Christina Romer was the best of a bad lot...and she proved it by refusing to go down with a sinking ship.

Haha.... I like this Bennen guy.... totally berates Boner....

I truely think that Boner and the repugs are way out of their league... he builds up an excitement for his speech on how to help the Americans (economically) in these troubled times and all he came muster is that "Obama needs to fire his staff" - I mean, how ludicrous is that?

DUDE, BONER, if you want to talk about the economy and get the press to cover you...why talk about partisan bickering? Boner you need to grow a pair of ballz and discuss true solutions of the GOP. You accomplished absolutely nothing today.

I can imagine the idiot being speaker of the house - TOTALLY disastrous. Please America reconsider the path you are on... with these November elections. if you dont like democrats, remember, it's still the lesser of two evils (the only option you have). If you don't like how the democrats are trying to pull the economy our of a recession, the only other alternative is to give the keys to the repubs and we know what they'll do with it i.e. drive us deeper into the ditch by

• Lowering taxes for the rich,
• Cutting Social Security
• Cutting Medicare
• Defund education
• deregulate financial industry
• Get in bed with the oil industry (i.e. with Iran/Saudis)
• Stop progress on achieving energy independence
• And on yes, buy more Bibles, hate islam, hate mexicans, hate gays, hate blacks, hate a lot more stuff

Hey all, sorry to keep posting this I'm hoping Sponge Joe and halperinze's might read this..never mind they are both dopes of nope after I read Spark Halprinze's peice in Time this AM.

Myth: Social Security is going broke.

Reality: There is no Social Security crisis. By 2023, Social Security will have a $4.3 trillion surplus (yes, trillion with a 'T'). It can pay out all scheduled benefits for the next quarter-century with no changes whatsoever.¹ After 2037, it'll still be able to pay out 75% of scheduled benefits--and again, that's without any changes. The program started preparing for the Baby Boomers retirement decades ago.² Anyone who insists Social Security is broke probably wants to break it themselves.

Myth: We have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.

Reality: This is a red-herring to trick you into agreeing to benefit cuts. Retirees are living about the same amount of time as they were in the 1930s. The reason average life expectancy is higher is mostly because many fewer people die as children than did 70 years ago.³ What's more, what gains there have been are distributed very unevenly--since 1972, life expectancy increased by 6.5 years for workers in the top half of the income brackets, but by less than 2 years for those in the bottom half.⁴ But those intent on cutting Social Security love this argument because raising the retirement age is the same as an across-the-board benefit cut.

Myth: Benefit cuts are the only way to fix Social Security.

Reality: Social Security doesn't need to be fixed. But if we want to strengthen it, here's a better way: Make the rich pay their fair share. If the very rich paid taxes on all of their income, Social Security would be sustainable for decades to come.⁵ Right now, high earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,000 of their income.⁶ But conservatives insist benefit cuts are the only way because they want to protect the super-rich from paying their fair share.

Myth: The Social Security Trust Fund has been raided and is full of IOUs

Reality: Not even close to true. The Social Security Trust Fund isn't full of IOUs, it's full of U.S. Treasury Bonds. And those bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.⁷ The reason Social Security holds only treasury bonds is the same reason many Americans do: The federal government has never missed a single interest payment on its debts. President Bush wanted to put Social Security funds in the stock market--which would have been disastrous--but luckily, he failed. So the trillions of dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund, which are separate from the regular budget, are as safe as can be.

Myth: Social Security adds to the deficit

Reality: It's not just wrong -- it's impossible! By law, Social Security funds are separate from the budget, and it must pay its own way. That means that Social Security can't add one penny to the deficit.¹

Sources:

1."To Deficit Hawks: We the People Know Best on Social Security" New Deal 2.0, June 14, 2010
http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/06/14/to-defict-hawks-we-the-people-know-best-on-social-security-12290/

2. "The Straight Facts on Social Security" Economic Opportunity Institute, September 2009
http://www.eoionline.org/retirement_security/fact_sheets/StraightFactsSocialSecurity-Sep09.pdf

3. "Social Security and the Age of Retirement"Center for Economic and Policy Research, June 2010
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/social-security-and-the-age-of-retirement/

4. "More on raising the retirement age" Ezra Klein, Washington Post, July 8, 2010
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/more_on_raising_the_retirement.html

5. "Social Security is sustainable" Economic and Policy Institute, May 27, 2010
http://www.epi.org/analysis_and_opinion/entry/social_security_is_sustainable/

6. "Maximum wage contribution and the amount for a credit in 2010." Social Security Administration, April 23, 2010
http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/240

7. "Trust Fund FAQs" Social Security Administration, February 18, 2010
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/fundFAQ.html

8. "To Deficit Hawks: We the People Know Best on Social Security" New Deal 2.0, June 14, 2010
http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/06/14/to-defict-hawks-we-the-people-know-best-on-social-security-12290/

I can't seem to find it within my self to take anything seriously... when a man has the nick name " Babb's " !

