{"id":8419,"date":"2012-07-20T11:26:22","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T18:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8419"},"modified":"2012-07-20T11:26:22","modified_gmt":"2012-07-20T18:26:22","slug":"refusing-to-cave-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/07\/20\/refusing-to-cave-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Refusing to Cave-in"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year ago, the Republican Party committed economic terrorism, holding our nation\u2019s good faith and credit hostage for concessions to continue tax welfare for the very rich.  As part of the settlement Republicans insisted on automatic sequestration, if the parties could not reach agreement on debt reduction.  Since then Republicans have refused to negotiate in good faith with regard to the revenue side of the budget, apparently expecting Democrats to cave-in and agree to even more massive domestic cuts and to extend the top tier of the Bush Tax Cuts.  Democrats are refusing to cave-in.  Now Republicans are accusing Democrats of holding the economy hostage.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"brass-balls\"It\u2019s only been a year since Congressional Republicans, bent on cutting spending, manufactured a financial crisis by threatening not to raise the debt ceiling. Now, apparently thinking the public has forgotten that debacle, they\u2019re furious that Democrats have figured out a way to turn the tables<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Senator Patty Murray of Washington, a member of the Democratic leadership, said Monday<\/a> that her party was prepared to let all the Bush-era tax cuts expire on Jan. 1 if Republicans refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy. The same holds true, she said, for the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts that begin at the same time, which Republicans demanded in the debt crisis but now oppose after realizing that the cuts affect more than social welfare programs<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Republican leaders quickly voiced horror at these tactics. \u201cHas it come to this?\u201d said Speaker John Boehner, accusing Democrats<\/a> of holding the economy hostage for the sake of high-end tax increases. Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, called it \u201can entirely avoidable high-stakes game of chicken with the single-minded goal of taking more money from those who earn it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Taking hostages has unfortunately become the default method of exercising power in Washington, after Republicans decided that conventional compromise with Democrats was unpalatable<\/strong>. But the Democrats\u2019 proposal would have nowhere near the same outcome as the Republicans\u2019 debt ceiling threat last year\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

I agree with everything the author said, except, I don\u2019t consider Democratic tactics as hostage taking, although it does indeed turn the tables on Republicans.  But before I get into that, <\/font>Michael Eric Dyson and Col. Lawrence Wilkerson discussed the military side of this issue.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

When Bush and Cheney were in charge they had two wars in progress and six more planned. The other six did not happen because they made such a mess of Afghanistan and Iraq that the resources they had intended to use were tied up. A Republican in the White House guarantees more wars in the Republican quest for world domination.  I\u2019m all for a strong military, but we should be able to defend ourselves without outspending the rest of the world combined.  We should direct our military resources to providing our troops with what they need for today\u2019s conflicts and to caring for our veterans, not to excessive profits for war contractors for outdated cold-war weapons systems.<\/font><\/p>\n

Overall, Democrats are not holding America hostage as Republicans accuse. They are simply refusing to cave-in to ongoing Republican hostage taking, as they very well should. Democrats may actually be growing big brass ones. If so, it’s about time.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A year ago, the Republican Party committed economic terrorism, holding our nation\u2019s good faith and credit hostage for concessions to continue tax welfare for the very rich.  As part of the settlement Republicans insisted on automatic sequestration, if the parties could not reach agreement on debt reduction.  Since then Republicans have refused to negotiate in […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}