Geithner: White House ‘Absolutely’ Willing To Go Off The Fiscal Cliff

Solve the job side as a priority. Spending comes in second.

So Obama and Geithner are willing to go over the cliff for a weeks worth of government spending and they want us to believe that it wouldn’t be their fault? They must really be counting on the public being quite stupid….but then again the majority voted for a loser.

Posted by: Jake | December 5, 2012, 7:04 pm 7:04 pm

The very small increase in taxes on the wealthiest of us means close to a trillion dollars over 10 years.

wendy wrote:”The very small increase in taxes on the wealthiest of us means close to a trillion dollars over 10 years.”
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So what do you do about the other 10 TRILLION dollars of deficit spending on those 10 years?

My husband and I believe that more ‘full time’ workers will be reduced to ‘part time’ before 2013 is over in order to head off the obamacare’tax’. It’s already happened to our middle class friends in service jobs. They’re barely making it and now their incomes have been cut. Thanks Obama!

So what do you do about the other 10 TRILLION dollars of deficit spending on those 10 years?

Posted by: Michelle Shu Jas | December 5, 2012, 8:05 pm 8:05 pm

Cut the wealthy off of all forms of social assistance, make sensible cuts and try to get more people working and paying taxes. It was the Bush economic crisis and the loss of jobs and taxes that threw his deficits into complete disaster.

wendy wrote:”The very small increase in taxes on the wealthiest of us means close to a trillion dollars over 10 years.”
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When did the commies switch to 10 year central planning? It always used to be 5 years in the old motherland.

Posted by: Michelle Shu Jas | December 5, 2012, 8:23 pm 8:23 pm and deleted by one of oBama’s little proletariat’s working the censor button tonight. You must have went to the same meeting that the MSNBC “progressives” went to at the oBama propaganda update meeting.

oBama still has his additional $1 TRILLION deficit baked into the baseline spending each year as far as the eye can see.

Posted by: Michelle Shu Jas | December 5, 2012, 9:05 pm 9:05 pm

Nope, President Obama took Bush’s 2009 $1.2 trillion deficit – and despite the economic disaster left by Bush – has cut that by $300 billion in his 2013 budget.

charlie wrote:”..has cut that by $300 billion in his 2013 budget.”
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How is it that someone with oBama’s economic and business acumen has taken so long. And just look at the hand he has been dealt in 2013 by the president from 2012.

charlie wrote:”..has cut that by $300 billion in his 2013 budget.”

Posted by: Michelle Shu Jas | December 5, 2012, 9:35 pm 9:35 pm

Yes, President Obama took Bush’s 2009 $1.2 trillion deficit – and despite the economic disaster left by Bush (millions losing their jobs, their homes, businesses going bankrupt, major banks and financial institutions defaulting, major auto companies collapsing, millions of Americans losing trillions in retirement investments, etc)– has cut that by $300 billion in his 2013 budget.

@Charlie, if you were really concerned about moving the country forward you’d work a job and pay taxes instead of wasting 16 hours a day shilling for Obama for four straight years. It’s a pathology. Get some Obamacare.

charlie wrote:”has cut that by $300 billion in his 2013 budget.”
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OK good, now what is oBama’s plan to bring all this back into balance, and when do you expect it to balance and begin to get rid of all the debt he has accumulated.

@Charlie, Obama’s tax plan was rejected by Democrats. Dems controlled Congress for 18 months. They weren’t working on stopping job outsourcing. They were working on Obamacare. They never passed a budget. Millions have dropped out of the work force since 2009. Many mass layoffs were announced after the latest election. Yet Bush is still being blamed by the lefty nutjobs.

Susan’s right. Liberalism is a mental disorder. Democrats own this economy. It’s going to get ugly next year. Obama doesn’t need you any more. He’s going to cut your benefits and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s time to eat your peas.

charlie wrote:” Without the details, it literally gives no guidance, which is the point of one of these bills.”
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But that didn’t stop the DEMOCRATS from voting and passing oBama’s takeover of the health care system, now did it.

