Fiscal Cliff - more Congressional blame games, less real negotiations?

There is a blame game going on. And Bohner is not what I would call, a strong negotiator. Nevertheless, Reid and Pelosi are not either. Reid made it clear during the campaign that HE does not like working with the GOP when he said if Romney won he'd not get support from the Senate Democrats. And he's proven it during the President's first term, he's tabled three or four budget proposals made by the House, because they came from the Tea Party Republicans. No debate, no negotiations, just tabled and not debated. The president's budget submitted during his first term did not recieve one vote, from GOP OR Democrats. It contained a large spending increase. So, I do agree, Obama does not seem serious about cutting spending. I also find it hard to believe that Pelosi is very concerned with serious spending cuts or that the president is serious about fixing our economy. I think he's more concerned with making the GOP the scapegoat for our ills.

There is plenty of blame to go around here--the administration hasn't actually "cut " anything--all they have said is they would decrease the expected future spending on some programs, they aren't "cutting" the base line budget at all (nothing new there), just making the upward adjustment to the base line budget a little bit shallower. Considering that our actual expenditures so far this fiscal year--at the moment we have an almost 300 billion dollar deficit for October/November, 57 billion more than the same two months last year, the odds are quite good we'll be well over a trillion again this year despite the so-called "cuts"--assuming those actually happen at all. The administration is also making noises about wanting unilateral power to raise the debt ceiling--or an infinite debt ceiling (even worse)--in 2006, he voted against raising the ceiling. In 2007, and 2008, he didn't vote on it (just declared present), but he did vote on the bank bailout (TARP)--which cost 700 billion dollars. Fortunately the banks paid it back. Trying to separate the debt ceiling from revenue doesn't work--and only congress can appropriate funds, so congress should also have control over the ceiling. Historically speaking, it should also be noted that when promises are made to make cuts, rather than actual cuts being made--the spending happens, but the cuts rarely do, no matter which party is in power. right now we are spending 4.8 billion a day or so, and more than half is borrowed money. The republicans are already in trouble, because they aren't getting the right message out to the people--they don't get the whole court of public opinion thing, and assume that people will actually take the time to read everything they can find, not rely on twitter, Facebook and the media for the "facts". They're wrong, of course. It is also interesting that they are once again allowing the POTUS to be active in legislation--far more so than previous POTUSes. The executive branch cannot, and should not legislate. Make recommendations, yes--but this my way or the highway crap that POTUSes have gotten used to needs to be addressed. The GOP have not stated what cuts, because the first rule of negotiation is, in a nutshell: he who makes the first offer loses--because once you SET the starting point, you have given control of MOVEMENT to the other party. Besides, the POTUS said, while on the campaign trail, that he would go for a "balanced" deal, looking to get 800 billion over--what was it--ten years? Funny, we have spent 300 billion in 2 MONTHS--not much of a deal. Then he upped it to getting 1.6 trillion--still over a wide span of years--but has yet to show any balance in his plan--or explain to the people the Washington version of accounting, that shows the "cuts" are not actual "cuts" at all. Nobody on either side wants to point that out. Making a pledge to spend less, but still overspend, in the future, is far from an actual cut, and it never works out as it is supposed to. Besides--at this point, unless they put in a stop gap legislation for delay, we will actually go "over the cliff", so to speak--this coming week. Because it takes TIME to write budgets, and get them passed, and then get them vetoed, or passed--about a week to ten days in general just to write them. We're already out of time. And the economy is already hurt. November numbers (the real ones, from the various government agencies that track sales and labor) were flat. During the biggest month of the year. And they are nearly flat so far this month. Almost all sectors of the economy that are tracked showed far smaller than the projected gains, and the U6, the REAL unemployment figure, is still at 13.9% aggregate, 14.4% adjusted seasonal. Check out the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm Food stamps are still going up as well--47.7 million people on food stamps as of December 7th of this year, check out the historic charts www.fns.usda.gov/pd/34SNAPmonthly.htm. none of our politicians are doing their job--they haven't for a long long time.

In one respect it is the fault of the Republicans. When they voted for tax cuts it had a sunset provisions of 10 years. However President Obama and the Democrats has also put some things in motion with the 2% Social Security tax holiday (which expires December 31, 2012. The plan that put spending cuts in effect January 1, 2013 that was developed and worked out by both the Republicans and Democrats. Lets face it the fault is with the people who see keeping their job more important that doing with is best for the country. If we go over the cliff it will be the fault of all those we elected for not doing their job which was to do what is best for We the People and the country.