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Sam Harris
$19.74
By Susan Zakin
$21
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Is the president a bad negotiator, or did he get the deal he wanted all along, as Rep. Dennis Kucinich suggests? Also on this week’s Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: the phony Social Security scare, teaching Shakespeare in Iraq and more. Update: Full transcript.
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Office of the Speaker of the House
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By Richard Reeves — Whatever they tell us, the men and women who run the country are governing for themselves and by themselves.
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AP / Richard Drew
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By Robert Scheer — The die has been cast. Obama’s deal to raise the debt ceiling is a disaster in the making.
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U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Brendan Stephens
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By Amy Goodman — The history of the U.S. national debt is inexorably tied to its many wars. The resolution this week of the so-called debt ceiling crisis is no different.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By William Pfaff — Few Americans know, or much care, about the opinions foreigners hold of the United States. This was displayed during the ignorant and solipsistic debate over when or whether the United States will pay its debts.
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President Obama spoke to the nation just after the Senate passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling and shortly before he signed it into law.
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AP via YouTube
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The U.S. Senate passed the debt deal just after noon Tuesday, avoiding a government default that was less than 12 hours away. (more)
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We were told to expect some resistance in the House to the debt ceiling compromise that would cut trillions from the budget, but Republicans in the lower chamber, helped by half the Democratic caucus (including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords), had no trouble passing the bill. (more)
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — It’s supremely galling. It’s unbalanced, unfair and mostly unwise. For President Obama and the Democratic Party, it’s a comprehensive defeat. But it’s not the end of the world.
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Flickr / Borya
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On Sunday, President Obama and members of the U.S. Congress agreed to cut at least $2.4 trillion from federal spending over the next 10 years, some of which will come from programs that benefit retired Americans. (more)
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U.S. Navy / Gus Pasquarella
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Here’s one way to feel worse about the debt ceiling deal announced by the president Sunday night: Read Paul Krugman’s column. The Nobel Prize-winning economist is about as harsh in his assessment of the deal as can be, saying it “will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.”
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White House / Pete Souza
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In an editorial published shortly after the announcement of a new deal to raise the debt ceiling, The New York Times calls the agreement a “nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists.”
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White House / Pete Souza
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Republican and Democratic leaders hammered out a deal Sunday to raise the debt ceiling but, as details emerge, it seems that the compromise will be so unpopular in Congress that members from both parties will have to come together to pass it. (more)
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RJ Matson, Cagle Cartoons, Roll Call —
Posted on Jul 31, 2011
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With Tuesday’s default deadline looming, time is running out. Is there a chance for compromise on the debt ceiling impasse?
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White House / Pete Souza
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Less than two hours after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a Republican-drafted debt plan Friday evening, the Senate voted to freeze the legislation in hopes that a better deal will be worked out.
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Kevin Dooley (CC-BY)
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By Joe Conason — A downgrading of U.S. Treasury securities will mean enormous and completely unnecessary increases in our interest payments to the nation’s largest creditor—and our most important competitor in the international arena.
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House Speaker's Office
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By Eugene Robinson — Conservatives are on a winning streak because they have a Big Idea that serves as an animating, motivating, unifying force. It happens to be a very bad idea, but it’s better than nothing—which, sadly, is what progressives have.
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The debt ceiling drama has gone on so long that the issue has reached a critical cultural benchmark: A rap video urging Washington to take action on the matter has gone viral.
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Bob Englehart, Cagle Cartoons, The Hartford Courant —
Posted on Jul 27, 2011
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — What the country yearns for is moderation. What we hear about is the political center. But centrism has become the enemy of moderation.
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Flickr / drona
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In the mind of New York Times wise man David Brooks, President Obama and the congressmen he’s negotiating with are equally to blame for the diplomatic trip and fall in last week’s federal deficit talks. (more)
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Flickr / zoonabar (CC-BY-SA)
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On Wall Street, a small number of investors are betting $4.8 billion that the U.S. government will fail to raise the debt ceiling in the next week and, subsequently, will default on its $14 trillion debt.
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We’re all about in-depth coverage, but when it comes to political grandstanding, better to just skip to the good stuff. Here are two minutes or so each from the president and House speaker’s Monday debt ceiling speeches (during which John Boehner said it’s “not going to happen.”)
