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2023-05-29 Home Front: Politix

[HotAir] Utterly predictable, although it still came about 24 hours later than I expected. On a holiday weekend when people are paying the least attention, Joe Biden finally cut a deal with Kevin McCarthy to raise the debt ceiling and end a game of chicken that Biden and Democrats lost months ago. House Republicans didn’t get everything they wanted, but Biden and the Democrats didn’t get anything they wanted except to limit the embarrassment.

President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Saturday reached an agreement in principle to raise the debt limit for two years while cutting and capping some government spending over the same period, a breakthrough after a marathon set of crisis talks that has brought the nation within days of its first default in history. ...
Kick the can down the road for 2 more years.
The deal would raise the borrowing limit, which is currently $31.4 trillion, for two years — enough to get past the next presidential election.

According to a person familiar with the agreement, it also would impose new work requirements for some recipients of government aid, including food stamps and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. It would place new limits on how long certain recipients of food stamps — people under the age of 54, who do not have children — could benefit from the program. But it also would expand food stamp access for veterans and the homeless, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the package.

The tentative deal also claws back some unspent money from a previous pandemic relief bill, and reduces by $10 billion — to $70 billion from $80 billion — new enforcement funding for the I.R.S. to crack down on tax cheats. It includes measures meant to speed environmental reviews of certain energy projects. And it includes an enforcement measure, meant to avert a government shutdown later this year, that would reduce funding caps for the military and veterans and Congress does not pass into law all 12 regularly scheduled appropriations bills by the end of the year.

Posted by Deacon Blues 2023-05-29 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11131 views ] Top

#1 ...It ain't much of a deal. I can't support it at all.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2023-05-29 06:52|| 2023-05-29 06:52|| Front Page Top

#2 The Stupid Party isn't crafty enough to play this to the vote and expect it not to pass, then go back to Biden and say we need more concessions.

Posted by Procopius2k 2023-05-29 08:35|| 2023-05-29 08:35|| Front Page Top

#3 There's equal amounts of screeching from each end of the political spectrum.

That tells me it's all uniparty kabuki.

Posted by M. Murcek 2023-05-29 08:40|| 2023-05-29 08:40|| Front Page Top

#4 Guess it was just way too much to ask for a genuinely balanced budget.

Posted by Raj 2023-05-29 10:25|| 2023-05-29 10:25|| Front Page Top

#5 ^ A US with a balanced budget and its National Debt under control would be more dangerous to the rest of the world than anything the Pentagone could come up with.

That's why it isn't happening.

Posted by M. Murcek 2023-05-29 10:40|| 2023-05-29 10:40|| Front Page Top

#6 A distant memory: Gramm-Rudman

...officially the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, U.S. budget deficit reduction measure. The law provided for automatic spending cuts to take effect if the president and Congress failed to reach established targets; the U.S. comptroller general was given the right to order spending cuts. Because the automatic cuts were declared unconstitutional, a revised version of the act was passed in 1987; it failed to result in reduced deficits. A 1990 revision of the act changed its focus from deficit reduction to spending control.

"spending control". That made my morning.

Link

Posted by DooDahMan 2023-05-29 11:01|| 2023-05-29 11:01|| Front Page Top

#7 The Budget Control Act of 2011 was a similar attempt. This act is somewhat famous for giving the word 'sequester' some panache.

The BCA2011 was amended by the Bipartisen Budget Act of 2013 which loosened the caps on spending and after the loosened caps were broken, partly by Republicans who wanted more Defense spending, the whole thing pretty much became a dead letter.

This is why I am not so much in favor of a strict budget control act - namely because it can not be maintained.

Posted by lord garth 2023-05-29 18:31|| 2023-05-29 18:31|| Front Page Top

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