House Democrats to Focus on Debt Ceiling

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

WASHINGTON - House Democratic leaders said Tuesday they will try to hold Republicans more accountable for annual federal deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars, starting with a vote on raising the $7.4 trillion debt ceiling.


Her party consigned by the election to minority status for another two years, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that when Congress returns next week for a lame duck session, Democrats will highlight how the legal limit on the national debt has risen by $2.1 trillion under the Bush administration.


"The president won't be able to blame anybody" for this and other problems, the California Democrat said. "Because the Republicans have full control."


Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, top Democrat on the Budget Committee, said Democrats want an open debate on a freestanding bill to raise the statutory debt ceiling, now at $7.4 trillion, by another $650 billion. Democrats, he said, would support an amendment enforcing a policy requiring that all new spending or tax cut measures are paid for.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041110/ap_on_go_co/democrats_debt&cid=512&ncid=2043

[TomClash]

1. And the Confederacy of Dunces is in which Party?

What a winning strategy!

A hundred million voters are up in arms about the debt ceiling.

[Gloria]

2. They'd have to explain how if affect everyday life....can they?

eom

[TomClash]

15. NO

It affects long term interest rates - take a look at the dollar's slide and the Fed willl soon raise rates.

and it affecats US security if too much debt is held by foreigners and it is caled.

[UpInArms]

8. UpInArms is up in arms about the debt ceiling .......... eom

[Nicholas_J]

3. This is the one bright spot in the Kerry loss

That every screw up, any collapse in the economy, any failures in Iraq, will not be able to be shifted onto Bill Clinton or the democrats.

Right now, the economy shows signs of softening, and the largest nations of the E.U. are talking about withdrawing investment in the U.S. becasue of the huge deficit that Bush is creating. A similar situation is what caused Bush's father to lose the election to Clinton because the deficit problem became so bad that Poppy Budsh had no choice but to raise taxes to try to deal with the deficit, but he refused to take the actions necessry to be effective. Dubya. f course is tallking about Tax simplification which is rRepublican code for raising taxes on the middle class.

That is traditional republican strategy. During the first term, they give tax cuts, usually large ones to the rich, and just enough of a taste to the middle class ov get them hooked, and then they offer a tax simplification that changes the code insuch a way that they hit large numbers of the middle class with tax increases, just enpough to raise federal income, but not enough to cause riots This is what Reagan did. In the first term, everyone got little tax cuts, thee rich got large ones, andthen second term, tax simplification. Reagan eliminated all of the tax deductions for the only kind of interest that the middle class could take, such as credit card interest, car loan interest, eliminated the deductions that the middle class could take for charitable contributions using the simple tax forms so that the overall taxes of the middle class went up because they couldnt deduct anything except mortgage interest. Dozens of new deductions were created for the rich and for corporations. which finally resulted in the kind of stuff we saw with the Enron Scandals.
Bush's answqer to the deficit problem will be programs cuts and a convoluted tax simplification policy that will add a thousand pages to the tax code. The only thing that will be simple is that they wiill probably remove so many more deductions from the middle class thatn n one will be able to file anyting other than a 1040 EZ form but the very rich.

The point they want to raise the debt ceiling to will now be the equivalent of 3/4ths of the annual GDP. This is far from the small percentage of the GDP that they claim is too small to have a long term effect on the economy.

The purpose of this is to completely dismantle the governments ability to pay for any of the new deal programs that they so desparately want to eliminate.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

5. That's right. The economy is not doing well and there is a 50/50 chance..

of another recession. It may be for the better that Kerry is not President!

[Yavin4]

7. The Differences Between The Reagan and Today is

that during the Reagan era we had a burgeoning IT sector which was creating a lot of good paying jobs. Today, we don't have that. During the Reagan era, there was no long protracted war going on that was costing us $1 billion a week.

So, if Bush wants to raise taxes on the middle class to cut the deficit, it will have to be a huge hike. A small hike just won't get it done.

[dweller]

4. just a friendly reminder

it's in the fine print.
dp

[Sara Beverley]

6. For get the debt ceiling and the deficits. Republicans have proven that

they don't matter. That's precisely what many of us believe during the Reagan administration when they used the deficit and the debt ceiling to rebuke welfare and other social programs. It was a lie then, it's a lie now. Dems are always a day late and a dollar short. Chasing the Republican tales won't get us anywhere. We were right in the 80's about it so why change now?

[MichiganVote]

9. Deficits matter to me.

Deficits plus fiscal theft from God knows where and by whom in our government. Americans should be asking, where is our money?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

13. Me too

The Repukes like to scream family values. Well massive deficits amount to a tax on your children and grandchildren.

[VegasWolf]

10. Sorry guys, I just don't think the current dem "leadership" could

get a post office named after Reagan. These clowns
better concentrate on "black box" voting if they
want to keep their jobs next time.

[gasperc]

11. good they got me e-mail

I demanded, insisted they fight this, stand together we have nothing to gain by voting with the GOP on this. The GOP offers no solutions to try and cut the deficit they simply want to "hope" that a growing economy will grow us out of the deficit. It's a farce!!!

[VegasWolf]

12. erm, growing economy, where?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

14. Haliburton's /nt.