Posted by: Michelle Shu Jas | December 5, 2012, 10:01 pm 10:01 pm

All of the Obamacare law was worked through committees and reviewed thoroughly and extensively. Big difference between that and the Republicans putting forward a phony version of Obama’s budget – well, for those with a functioning logic and knowledge not overrun by their bigotry and bias.

Mass layoffs under Bush = Economic collapse
Mass layoffs under Obama = Forward!

5% unemployment under Bush = Recession
8%+ unemployment under Obama = Job recovery

Bush debt = Unpatriotic (Obama’s words)
Obama’s much larger debt = Moving in the right direction

Obamacare was worked on behind closed doors. There was zero transparency.

Mass layoffs under Bush = Economic collapse
Mass layoffs under Obama = Forward!

Posted by: Libs are Hypocrites | December 5, 2012, 10:12 pm 10:12 pm

“Massive layoffs” under Bush = 8.5 million job lost
“Massive layoffs” under Obama = 5.3 million jobs gained back

You lose again right wingers. You can’t get anything correct.

Sorry, I have to depart you right wingers. I’ll leave you to wallow in your loss and your lies. Cheers!

charlie wrote:”All of the Obamacare law was worked through committees and reviewed thoroughly and extensively.”
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What a lie! This abomination was slapped together and passed the Senate on Christmas Eve to rush it into law before Scott Brown joined the Senate. There was nothing thorough about it. They slapped it together so fast it forgot to add covering children with pre-existing children. It was just a jumbled mess that no one could understand that hundreds of companies had to get waivers. These are well known facts for ” those with a functioning logic and knowledge not overrun by their bigotry and bias.”

The President’s plan will result in about $1.6 trillion in savings over ten years. The Republicans haven’t even been able to specify more than $300 billion. It’s another GOP con game.

fox free wrote:”The President’s plan will result in about $1.6 trillion in savings over ten years. ‘
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What does his plan do for the $10 TRILLION in deficit spending over ten years?

“Massive layoffs” under Obama = 5.3 million jobs gained back

You lose again right wingers. You can’t get anything correct.

POSTED BY: CHARLIE | DECEMBER 5, 2012, 10:16 PM 10:16 PM

Politifact debunked your Obama numbers. They’re a myth just like all of Obama’s numbers. Only unthinking sheep believe them.

” He needed his useful idiots for the election but now he’s done with you.”
POSTED BY: BILL | DECEMBER 5, 2012, 10:21 PM

That’s right Bill ! Just imagine how great everything would have been with more Romney supply side economics instead. After the last Republican economic disaster under G.W. Bush, our economy built 3 Million net new jobs over eight years. Yet the bitter Right Wing still lectures about useful idiots. LOL

That’s the blatant absurdity of the Republican position. In order to protect the tax breaks for the wealthy [their TOP priority] the GOP rejects the President’s plan, and offers an alternative that lowers deficits even LESS, and they seem to do it with a straight face.

Oh yeah, the first thought I have when I think of Obama is deficit reduction. Oh, and balanced budgets.

That’s the blatant absurdity of the Republican position. In order to protect the tax breaks for the wealthy [their TOP priority] the GOP rejects the President’s plan, and offers an alternative that lowers deficits even LESS, and they seem to do it with a straight face.

Posted by: fox free | December 5, 2012, 10:54 pm 10:54 pm

Very sad indeed.

Basic budgeting is a skill the Obama Administration lacks. The Republicans are not always right, but Obama’s fixation on increasing tax rates rather than fixing the tax code (which probably would raise taxes on the super wealthy) is inexcusable, as is his requesting Congress abdicate its role in limiting the federal debt ceiling. With Obama taking the stance he is, the little people are the only ones going to be hurting.

