On January 17th, the Wall Street Journal bannered "GOP Weighs Short-Term Debt-Limit Increase," and reported that, "Republicans are discussing whether to support a short-term increase." The very next day came the announcement that they were actually doing it: the Washington Post headlined "House Republicans Agree to Vote on Bill to Raise Debt Limit for 3 Months." Then, on the evening of January 20th, House Republicans officially introduced their bill to extend until May 19th a "Temporary Extension of Debt Ceiling," in order to permit the U.S. Treasury to continue paying its previously contracted obligations, while they propagandize about "the need to get federal spending under control" -- on the backs of everyone except the financial elite, whose bailout was the second-largest cause of the fiscal problem, after the plunge in tax-receipts that had been itself caused by the elite's own rampant financial frauds destroying the U.S. and global economies.
This could turn out to be a long end-game, but if Obama were instead to have used the 14th-Amendment weapon that remains at his disposal, none of this would now be happening at all -- the Republicans could have been forced to capitulate as soon as the fiscal cliff came. Obama, thus, without the availability of that threat, and with the extension of the debt-limit threat, and having already renounced any other threat, is willing to drag the country down, if need be, in order to culminate Milton Friedman's strategy for ultimate Republican victory.
On January 14th, Rosalind S. Helderman of the Washington Post bannered "House GOP Freshmen Present New Challenges for Boehner," and reported that House Republicans were even refusing to okay disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy in NY and NJ unless the money was deducted from other federal spending. This type of fiscal extremism had never before happened in U.S. history: these far-right fanatics were holding flood-victims hostage to Milton Friedman's "libertarian" "fiscally conservative" ideological monstrosity. Meanwhile, the aristocracy booms like never before, based upon federal bailouts, which resulted from the Obama-Republican refusal to allow accountability to Wall Street crooks, and to their crony investors.
Another example of how far House Republicans are willing to go in order to attack government spending that benefits the public instead of aristocrats is documented in a report by thinkprogress.org on 22 January 2013, headlined "House Republican Leader Blames Gun Violence On "Welfare Moms.'" Video was shown there of the 5th-ranking House Republican speaking before a 100% white audience at a town-hall event in his low-income Dixie district, answering a constituent's question, by saying that gun violence occurs "because welfare moms want to get additional benefits and if they can put them [their children] on SSI [Social Security Income payments] through maintenance drugs, they can also put them on Social Security disability and get a separate check," which, he claimed, was causing too many children to go crazy on "psychotropic drugs." The congressman said, "Not only is it fraudulent on the government, but it also tells a kid with great potential, "don't try because you're disabled.'" Thus, a constituent's question about gun-violence sparked from this mini-Goebbels an answer that denigrated both Social Security and "welfare moms." That is how fascist these politicians are.
Amongst liberals, it is fashionable to blame the Obama Administration's failures not on the President himself, but on people below him in the power-structure. For example, Geithner is often blamed, as if he hadn't been doing Obama's bidding. Often, even Reid and Pelosi are blamed, as if they could get anything done without the support of the head of their own Party. However, those views are false. They arise from misunderstanding the structure of power. For example, on Friday, 24 January 2013, Steve Benen at maddowblog headlined "Filibuster Reform Dead Until at Least 2015," and Rachel Maddow's liberal audience responded with statements like, "Time to primary all senators who voted against reform for majority rule." However, Ezra Klein was more interested in explaining than in venting, and so he bannered at the Washington Post's Wonk Blog "Why Filibuster Reform Failed." He noted that, "one Senate aide told me, 'Remember, estate-tax repeal got 59 votes in 2006.'" The estate tax is the most progressive tax in the U.S. system, hitting fewer than 1%, of only the very wealthiest of people -- basically it hits only the heirs of multi-millionaires and billionaires. This tax is essential in order to counter the re-emergence of a runaway aristocracy -- a plutocracy -- in this nation. But a massive propaganda campaign by 18 billionaire families has caused it to become enormously unpopular -- the only U.S. tax that the majority of Americans think ought to be repealed entirely. Probably no single issue is as central to the ideology of progressivism as is continuing if not increasing this tax, but any politician who votes this way must exercise great political courage in order to do so. Not only did 59 U.S. Senators vote to abolish it in 2006, but in the House, abolishing it had already passed overwhelmingly, by a vote of 272, to only 162 courageous and principled Democrats. Without the 60-vote rule in the U.S. Senate, there would be no federal tax on enormous estates, as there still is. Unearned wealth would not be taxed at all by the federal government; only earned wealth (via incomes, sales, etc.) would be. That's Republican heaven. Democrats need the availability of the filibuster, just as much as Republicans do. Liberals can be suckered to blame the wrong people -- conservatives aren't the only ones who do that.
However, defenders of the Criminal-In-Chief also have other rationalizations for not blaming him. For example, an Obama-defender might ask: Doesn't this analysis ignore the "fact" that the federal government is actually making a profit on all of those "toxic assets" that it had purchased from these Wall Street institutions, and so this bailout wasn't really a handout to aristocrats, by the American public, after all? No. That, too, isn't true. Here is how and why:
Although the U.S. Treasury has been selling many of those assets, the purchasers of these toxic assets have been off-balance-sheet entities of the federal government: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and, above all, the Federal Reserve itself, which is the nation's creator of money. Technically speaking, the Fed is owned by its member banks; but, in reality, the balance sheet of the Fed will ultimately determine the government's obligations, because the full faith and credit of the U.S. government backs the Fed, especially the Fed's TALF or "Term Asset-Backed Security Loan Facility," by which the mega-banks have sold to the Fed their "toxic assets." Those "toxic assets" thus become owned ultimately by future U.S. taxpayers. Furthermore, two-thirds of the $1.54 trillion "Total Outstanding" to the federal government, and 58% of the $13.87 trillion "At-Risk" to the federal government, on the "Total Wall Street Bailout Cost," is due to be repaid to future U.S. taxpayers from the Federal Reserve. In other words: the Fed, an off-balance-sheet entity for the U.S. Treasury, has bought these toxic assets, mainly from its biggest member banks; and future U.S. taxpayers will be left holding the bag for them. Moreover, the trashiest of these toxic assets is the stuff that hasn't yet been auctioned off and so paid back to the U.S. Treasury; like wikipedia said about the "Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility": "The Fed refuses to provide any information on how it priced individual securities bought with TALF funds." The Fed is owned by the banks; if they're ripping off the federal government, it's in their interest not to reveal to us now how bad the theft will turn out to have been. This money is being taken out of our future. Our Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will thus "need to be" slashed, though this will occur gradually (such as by reducing the inflation-adjustor on SS), just as the tax-hit upon Americans will occur only gradually, and so the idea here is that the public will grudgingly accept this slow-motion fleecing by the aristocracy. This is probably the biggest and most systematic theft in all of global history, but the details of it are still being hidden from us. Here is why:
There is an old aphorism, that if you boil a frog slowly, it'll never notice -- it won't jump out of the pot. Well, today's children are those frogs. That is Obama's plan, not merely the plan of other Republicans -- it is the fulfillment of his plan, in which he is being "forced" (supposedly by other Republicans) to do this.
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