(10-04-2021, 04:55 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: No. No Republican needs to vote for a reckless spending bill. This is a bloated bill made by democrats, and, if they want to pass it, they have the votes to do so. Republicans withholding their votes is their way of saying Democrats need to own this bill. If the Dems can't get their own people on board, that's entirely on them. Why do you struggle with this?

(10-04-2021, 04:55 PM)jagibelieve Wrote:

(10-04-2021, 04:07 PM)mikesez Wrote: What do we think of the debt ceiling standoff?
The President is blaming Republicans of course, and there is some basis for that because this problem is usually fixed with votes from both parties.

I just don't see why Democrats won't go ahead and pass the increase to the debt limit without Republican votes.  They get three chances at reconciliation per year, did they already use two? I think they only used one.

In Congress, everybody is a little bit to blame, but the majority party is always more to blame than the minority party.

There are a few problems with this.  At some point this needs to stop.

The "basic" problem is borrowing money in order to pay off money owed.  That's pretty much the same as not being able to pay your credit card bill, so you raise the credit limit (borrow more money) to pay it.

The second problem is that the democrats don't want to raise the debt ceiling to pay off existing debt, they also want to increase it enough to pay for their "green pipe dream" bill.  In my analogy it's like borrowing money not only to pay your credit card bill, but also to buy something else.

When you look at the claimed "$3.5T" green pipe dream bill that democrats want to push though, it's filled with massive pork.

Another problem is that the democrats are claiming that their $3.5T pipe dream bill "won't cost anything" because they want to raise taxes on pretty much everyone.  They target the "corporate tax rate" as well as "capital gains" and "estate taxes" in order to "get money from the wealthy".  All three of those targets sound good to many people, but they don't realize just how much it would hurt everyone.