A conservative revolt in the House over the GOP debt ceiling plan.
Based on the article above, it doesn’t look like any plan has sufficient votes to pass, which means the federal government is going to have to figure out what it’s like to live under a budget. What a concept!
The day of reckoning looms even closer: Credit rating downgrade for the U.S. government could come as soon as Friday. Key quote:
It’s not the debt ceiling that’s triggering a potential ratings change — it’s the trajectory of debt generated by the federal government.
And this:
The problem, as [the ratings agencies] see it, is not that America can’t pay its debts next month, but that America has grown its debt to such a degree that we can’t pay them in the long run without serious restructuring of the federal government — and this administration refuses to consider it:
Then there’s this: “Petulant and Inept”
The devil is in the details,” says a Republican strategist closely involved in the debt fight. “When you’re talking about $1 trillion [over ten years], you’re talking about $100 billion a year, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be evenly distributed among the years.” Does that mean it might be loaded mostly at the end of the decade, when it might not even happen? “That’s where you get into the details,” the strategist says.
Travesty of justice: A mother faces three years in prison for jaywalking during drunk hit-and-run that killed son while the drunk driver was only sentenced to six months.
Thank the gods for climategate.
We are certainly in a far different world vis-a-vis global warming than 21 months ago. The [global warming] climatologists are, to a very large extent, being ignored. Yes, there is an IPCC coming up, and perhaps we should wait until that is over. But I will predict that no matter what hoohah comes out of it, it will not have 50% of the energy of the previous IPCCs, because governments just aren’t listening with baited breath anymore. If there is any place where the mojo counted, it was with governments. But it ain’t there any more.
From Ed Morrissey: Did Obama refuse a bipartisan deal on the debt ceiling?
Science discovers the obvious: Government agencies are routinely over-optimistic in their budget forecasts. From the abstract:
The paper studies forecasts of real growth rates and budget balances made by official government agencies among 33 countries. In general, the forecasts are found:
- to have a positive average bias
- to be more biased in booms
- to be even more biased at the 3-year horizon than at shorter horizons.
This over-optimism in official forecasts can help explain excessive budget deficits, especially the failure to run surpluses during periods of high output: if a boom is forecasted to last indefinitely, retrenchment is treated as unnecessary. Many believe that better fiscal policy can be obtained by means of rules such as ceilings for the deficit or, better yet, the structural deficit. But we also find [that] countries subject to a budget rule, in the form of euroland’s Stability and Growth Path, make official forecasts of growth and budget deficits that are even more biased and more correlated with booms than do other countries. [emphasis mine]
In related news, it is now more than 800 days since the Democratically-controlled Senate has passed or even proposed a budget, as they are required to do by law.
FAA goes into a partial shutdown and nobody notices.
Or they do, because they pay less in taxes!
Repeal it! An Obamacare provision appears to force middle-class families to either buy unaffordable healthcare or pay the penalty for going without.
I wrote “appears to force” above because the issue at hand is so complex I don’t think anyone either in or out of the Obama administration truly understands it, another indication that the healthcare law is a disaster that needs to be ceremoniously dumped, and as quickly as possible.
