10:10 pm ET
Apr 7, 2011

Budget Battle

Reid, Boehner: No Deal Yet

    • Where winning the next election is the only thing, the Teapublicans believe that destroying the economy hurts Obama. Republicans will force a shutdown , kill the recovery with excessive and needless cuts. BUT the RICH will get $400 BILLION dollars in tax cuts no matter what

    • The RICH will get $400 BILLION dollars in tax cuts PER YEAR no matter what

    • And if I here one more person say they are worried about all the spending I'm gonna be sick! You only cared when a Black Man named Obama had control of the money. Bush, not a peep, Clinton, not a peep, Reagan, not a peep. What you all were sleeping for over 2 decades and then decided to say wait a minute we're spending too much.

    • The founding fathers made compromises. Governing is ALWAYS about making compromises. The new GOP has convinced themselves that they and they alone know what's best for this country, and that's to take us back to the era of the "robber barons". Governing requires rational and logical action. It's irrational to address deficits by dealing with only one side of the equation, spending, and not addressing revenues (taxes). Revenue, as a percentage of GDP, is the lowest in 60 years and we're puzzled about why there's a deficit?

    • Rachel Maddow asked if the GOP really wants a government shutdown on her show tonight:

    • @Anonymous
      There was a government shutdown during the Clinton administration. And spending was an issue. It's not about race. The size of the government has increased but with real growth in Bush administration (creation of Homeland Security) when I was an intern. I have been a federal employee for 10 years and seen the waste first hand. The irony is that, as an employee, you have to write a justification to get office supplies but upper management will award a contract for pay $600 for a desk phone (an exaggeration but you get my point). While I am willing to make sacrifices personally to make our country better, I hope that federal employees don't become the scapegoat for this administration's spending problems.

    • The continuing threats of government shutdowns have almost the same impact on consumer confidence as the real thing. The democrats and obama would clearly be to blame for a shutdown.

      People are unhappy with obama and the democrats given the high unemployment rate (8.8%), the weak housing market, the underwater mortgages, the high gas prices ($3.58+/- per gallon), the rising cost of food, the unauthorized war with Libya, the lack of action to combat wall street corruption, and other broken promises. Government shutdowns and layoffs (and the threat of shutdowns and layoffs) will continue to cause pessimism for the foreseeable futur

    • so far there are only 4 comments - all blaiming conservatists for not passing the budget. I am not a Republican nor a Democrat. Commong sense telse me that we cannot keep spending with NOTHING to back it up. I am not willing to spend my hard e.arned money to pay for illegals to have education & medical coverage; I am not willing to spend my money to sponsor other nation's economies. I DO NOT WANT ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT OR ECOMONY. I want to be able to reap the benefits on MY hard work.

    • Politics is showbiz for ugly people. Where are the Hollywood/Upper West Side free-with-their-pocketbooks-when-the-Black Panthers-show up-crowd when you need them?

    • Goes to show that Obama is incapable of Kicking Butt. Butthead in Chief, thanks for nothing.

    • The theatre of the absurd.

    • I'm too tired of the rep's unceasing hostage taking, government shutdown this time around, aimed at pay for the previous hostage taking.

      Are they listening people ?
      The vast majority of public back upgraded health care package, renewable policy, instead of roll-back of them.

    • Oh, please, Washington, spare us your phony theatrics. How many times are we supposed to buy into this act? Trumpet the disaster at hand in the newspaper for days. Shout it from the televisons and radios. Oh, how will we stop the ticking of this deadly time bomb! Please, spare the public your dime novel theatrics and perils straight out of a Hollywood cliffhanger. Shut down. Why, the whole thing could SHUT DOWN! How many times in the past few years have we had to suffer this same Grand Guignol scenerio? How many times do we have to go through your faux "back against the wall" posing. You know you will pass this spending bill at the expense of the average working American, must we also swallow it with your melodramic gesturing and trumped up propaganda. "It had to be done!" Obama will proclaim. Shut down averted! Once again Republicans and Democrats lower their gloves to stave off disaster - oh, and how boths sides will bemoan the cost to them, when it will be the Average Joe who will feel the real pain. But they expect us to stand up and cheer the noble sacrifices they made in their principles. Huzzah, thank you congress. Three cheers, thank you Senate!! Save by the bell, rescued at the last minute! The great dog and pony show again paraded out to placate the masses. But one day, the plot will wear thin and the audience will boo the dime players for their tireless repetition. Shame on all the cast (and, yes, you Mr. President) for this infuriating rerun of the Great Washington Hand Wringing Show!

