What did we, the people of this country, get out of the debt deal? More debt! Here is the headline from this morning’s Drudge Report.
US debt shot up $238 billion to reach 100 percent of gross domestic project after the government’s debt ceiling was lifted, Treasury figures showed Wednesday.Treasury borrowing jumped Tuesday, the data showed, immediately after President Barack Obama signed into law an increase in the debt ceiling as the country’s spending commitments reached a breaking point and it threatened to default on its debt.The new borrowing took total public debt to $14.58 trillion, over end-2010 GDP of $14.53 trillion, and putting it in a league with highly indebted countries like Italy and Belgium.
Let’s all give thanks to Boehner and McConnell. This is what they gave us for “political expediency.” Let’s also insure their last election is the last they’ve won. Neither are fit to hold any elected or appointed public office.
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Oh, remember how the Washington crowd crowed that the jobless rate dropped last week to under 400,000. Not so. They lied again. The figures have been revised.
Weekly applications for unemployment benefits edged down 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 400,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s the lowest level in four months. The previous week’s figure was revised upward from 398,000 to 401,000.The four-week average, a less volatile figure, dropped for the fifth straight week to 407,750. That suggests there is a downward trend in layoffs.
Whoops! Just a slight accounting error. I wonder what the revised number for this week will be? Higher probably.
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The stand-off continues. What standoff? The dems continue to block the FFA funding bill. When the bill was passed in the house, it cut funding for all the past pork added by the dems, the airports in the boonies subsidies (remember Murtha Airport?) and it removed a provision that would force Delta Airlines to allow unions. Delta’s Flight Attendants have consistently rejected union efforts to unionize. Here’s an extract from an article by the Orlando Sentinel.
Part of the reason for the current impasse centers on these stopgap measures, which Congress has passed 20 times since 2007 to keep the FAA running while it works to pass a long-term FAA operating plan.
Usually, these “extensions” were “clean” – simple reauthorizations of the status quo — but this time Mica and House Republican leaders took aim at the airport subsidies in order to “force the issue” of resolving the long-term FAA operating plan, according to Mica.His Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said Wednesday that the message he received from House Speaker John Boehner was that the House would agree to another “clean” extension only if the Senate agreed to add anti-union language to the long-term FAA bill. That language would reverse a new regulation instituted by the National Mediation Board that would make it easier for unions to organize at airlines, a regulation strongly opposed by Delta Air Lines.Rather than acquiesce, Rockefeller said Democrats intended to fight it out lest they set a precedent of bowing to House Republican demands. Many liberal Democrats say their party – and President Barack Obama – already did that this week by agreeing to GOP demands that a debt-ceiling bill contain only spending cuts and no new tax revenues.“What we are really trying to do is what they [Republicans] said they are trying to do and that is ratchet up the pressure,” Rockefeller said.
Delta? Well, you see, there’s a regulation that would allow unions into businesses by a simple vote of those submitting ballots—not by a majority vote of those affected. This FAA bill blocks that rule.
I guess Boehner and McConnell aren’t involved in the FAA stalemate. If they were, they’d sell out the Delta Flight Attendants too and reinstate all the liberal pork.
When your “friends” are no different from your enemies, are they still your friends?
No.