Basic budgeting is a skill the Obama Administration lacks.

Posted by: Accuracy Counts | December 6, 2012, 3:11 am 3:11 am

That’s your theory, but the Republicans already showed themselves incompetent – there’s no need to guess about it.

Bush came in – with surpluses given to him by Clinton – promising to eliminate the deficit and pay down the national debt. Instead he produced deficit after deficit and doubled the national debt. Republicans talk big, and fail big.

barb wrote:”Then address the larger tax reforms. That’s the plan. No need to be hasty.”
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What a lie. DEMOCRATS have NO plan to address the larger tax reform, unless of course it involves more of their favorite activity which is raising taxes on everyone. They never have, they never will.

tmferretti wrote:”The President would be better off if somehow he could start negotiations with Grover Norquist.”
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How about then we just get Grover Norquist with Richard Trumpka, George Soros, Vladimir Putin, and Valerie Jarrett in the same room to let them hash it out. oBama and Boehner can go play golf until they negotiate something.

Posted by: Barb | December 6, 2012, 3:23 am 3:23 am

Still shilling for Obama at 3:23 am while the producers you hate rest for another day of work to subsidize your freeloading lifestyle. Cute!

MICHELLE and JOE

The republicans have failed to enter the electronic age. Before, they could lie, make out of contest statements, spin and generally con the American people. In order to check them you needed a hard copy of the bill and who voted for or against it.

Now, in the electronic age, all people have to do is go to Goggle and its all there. They can’t run their con game anymore.

If you look at the sequester, the republican plan delivered to the President and the Ryan budget you’ll see there is no difference, all three will still put us over the fiscal cliff.

Posted by: tmferretti | December 6, 2012, 8:51 am 8:51 am

Sequestration was all Obama’s idea. Congress wasn’t involved at all. Politifact confirms it. Forward!

GALLUP:

U.S. Unadjusted Unemployment Shoots Back Up

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, was 7.8% for the month of November, up significantly from 7.0% for October. Gallup’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 8.3%, nearly a one-point increase over October’s rate.

Forget the polls.

The republicans need to read the history books of the great depression in the 1930s. It’s an adventure in time travel.

Every position FDR and the democrats took and every position the republicans took is exactly what positions the democrats and republicans are taking today.

The results will almost be the same. FDR was elected 4 times (President Obama would be if it wasn’t for term limits). The republicans were thrown out of the Congress, which will happen in 2014, never to return to power in 25 years.

Posted by: tmferretti | December 6, 2012, 9:30 am 9:30 am

Politifact rated President Barack Obama’s statement in his October 22nd debate that the sequester “is something that Congress has proposed” as mostly false.

Politifact’s reporting comes partially from Bob Woodward’s book The Pride of Politics. In it, Woodward shows the sequester was initially an Obama White House idea. The apparent intent was to get Republicans to negotiate cuts, something that did not happen.

The rating:

Obama said that the sequester — and the defense cuts that would result from it — was not his proposition. “It is something that Congress has proposed,” he said in the debate.

But it was Obama’s negotiating team that came up with the idea for defense cuts in 2011, though they were intended to prod Congress to come up with a better deal for reining in the deficit, not as an effort to make those cuts reality.

Obama can’t rightly say the sequester isn’t his, but he did need cooperation from Congress to get to this point. We rate the statement Mostly False.

REALITY CHECK

You fail to recognize facts as they exist.

Tell those defense workers who will lose their jobs because the republicans have drastically cut defense spending in this sequester as they do in the Ryan budget. Tell those teachers, firfighters and policeman who will be let go.

Government spending does create jobs and improves the economy. It did during the great depression, whether you want to believe it was FDRs alphabet soup of jobs programs or WWII.

It’s a law of economics, just as valid as Newton’s law of gravity; you don’t quit putting money into the economy in a recession. The FED knows this, they poured billions into the housing markets and now we’ve seen a 21% increase in home values and a 12% increase in housing starts.

