Republican budgeting- bad TeAA+

The unsurprising news that S&P downgraded the U.S.'s debt to AA+ shouldn't be taken with too much alarm, partially because these were the guys giving Lehman Brothers an "A" rating right before they collapsed, and they overrated most of the subprime and mortgage backed securities before they fell apart, probably because they got paid for doing so. But that being said, this passage is an important one.

The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year's wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge, and, as we see it, the resulting agreement fell well short of the comprehensive fiscal consolidation program that some proponents had envisaged until quite recently. Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.

In other words, S&P thinks the Baggers aren't able to work with everyone else to do anything that would actually help the country long-term, and the lack of increased revenues and sustainiability of entitlements makes things unworkable. They're practically screaming "RAISE TAXES ON THE RICH, END THE WARS AND STABILIZE SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE!!" But I'm sure the lobbyist cash will talk louder than this analysis of getting our deficits and debt back on track.

(Of course, Paul Krugman mentions that another problem could be that S&P took the worst-case scenario for their starting point instead of the actual one. OOOPS!)

Same problem is developing in Wisconsin, where I have it on good authority from people who have seen the numbers that the Scott Walker/ WisGOP budget is already coming in low on revenues and will probably need another budget repair bill in the upcoming months, regardless of whether or not the Dems take back the State Senate. Now, I can't tell you the numbers for sure, because the the Department of Revenue has been late in releasing them for June. Interestingly, these June numbers have been out in late July for the last 3 years, but are being held up this year. Think the recall elections may be playing a role here?

I mean, it's not like Walker and co. didn't leave a $21 million hole in Milwaukee County or anything like that. This is especially egregious because Milwaukee County has a special designation as a "first-class county", and could have been exempted from cuts in state shared revenue under the point that they had already cut employee benefits, and therefore couldn't offset the cuts like other communities could. And who was the County Executive when that imposed these benefit reductions? SCOTT WALKER! So Gov. Dropout hurt the alleged effectiveness of his own actions now that he moved on to a bigger job.

This is how pathetic and paid off the average Republican is when it comes to fiscal matters. They put in unworkable solutions, which cause deficit and debt problems, and then put in place actions and policies that make the problem they caused even worse. It's almost like they want society and government to fail in order to have their contributors take over these services, and make a helluva lot of money in the process.

Oh, forget that "almost", that IS what they want. And that's why we need to blow them all out of power in 2 days. LET'S DO THIS.