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Flickr / doug88888
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Over the past century, America’s rich made their millions and billions through the use of public assets shared by everyone. By virtue of those profits, they have not only a moral, but a rational obligation to pay more for the upkeep of public services. (more)
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Flickr / mikoosij
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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Friday gave voice to the frustration of millions of American liberals who feel betrayed by President Obama’s eagerness to abandon key social welfare programs established and preserved by his Democratic predecessors. (more)
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Most Americans care more about jobs and the economy than debt, which is why Mitt Romney is campaigning on those issues while President Obama is caught up in the tea party’s priorities.
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On this week’s “Left, Right & Center”: Getting too close to the debt deadline, Greek insolvency and what’s with these credit rating companies throwing their weight around?
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By Eugene Robinson — There are basically two ways to reduce the debt as a percentage of GDP: Cut government spending or make the economy grow. The problem is that doing more of one means doing less of the other.
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Cliff (CC-BY)
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Senate Democrats have noticed that the president is dealing directly with House Republicans to reach a debt ceiling deal, one that may include trillions in cuts to Social Security and Medicare without any tax increases, and they’re not happy.
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AP / Paul Beaty
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By Bill Boyarsky — There is a deep-rooted wrongheadedness about the Republicans as they drag the country toward fiscal disaster. Those afflicted with this harmful thinking range from tea party extremists like Michele Bachmann to pundits such as Peggy Noonan.
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By Joe Conason — Even the most extreme Republican partisans in the Senate seem to realize that their House colleagues, seized by some combination of ideology, madness and pig ignorance, are propelling the country and the world toward economic chaos.
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Flickr / Senator Mark Warner (CC-BY)
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President Obama announced his support Tuesday for a deficit-reduction plan drafted by a bipartisan Senate group known as the “Gang of Six.” The lawmakers’ proposal promises to reduce the deficit by $3.7 trillion.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The House Republican strategy to link a normally routine increase in the nation’s debt limit with a crusade to slash spending has already had a high cost, threatening the nation’s credit rating and making the United States look dysfunctional and incompetent to the rest of the world.
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Another week, another standoff on Capitol Hill over the ever-pressing debt ceiling issue, with President Obama warning Friday of impending economic “Armageddon” if things don’t get sorted out soon. So what’s the good news?
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By Joe Conason — At long last, President Obama seems to have run out of patience with the truculent Republicans who have rejected all of his overtures for a budget deal—just as Moody’s and other economic authorities again warned of the potentially catastrophic consequences of a debt default.
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By Eugene Robinson — President Obama has had it up to here with the preening and posturing of Republican “negotiators” who won’t negotiate. Who could blame him?
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AP / Susan Walsh
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By Bill Boyarsky — Rather than trying to conciliate the Republicans, Obama ought to speak out against them. The truth is that Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell don’t want to work with him.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The wounded are especially dangerous fighters. President Obama now occupies the high ground in the debt ceiling debate, having called the Republicans’ bluff on the debt. He showed that deficit reduction is not now, and never has been, the GOP’s priority. He dare not get overconfident.
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AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Robert Scheer — These threatened programs are not government handouts to a privileged class, like defense contractors and bailed-out bankers, who do feel eminently entitled to pig out at the federal trough.
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By Eugene Robinson — The truth is that Democrats have made clear they are open to a compromise deal on budget cuts and revenue increases. Republicans have made clear they are not.
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By Joe Conason — Suddenly Republican leaders in Congress, after months of staring down the Democrats over a potentially disastrous debt default, began blinking so fast that they might have been signaling in Morse code.
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Flickr / SpeakerBoehner
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No visible progress was made during deficit talks Sunday in which President Barack Obama failed to persuade House Republicans to support $4 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. (more)
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RJ Matson, Cagle Cartoons, The St. Louis Post Dispatch —
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RJ Matson, Cagle Cartoons, Roll Call —
Posted on Jul 10, 2011
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Flickr / SpeakerBoehner
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On Saturday evening, Speaker of the House John Boehner accepted less than he previously asked for in a deficit reduction plan. He slashed the GOP demand for total cuts from $4 trillion to, roughly, the $2 trillion suggested by the White House, and he tentatively agreed to some form of tax increase. (more)
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