The Congress needs to do their job and not make the FED do it for them.

What I ‘really don’t get’ is why there is NOT more OUTRAGE being shown to Grover Norquist and his two MAIN billionaire backers. ESPECIALLY from middle class America. As I constantly said before the election folks…YOU BETTER WAKE UP! SO, SO MANY OF YOU… JUST DO NOT HAVE A ‘CLUE’ AS TO WHAT IS GOING ON HERE. The GOP has NO CHANCE of ever being a ‘big tent’ or party for the average man…as long as these extremely wealthy jerks have control of you.

Isn’t it odd how the media keeps saying what a disaster it would be to go off the fiscal cliff while running stories about how the public will blame the Repubs thus insulating our Prezzie Barry when the only way to make sure we don’t go off the cliff would be to place the blame where it ought to be, at President Obama’s feet.
The only reason Barry is willing to go off the cliff is because he’s convinced he won’t take the blame.
Image is everything with this guy.
The media is unwittingly helping to push us off the cliff.

cnd fox wrote:” OUTRAGE being shown to Grover Norquist ”
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You get rid of George Soros and we’ll boot Norquist.

The GOP has NO CHANCE of ever being a ‘big tent’ or party for the average man…as long as these extremely wealthy jerks have control of you.

Posted by: CND FOX | December 6, 2012, 12:04 pm 12:04 pm

There are more wealthy Democrats than Republicans in Congress. Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are all multi-millionaire one-percenters. They are super wealthy elitists who spend their time with other super wealthy elitists. They have nothing in common with the “average man.”

Barb | December 6, 2012, 2:01 am —- Yeah sure, The Myth f the Clinton Surplus. Obama promised to cut the deficit in half by now. Obama has projected he will spend more than all Presidents before him COMBINED by the end of his 2nd term. I guess you are OK with that?

The Patchwork President and his administration has led (and I use the term lightly) us to a cliff. Bush was lambasted in 2008 during his recession yet Obama’s minions want to blame this on the GOP. Our seperation of powers, the 3 houses, are 2/3rds Democrat. Obama has already made his projections for his next 4 years and has projected he will spend more than ALL Presidents before him…COMBINED. You Bots seem to think that is soemhow a good thing?

JOE

If you think that cutting spending in the middle of a recession is going to help our economy you’re delusional. Explain to me exactly how these spending cuts are going to create jobs. These cuts don’t help business, something the business leaders just have just told you.

The republicans tried the same tactics they are using now; stop FDR from spending on jobs programs such as the WPA, CCC and TVA. Finally WWII came along and they were forced to spend.

You said: “As for teachers, firefighters, and policemen, those are only three job types out of thousands in the world” This is the only thing you got right in your whole post. Yes they are only three types, but any job puts money in people’s pockets and therefore into the economy.

Only 13% of Americans think the deficit is the issue. Their instincts are right. They keep telling you republicans it’s all about “Jobs” but you fail to listen.

How ’bout we just take the administration and congress to a near by cliff and give them a collective shove. —-When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.-Thomas Jefferson

and we’ll boot Norquist——————-the Republicans wimps in the House are obviously convinced that will go the other way ’round……LOL!

tmferretti wrote:”Yes they are only three types, but any job puts money in people’s pockets and therefore into the economy.”
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So the left wing loons want to stimulate the economy by taking massive amounts of money OUT of the economy.

Obama has projected he will add more to the deficit than all other Presidents before him combined——————–that bogus claim has been shot down by every fact-checker out there. Bush added more new spending than Obama has. Too much exposure to Fox has been show to cloud reality

fox free | December 6, 2012, 12:42 pm —- Obama has projected he will add more to the deficit than all other Presidents before him combined. According to the treasury, if Obama’s numbers remain the same, this will become a fact. An inconvenient fact to be sure. Now, if you want to talk about new spending (a completely different subject), we can start with the stimulus, Obamacare, bailout losses, etc. I can’t wait to see the upcoming debt ceiling talks, because evenif Obama doesn’t give in here, he will have to give in sooner or later. The GOP has compromised with closing loopholes, where’s Obama’s compromise now?

Sorry, but if you ask the Treasury, they don’t attribute all the deficit spending to Obama of course. Large deficits were created by the economic downturn for instance, and the public still largely blames Bush and the GOP for that….and correctly so.

Soros just controls his minstrel

The GOP has compromised with closing loopholes, where’s Obama’s compromise now?—————–the GOP has not specified a single loophole they will close. It’s just another con game.

fox free | December 6, 2012, 12:52 pm – It’s called “negotiations”, something Obama seems to want to do from his vacation spot in Hawaii. The GOP has offered their compromise, time for Obama, Reid and Pelosi to man up.

The countries who adopted austerity instead of stimulus suffered much slower economic growth.

Posted by: fox free | December 6, 2012, 12:45 pm 12:45 pm

Unsustainable debt has consequences. Duh. People who lost their homes to foreclosure learned that lesson well when their credit ran out. It was painful but they survived. You will too. You’ll just have to learn to live on less. It’s the new normal. Anybody who didn’t start preparing for this reality four years ago is a fool. Obama and Pelosi have been publicly warning us since 2009 that the tipping point was on its way. They just didn’t know exactly when. Well, it’s almost here. Math always wins. It’s time to eat our peas.

Forward!

Obama’s latest demand — the ability to approve automatic increases in the debt ceiling — has only complicated the already-shaky talks. And Republican lawmakers this week sought to prove that the provision wouldn’t even clear the Democrat-controlled Senate.
As of Wednesday evening, 43 senators had signed a letter to Obama opposing the debt-limit proposal. That represents enough votes to block the measure from passing.
“The Congress is ready to work with you as equal partners in addressing the coming fiscal cliff,” Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and 42 other senators wrote. “We agree that Washington must rein in the debt, which is one reason we strongly oppose your proposal to eliminate Congress’s role in establishing a federal debt limit.”
They continued: “We believe that preserving Congress’s role in setting the debt limit is necessary to encourage deficit reduction and uphold our constitutional tradition of legislative control over borrowing.”

The Republican ‘compromise’ is a joke. They’ve barely come up with $300 billion in savings. The President’s plan will save $1.6 trillion over ten years.

You’re biting on the MSNBC lies they’ve thrown the idiot nation as bait. Put down the Koolaide FOXFREE

fox free | December 6, 2012, 1:30 pm — The POTUS who has had record deficits over any other is hardly going to make me believe he will save that much. How far off was he with his signature Obamacare again? You are a minion, nothing more.

I don’t consider calling people retired an insult even though I’m not. Maybe that’s why you guys lost Florida too.

Posted by: fox free | December 6, 2012, 1:33 pm 1:33 pm

The right wingers called people names and insulted people all through the run ups to both Obama elections, thinking somehow this was an intelligent and useful tactic. Losers.

Posted by: Mark | December 6, 2012, 2:03 pm 2:03 pm

Sad, but true.

I don’t consider calling people retired an insult even though I’m not. Maybe that’s why you guys lost Florida too.

Posted by: fox free | December 6, 2012, 1:33 pm 1:33 pm

The right wingers called people names and insulted people all through the run ups to both Obama elections, thinking somehow this was an intelligent and useful tactic. Losers.

Posted by: Mark | December 6, 2012, 2:03 pm 2:03 pm

That’s the level of politics they aspire to – and they lose.

I’m less worried about individuals voicing their independent positions than the incompetent leaders we have to choose between to make decisions for our collective citizenary. But, do as you like. …worry about someone elses right to by a jerk individually.
And, for the record, name calling and bigotary is not a political spectrum exclusionary issue. Just as many racist and rude liberals exist in our world.