How about we just hate you instead!!!

Boehner is a bone head.

Confirmation bias:

The tendency to seek out and acknowledge evidence that confirms your beliefs while ignoring evidence that runs counter to them.

Focus on reasons that the evidence may be misleading.

When gathering evidence about a problem, look first for information that runs counter to your intuition. This information needs to be scrutinized more closely than supporting evidence.

This is what to expect from the repugs. No ideas, No leadership, No economic plans, No class. We the people are getting very tired of nothing but attacks. Fox will keep stoking the fires till they burn down the GOP. The Grand old party is over. We can see you.

Again 8 years of getting into this mess and they want waht in 2 years.......... LOL!!! You people are incredible. With no help from the repugs you get that purple stuff that people drink when they want to just DIE. You also get nothing from the repugs but hate filled lies and more of the same agenda that got us where we are today. Yes that it the good old boys club, just say no and it will get fixed.

Incredibel, just incredible.. tsk, tsk, now you want to stop and take your ball and go home. I mean 8 years and we get to drink the cool-aid :-)

I like Boehner-would make a good President! Warren Hunt

The more Congressman Boehner opens his lying mouth the better for Democrats. The Democrats should take those lies and add them to their campaigns pounding home the message. That would be especially true in Ohio.

The Tea Party movement was born on Feb. 19 with a now-famous rant by second-string CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli, who called for a 'Chicago Tea Party' in protest of President Barack Obama's plans to help distressed American homeowners. Santelli’s call blazed through the blogosphere, greased along by a number of FreedomWorks-funded blogs, propelling him to the status of a 21st century Samuel Adams -- a leader and symbol of disenfranchised Americans suffering under big-government oppression and mismanagement of the economy. That same day, a nationwide 'Tea Party' protest movement mysteriously materialized on the Internet. A whole ring of Web sites came online within hours of Santelli's rant, like sleeper-cell blogs waiting for the trigger to act, all claiming to have been inspired by Santelli's allegedly impromptu outburst. ... But as our investigation showed, the key players in the Tea Party Web ring were no amateurs, but rather experienced Republican operatives with deep connections to FreedomWorks and other fake grassroots campaigns pushing pro-big-business interests." [2]

I posted last night that we should all watch this speech (or read it in my case) and then decide if we want this man as our next speaker and third in line to the Presidency...

I'd like to take vote now...

Y' ever notice that among all the amendments the Repubs would like to repeal, Boehner never brings uo the 21st?

CUT & PASTE:For the last 20 years, no one principle has united the Republican Party quite like its violent opposition to tax increases—except, perhaps, its equally ardent obsession with tax cuts. When liberal economist Paul Krugman described the GOP as a horde of “tax-cut zombies” just “shambling forward, always hungry for more,” he wasn’t far off; every election cycle, Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform forces candidates to sign a “no new tax” pledge, and holdouts risk being publicly ridiculed for not signing. But now there are indications that at least some Republicans, like Daniels, are awakening from their stupor. As the crippling recession and mounting long-term deficit projections inspire new calls for fiscal austerity, especially from the Tea Party types currently driving the GOP’s agenda, it’s worth asking whether we’re about to witness the biggest change in conservative politics since the rise of Reagan: the beginning of the end of the Tax Zombie Republican. To get a sense of how such a staggering shift could be possible, let’s rev up our DeLoreans, restart our flux capacitors, and return to the roots of modern-day Republicanism. Among conservatives, Ronald Reagan is remembered as the tax-cutter in chief: the supply-side hero whose Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 slashed the top marginal tax rate by more than half. But the truth is that after his first year in office, Reagan was actually willing (if not always happy) to compensate for gaps in the government’s revenue stream by raising rates. In 1982, for example, he agreed to restore a third of the previous year’s massive cut. It was the largest tax increase in U.S. history. The Gipper also raised taxes in 1983. And 1984. And 1986. The party sainted him for his efforts. That permissiveness ended with Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush. While campaigning for president in 1988, Bush made a solemn promise: “no new taxes.” But in 1991 he accepted a small tax hike as part of a major deficit-reduction package. Conservatives—who’d become militantly, monolithically antitax in the Gipper’s wake—were enraged. Never mind that the package paved the way for the booming economy and balanced budgets of the 1990s, much as Reagan’s apostasies coexisted peacefully with the steady growth of the previous decade. Bush lost the right, and then reelection. Ever since, only the rarest of Republicans has dared to deviate from GOP dogma on taxes—even as the party’s absolutism (see: Bush, George W.) spawned record deficits and squandered its reputation for fiscal responsibility.