    • Meanwhile in Iraq…

      After midnight, Marines, and soldiers will get their LAST PAYCHECK.

      And the right calls that PATRIOTISM and PRINCIPLE.

      Only a lowdown COWARD would call it that.

    • If this happens, the middle, and that includes the military, will turn against the Tea Party and strip it of its mantle of REAL PATRIOTS.

      And then they become nothing but Glen Beck clones.

      It will happen. Any party that runs on pure rage not only dissipates but sinks into irrational behavior.

      Even Rand Paul is distancing himself from this gaggle of nuts.

    • Today’s Homework:Look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average before 1982 and after 1982. Then ask yourself what happened.

      Easier Said…: I want to be able to reap the benefits on MY hard work.

      Harder than you think: Well if you’re in the private sector working for someone else then that is going to be a little difficult with the way things currently are. People only reap the leftovers of their hard work. The benefits go to employers and shame on you for wanting more for you labor. Just be grateful if you have a job.

      Wait…what?:Truth is that in the past 100 years we have gone from self-sufficient individuals of an agrarian society to corporate-dependent individuals of the information age. Most people in the U.S. have never known a life where a job was an alternative way of sustaining oneself.

      Aim for your foot and pull the trigger: A business has an obligation to make profit for the owners and stockholders…NOT the employees. Aside from obtaining more revenue, a business must strive to maintain a low overhead. Over the years, business’ profit margins have increased as they have lowered their employment costs…what the working class refers to as salary and benefits. So if you ever lose a job, benefits or income because your employer mismanaged, outsourced or just cutback, take comfort in the fact that by devaluing your labor, someone was made a little richer :-)

      Corporations lowering overhead and generating profit is also why we have 401k plans instead of pensions. If you work private sector then you pay into your 401k. Your employer may offer the fringe benefit of matching. A pension legally bound an employer to and agreement, whereas matching a 401k can disappear when the profits are lower than desired.

      Your 401k retirement money is taken and reinvested into “the Market”. Aside from the profit of goods and services, an employer may also obtain funds via investments. This investment money comes from other 401k plans. A substantial portion of the private sector salaries are paid with other people’s retirement funds.

      Current 401k style retirement plans place all of the risk on the investor, whereas people who primarily live off their investments have secured investments.

      People only reap the leftover of their hard work. The benefits go to employers.

    • Sickening to note that Obama now sees the government as necessary to EVERYTHING!. Small business, home ownership, vacations, big business, and on and on. What a horrible world view he has. That the government has intruded into every facet of our economic and personal lives, so that he can characterize the threatened shutdown as he does, is a national tragedy.
      GO TEA PARTY! Rid us of the looters and moochers.
      By the way, the sticking point is on abortion and specifically taxpayer money going to the eugenicist abortionists over at Planned Parenthood.

    • Not sure what the government has done for me that I couldn't get by without for awhile.

    • The Democrats got us into this mess.
      They controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency. They refused to complete their obligation to pass this budget as of Sept. 2010!!
      Well, now we pay the piper. Each side should give a little. Here's how the Republicans can give. Planned Parenthood's hundred millions should include an audit to ensure that they are actually delivering women's health services and not just abortions, whose ffunding is illegal under US law. If you get $100 million and spend $90 million for abortionos, you'd better show you have over $90 million in other income. If you only have $50 million in other income, or even 80, you're funding abortions with US taxpayer money, and have to give it all back. So hello PP, or good-bye PP. Let's just get it done.

      Look at this way, it must be important, if the Dems are willing to shut down the government -- yes the Dems -- because they want to keep the flow into abortion mills!!
      If the Dems refuse a deal like that, they're on the hook. btw 'abortion' includes late-term abortion!!

