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[Glowcat]

Anyway, vote still hasn't happened.  With five and a half hours to go before midnight, I'm wondering what the Hell is taking so long.

Maybe they're trying to eek out as much suspense as possible for their Republican-tolerable revenue plan: "Washington: The Movie".

[nenjin]

By the by, this whole two week orgy of legislative retardation cost the US taxpayer $1.7 billion dollars in increased interest.

It only took the Tea Party and Republicans $1.7 billion dollars to make the point we need to be more financially responsible. But wait, there's more (money to be lost!)

The cost of [increased interest rates due to uncertainty] for the U.S. Treasury (and consequently U.S. taxpayers) will likely grow on Tuesday, when the government is scheduled to auction $23 billion in one-month Treasury bills.

They're currently yielding 0.14%, up from 0.01% two weeks ago. If that increase holds it would cost taxpayers an additional $249 million in interest.

The extra interest payments will add to the nation's deficit, further contributing to the problem that caused political gridlock in the capitol.

[counting]

Just watch a visualization display of what 1 trillion dollars stack and 15 trillions would look like. It's kind of interesting and putting things into strange perspective. Thinking how much of 1 trillions worth of gold would be compare to paper dollars.

[Nadaka]

"the military budget is only half of the total cost problems, so its not that serious".... Jesus christ man, can you not see what's wrong with that statement?

In response to the assertion that it was the wars alone that caused the deficit spending? Nothing at all wrong with that. In fact, considering that nearly all of the defense budget is spent in in America, on American middle class jobs, its elimination would not only be disasterous for our defense but for our financial security as well.

US spending breakdown:

8% interest
38% discretionary
54% mandatory

broken down more:

8% interest

discretionary
*20.5% defense
*16.4 domestic
*1.1% foriegn

mandatory
*18.4% social security
*13.5% medicare
*7% medicaid
*4.3% other
*3.8% other retirement and disability

We are about 40% over budget. No source of spending can be slashed hard enough to stop the deficit. Even if we completely eliminated all discretionary spending, it would not be enough. We need to raise taxes. Period. End of story.  Anything else is insane.

[GlyphGryph]

Though really, doing both is probably a good idea long term if fiscal responsibility is a thing we want (at least for a while)

[Nadaka]

I don't think anyone is saying no spending cuts. We are just saying that we can't disembowel the government completely.

[counting]

It's voting right now.

[Phmcw]

What I mean is that :

According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report published in October 2007, the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion dollars by 2017 when counting the huge interest costs because combat is being financed with borrowed money. The CBO estimated that of the $2.4 trillion long-term price tag for the war, about $1.9 trillion of that would be spent on Iraq, or $6,300 per U.S. citizen.[9][10]

Source wikipedia

So A) your extensive budget cut conceded right now are about the cost of the wars
B) You'd still have money if you didn't fought them.

Anyway 20% for the military is huge. Halve the budget and spend it on long term research, education and space exploration, and you'll get returns on your investment as well as the benefits of spending it in America.

And last : I'm not sure the cost of the war is counted in the regular budget (just something I read somewhere, I'll try to check).

[kaijyuu]

I'm all for axing the military budget to a fraction of what it currently is, but even I can see that putting that many people out of work all at once would be catastrophic.

[Phmcw]

I'm all for axing the military budget to a fraction of what it currently is, but even I can see that putting that many people out of work all at once would be catastrophic.

We know you need to do that gradually, with reemployment plan (As in, hire the engineer you just fired from the army in the NASA and education).

[Aqizzar]

It's voting right now.

Aaand it passed.  Surprisingly, it passed by about 269 votes to 161, much higher than necessary.  There's always an element of people voting against stuff they know will pass as a protest, and not nearly as many people did that as you'd expect.  Interesting how many people wanted to be on the "right" side of this.

Oh yeah, and Gabriel Giffords came back to D.C. to cast her vote as well.  Ain't that always a pretty picture.

[counting]

House pass the deal. 269 : 161.

[Impending Doom]

Dammit, I had high hopes of becoming some kind of feudal warlord.

[Dsarker]

Is that all there needs to be done? Phew.

[nenjin]

Don't wipe the sweat from your brow just yet.

The analysts wanted about 2x the amount of spending cuts that this plan ultimately calls for. This may in the end still force them to lower our credit rating (although not as drastically.) I kind of doubt in the end that will happen because no one wants that, at all.

Meanwhile, stocks are flipping the hell out at the moment and once all the hoopla of default is passed, we'll actually have to deal with the reality of these budget cuts. While we're out of the frying pan, we're still dancing on some very hot coals. I really hope Congress can muster the political will to address taxes and tax reform next, but I doubt that will happen with the elections just around the corner.