Why would that change now? Because for the first time in the past two decades, the math—both fiscal and political—might require it. In 2009 the national debt was 53 percent of GDP. That’s less than ideal. But it’s nothing compared with the projected 2050 debt: 350 percent of GDP. Economists say that closing the gap, which stems from long-term forces like rising health-care costs and the retiring of the baby boomers rather than fleeting issues like President Obama’s stimulus package, will require both lower spending and higher taxes. And while Republicans tend, at least in theory, to support spending cuts next year, and the year after, it will be impossible to keep cutting through year 40 and beyond. Right now, the United States spends less as a share of GDP than all but nine of its 31 fellow OECD nations; our revenue intake, meanwhile, ranks next to last, with 2009’s taxes slipping to their lowest level as a percentage of personal income since 1950. There isn’t much left to cut on either side of the equation, and forecasters predict that our economic growth may be slowing for good. If we’re serious about tackling the debt, we will eventually need more revenue.

Which is where politics comes into play. Pundits like to explain the Tea Party as a reaction to Obama’s overspending. But the movement’s animosities actually go farther back. As National Review’s Kevin Williamson has noted, what activists “are really looking for is an alternative to the establishment Republicans, whom they distrust, with good reason, when it comes to the bottom-line question of balancing the budget and getting our fiscal affairs in good order.” For them, Dubya redux won’t do. Instead, it will be fiscally mature Republicans—the ones willing to acknowledge, as Williamson puts it elsewhere, that “tax cuts don’t get us out of the spending pickle, and growth isn’t going to make the debt irrelevant”—who wind up getting the biggest boost from this new grassroots appetite for austerity. There’s a reason Paul Ryan is suddenly so popular.

To be sure, Republicans will never like—or campaign on—tax hikes; even now, they’re pushing to extend the Bush tax cuts in their entirety. (Few experts support raising rates during a recession.) But as the debt grows, penny-pinching may become a bigger priority than opposing new taxes. The more that conservative activists and thinkers reject starve-the-beast, supply-side absolutism in favor of tough, practical budgeting, the thinking goes, the more room their representatives in Washington will have to strike the sort of deficit-reduction bargains--serious spending cuts paired with targeted tax reforms--that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush struck not so long ago.

Given that the entire country, and not just Tea Partiers, is in a belt-tightening mood, the political upside could be considerable. According to a Pew poll from late July, 58 percent of Americans want to repeal either some or all of the Bush tax cuts—which means that for the first time in years, mainstream voters are at least willing to consider tax increases. Once Republicans return to power, perhaps as a result of Democratic exorbitance, they will have a golden opportunity. By proposing substantial, long-deferred spending cuts—Medicare? Social Security? defense?—the GOP could revive its reputation as the party of fiscal responsibility and win back moderates (and likely some young voters, who will be glad to dodge the baby-boom bullet). If Republicans have to accept minor tax increases from the other side of the aisle in order to get their proposals passed—reluctantly, like Reagan—then so be it. ’Tis a small price to pay for, you know, saving the country.

Sounds implausible? Then consider how the next crop of GOP leaders has behaved when tasked with balancing a budget. Eight days after taking office as governor of Indiana in 2005, Mitch Daniels pitched a sizable tax hike on all individuals and entities earning over $100,000. A few days later, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, another potential presidential candidate, came out in favor of upping his state's franchise tax. Mike Huckabee raised taxes in Arkansas, as did Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. Even Congressional leaders are showing some flexibility. Ryan has proposed a plan to make the Bush cuts permanent, but he's also said he'd accept a brief, two-year extension—after which they'd be up for reconsideration. Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, a longtime fiscal hawk, recently criticized his fellow Republicans for signing Norquist's anti-tax pledge, saying increases should be on the table. Meanwhile, reports from inside President Obama's bipartisan deficit commission—a simulation of the bruising budget debates to come—note that Republicans have "mostly held their fire" on taxes. Just last Thursday, in fact, one member of the group, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) told the Wall Street Journal that he opposes tax hikes but "wouldn't rule anything out at this stage in the discussions." Otherwise, he said, "The thing blows up before it has a chance to work."

Perhaps that’s just posturing: a concession to the politics of the moment. Perhaps those politics will change, and everyone will forget all about our looming fiscal crisis. But don’t count on it—and don’t be surprised to see a Republican president affixing his Hancock to tax increases someday, or a Republican Congress passing them. The zombies, of course, will moan. But it may be the last we ever hear from them.

Bu##s@t

Doesnt anyone get it? In the 80s when free trade started and every leader since has touted, simply added more goverment jobs. Now the chickens came home to roost. Not enough taxes coming in to pay for goverment jobs. Not mentioning it has gotton where goverment jobs pay better than private sector. Well at some point free trade will fail by process of virtue. American workers cant compete with fair trade when our goverment with holdings amount to more than our poverty world competion. But we will get there sooner than expected. We will be in an impoverished country. Heck of deal, free trade only works after all.

More GOP BALONEY!!

Hey Ali, did Mark exhaust himself from shilling for Democrats and leave you to finish up? Does MSDNC ever plan to hire any actual journalists, or just keep poaching from the Air America refugees?

knows, you are a riechwing drooling faux news drudge report neo dumb@$$ with a tendancy to escape from the Beckistan farm.