    • Thanks to God for the United States Constitution and for John Boehner.

      We are still a rare and fortunate People, in our ability to shut down our own Government; and Boehner deserves praise for exerting that People Power peacefully in Washington.

      I am surprised that Obama is willing to put 800,000 jobs on the line for the sake of Planned Parenthood.

      In contrast to his apparent pivot to the center-right, that position seems extremely leftist to me; and it won't be popular in this center right nation.

      How about shaving some defense, in conjunction with the PP cuts, bringing total cuts to $39 Billion?

      Reasonable compromise?

    • "I want to reiterate to people why this is so important. We’re now less than 30 hours away from the government shutting down." - Obama

      Obama's tone and language is inappropriate. The People already know this. In fact, the People are the ones making it happen, through their elected representatives.

      Obama is learning that his election was not a paradigm shift to the left. Rather, it was just a temporary outburst of anti-war sentiments. In the long haul, America is still a decidedly center-right nation!

    • This is a really unfortunate thing for the federal government employees. I know most of us, myself included, do not like big government, but the fact of the matter is that there are some things that are valuable to society that everyone needs and everyone profits tremendously by having, but nobody in society wants to pay the bill for. Military, transportation systems, corrections, energy, courts, education etc. are all important public goods that require public sector employees and often rely on significant federal funding.

      PLANNED PARENTHOOD DOES NOT BELONG ON THIS LIST. Let Bill Gates and other hard core eugenicists who want to run the world fund it as part of their "charity" of death and global depopulation.

      This is insanity to have soldiers and marines about to be involved with four wars (including the one at the border with Mexico) without receiving their pay! This is the BIGGEST atrocity of them all.

      Think about the engineering talent that will be lost from the public sector. Many of these people in federal jobs have PhD's and PE registration. They can go anywhere they want to but CHOOSE to work for the good of society. Isn't it alarming that about one year after the Nashville flood, the people who handled the technical aspects of making sure the floodwaters damaged as little as possible (US Army Corps of Engineers) are now mostly non-essential employees?

      And how about all these folks in private industry who depend upon government authorizations? And the people who supply them? This is devastating for our nation's economy.

      Though I'm not a federal employee, I really have to side with the federal employees on this one. They have dedicated their careers to serving we the people, but the reward for their loyalty is to be cut to the bone by we the people. When the banks were in trouble because of their own doing, they got bailouts. When the majority of federal employees did everything right, they are now thrown under the bus.

      For those of you who think that federal employees do nothing but soak up tax dollars, think again. Most of them provide you with services you take for granted. If this shutdown goes on long enough, you'll get it by the end.

      For those of you who want to complain that they make too much money, just consider the education and skills it took to land most of those jobs. The salary may well be higher than the nation's average, but so is the educational and professional achievement of many of those employees, typically those in the GS-11 through GS-15 range. I believe in a frugal and limited government, but when people serve we the people, we have to pay the bills.

      The federal government needs to get its head out of its posterior. Both sides are in the wrong here. Yes, we need a more sensible budget, and yes Planned Parenthood should be defunded, but this is insanity. We need to be AUDITING THE FED and throwing the real perps (Bernanke, Volker, Greenspan) in prison. Then we need to recover what belongs to WE THE PEOPLE. We don't need this shutdown business. It's taking it out on the wrong people.

      END THE FED! IT'S WHY WE ARE IN THIS MESS! Government of the people by the bankers and for the bankers and for nobody else must cease. TYRANNY MUST STOP.

      As for Chuck Schumer, when you want to say that we have the flea wagging the tail of the dog, you better remember that the flea is the one listening to the majority of Americans right now.

      The answer to 1984 is 1776.

    • Why, who woulda seen this coming?

      Officials Tout Last-Minute Government Shutdown Deal
      ABC News - Michael S. James, Huma Khan - ‎52 minutes ago‎
      Barely more than an hour before a midnight deadline, officials announced a deal to avert a government shutdown. "We will cut $78.5 billion below the president's 2011 budget proposal, and we have reached an agreement on the policy riders," House Speaker ...

    • I’m still trying to get mine that focused. I guess it’s all a work in progress. http://www.pursehandbag.org

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