltway, which does mostly encompass your district.
Jim Moran: proudly combing the ideological rigidity of Barack Obama, the intellectual flair of Joe Biden, and the BAC of a Kennedy.

Previously: