Congress leaders reach deal to avoid government shutdown threat

[moonbladem]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats and Republicans in Congress reached a deal on Tuesday to fund federal government activities through next March and eliminate any threat of agency shutdowns that could upset voters ahead of the November 6 presidential and congressional elections

Comments

[sankaku_atama]

I still don't understand why Republicans, who have yet to fulfill the promise they made back in '10 to create jobs in even a single case, still have a chance to win anything at all, much less 'win big'.

Oh, wait, yes I do. The majority of this country is full of fucking fear-prone, sight-based, herd mentality, bigoted, ignorant, intolerant morons.

Every time someone mentions the words 'lame duck congress', I have an urge to go play Duck Hunt and somehow program every face of every congressperson on the ducks' heads.

[/ rant]

[awfulbliss]

They have a chance because unemployment 3 1/2 years into Obama's presidency is still over 8% after an $830 billion stimulus bill that promised otherwise (with lots of charts and if you didn't believe it you were totally dumb of course), among other things. Pretty simple really.

[awfulbliss]

How are you so sure? What constitutes a "total meltdown?" Most would agree that -- assuming some kind of collapse was inevitable -- TARP prevented a total meltdown, not the ARA. I don't recall much in the way of any apocalyptic scenarios if the ARA wasn't passed compared to TARP, anyway. If you mean a deepening recession, it's not really possible to know what would've happened in the absence of the stimulus. Any reasonable and serious person would acknowledge that the stimulus created some jobs and saved others, particularly in the public sector, but the stimulus was supposed to put us on track to produce thousands of jobs and grow the GDP each month, like past recovery efforts have. Surely just about anyone would concede that in that regard it has not been successful.

[awfulbliss]

Again, the issue isn't simply whether the stimulus created jobs/prevented layoffs - of course it did. If we're judging the effects of the stimulus by how many jobs it created, now matter how badly historically and at what cost, then sure, it "worked." The issue is really whether the stimulus was an effective use of funds, if it created an environment to facilitate long-term job growth, and how the recovery effort fares historically. At least, I would hope that would be a way of assessing its success. We have no way of knowing whether it prevented some kind of economic catastrophe or not (CBO said as much in a study) in the absence of any stimulus at all, unless you want to take the high estimates as gospel even if those economic models have been wrong for three years now. Hell, the CBO itself in the link you provided seems to think it's entirely possible that the difference between $0 spent and $830 billion could be .2-3% in the unemployment rate. That's...pretty terrifying to me

[brother_dour]

When consumer confidence is low (such as our current recession), too much spending isn't the problem- not enough is. The private sector won't spend anything on hiring or expansion without high consumer demand, but consumers won't spend money because they can't- or because they're afraid to. It's difficult to justify a new flat screen TV, for example, when you might be laid off in three months. When consumers aren't spending, and businesses aren't spending, then all that is left is the government.

But I'm curious to see what awfulbliss says.

[brother_dour]

It's hard to do ANYTHING meaningful when over half of Congress is not interested in doing anything but make you look incompetent. The Democrats have only performed as well as the morons across the aisle have let them perform.

And don't forget- the executive branch is THE weakest of the three. 95% of the things people blame the President (any President) for they should blame on Congress.