Tag: Super Committee

Hi Dave, Hi Fred, Have you recognized yet, that you have an impossible task?  Have you noticed that "increasing revenues" seems to be impossible? Does it seem hopeless?

It ought to.

Obviously, as two of six members tasked with the overwhelming task of reigning in an upwardly spiraling debt situation, you hold a great deal of responsibility.  And with only 11 days till the collapse of your hopes to accomplish this without crushing business, and raising taxes on those making over a dollar a year, the realization that there is nothing of which you are aware that will solve this problem, must keep you awake at night.

Therein lays the problem.

You both don't know, because you have failed to listen in the last couple of years, as the good folks who have marched, protested, changed the face of the congress you occupy, have told you how.  It is not a part of your understanding.  were you asleep?  You didn't listen to those folks in 2008 when you had an opportunity to say no to the use of taxpayer funds to prop up businesses that needed to fail.  You didn't listen to good Republicans who now mourn the loss of moral authority with regard to improper payoffs to corporate supporters and masters, which BTW has given the current president cover for his own abuse of our treasury.

And you didn't listen when the majority of the country once again said "NO!" to raising the debt ceiling once again in a way that serves only to feed the beast which will ultimately consume us.

NH Journal sums up why this is ridiculous here:

There is a clear reason for this, as carried interest differs substantially from a traditional salary. Under most agreements, the manager of the investment partnership receives no carried interest if the endeavor fails. The manager is also on the hook for returning the principal from the partners, regardless of his performance. Most workers in our economy do not have to return a significant portion of their salary if they do not accomplish what their colleagues and supervisors expect of them.

"Balancing the budget" by killing the dollar bill and forcing Americans to carry little burlap bags full of dollar coins like it is the 12th century, not the 21st?  I know this is RightMichigan.com, not 30 Rockefeller Center, but... Seriously?

According to Roll Call, that's the proposal being floated by a "Republican" Congressman from Arizona by the name of Dave Schweikart.  (Because the last time Republicans followed the lead of an Arizonan it worked out so well.  (ZING!))

Schweikart (pictured at right swimming in cold, hard home-state-mined cash) claims that burning all the paper money and forcing Americans to use those gold colored copper one-dollar coins (you know, the ones you immediately hand back to the cashier or the bank teller asking for "real money" every time she tries to hand it to you?) will help balance the budget by saving less than $200 million a year.  Coins are more durable, the argument goes, so they'd last longer and cost less to reproduce.

Yeah they last longer.  Because they sit in the bottom of our sock drawers since you'd have to lug around eight pounds of metal to buy a freaking Big Mac!  The American people have had the option -paper or coin--for years.   We've chosen lighter pockets and fewer trips to the chiropractor.

Camp and Upton sit on the powerful Super Committee and have not yet provided any clear inclination that they back this expensive, onerous, poorly thought out  bit of cow-towing to Arizonan special interests (I'll get there, bear with me), but its just a sneakily stupid enough of an idea I figured it'd be worth raising the red flag.

Please read more below the fold.