debt vote

The interactive map can be found at the New York Times.   There is an entire list of how each member of Congress voted, as well as a click on feature on the map.  The map here is a screen capture so it doesn’t have that capability.

The biggest surprise I see is how many voted against the measure in Utah.  Utah was footing the bill for all the national parks to be open.  I believe there are at least 6 NPs as well as a number of national monuments.   That’s financially shooting yourself in the foot when so many small towns and hamlets rely on those parks for their very existence.  Go figure.

The bill also contained a fair amount of pork.  I suppose the pot needed to be sweetened to get some folks on board with it.  I find it ironic that the bill to reduce spending contained so much pork.  It wasn’t bad pork, but pork is pork.  One item I remember was to help money to Colorado for  flood recovery.  That should be automatic.  [eye roll]

I am happy to report that Reps. Wolf and Wittman both voted to pass the debt bill as their spokespeople had assured us they would.  Reps. Goodlatte and Hurt voted no, which surprises me also.  They have districts that include parts of Northern Virginia where so many federal workers have been out of work.  What were they thinking!

All 4 Virginia and Maryland Senators voted to pass the bill.  There were no Democratic nay votes.

Final tally:

House

Yeas  285     Nays  144

Senate

Yeas 81         Nays  18

So we ended up right back where we started other than being a couple billion dollars poorer as a nation and we have lots of people who are having trouble making ends meet.   That’s really a shame.  I hope the American people have long memories.  Many folks live paycheck to paycheck whether we want to or not.  This has been a very painful experience for lots of people.  It just didn’t need to happen.

 

46 Thoughts to “How did Congress vote?”

  1. $24 billion taken out of the economy.

    S&P cuts annual US growth view to 2% from 3%.

    $100 million added to the deficit.

    So unnecessary.

  2. Lyssa

    And based on the “Geography of Government Benefits” excluding Social Security, unemployment, Vet benefits and Medicare but leaving income Support and Medicaid you have a solid correlation between “nay” votes shown here and states with high numbers of recipients of the last two government benefits.

    That’s what makes some use the word stupid.

  3. So…. correlation between evidence that entitlements are growing and widespread and killing our budget and “nay” votes shows that those votes are stupid?

    Yay! The debt limit was raised! Yay! We’re going to borrow more money and spend an increasing amount of money!

    Oh look! China downgraded us because we keep do that! NOT because we argued about the debt ceiling.
    http://www.france24.com/en/20131017-chinese-agency-downgrades-us-credit-rating

    “The fundamental situation that the debt growth rate significantly outpaces that of fiscal income and gross domestic product remains unchanged,” Dagong said in the statement, adding Washington’s solvency was vulnerable as old debts were still repaid through raising new debts.

    What do they know anyway? We have people waiting for checks! We MUST pay for the bread and circuses!

    1. Let’s talk about entitlements…first off, what are you talking about when you say ‘entitlements?’ I hate that word. It’s always said with a sneer, regardless of who says it.

      Who would you take from?

  4. Lyssa

    No, the point is not as general as you misquote me.

    The fact that the constituents of those voting nay are large percent of recipients is the point. Those recipients are voting in representatives that want to stop their benefits.

    1. Which of course makes no sense. I haven’t figured out that phenomena yet.

  5. BSinVA

    I have decided to become a mini-Koch brothers political influencer. Call it Diet Koch, if you will. I have Wikipedia’ed “tea party caucus” which gave me a list of tea party caucus members (all Republican). I intend to follow the re-election of each of these folks. I will donate $5 to any non-tea party Republican who is running to unseat a tea party incumbent in a primary. I will also donate $5 to any Democrat or non-nut job third party candidate who is running to unseat a tea party caucus member in a general election. Now if 50 million like minded Moonhowlings posters join me, we will have a real impact on future elections. If no one joins me. I still intend to fight the tea party at each and every election until they disappear or moderate their views. I will finance this endeavor with the money I’m saving from health care reforms.

  6. Lyssa

    I’m in as anti-Koch. Mini-Koch sounds flattering. They are real mercenaries. No allegiance to any country or belief except themselves.

  7. Rick Bentley

    “Yay! The debt limit was raised! Yay! We’re going to borrow more money and spend an increasing amount of money! ”

    Yay! We balanced our budget through the 1990’s, and circa 2000 we can lower taxes to a level that is unsustainable! Yay! Conservative groups can exert undue leverage to preclude any increase in income tax, even when we start to slide towards debt! Yay! Let’s go involve ourselves in wars and nation-building, without even pretending that we have the money for it. Yay! Let’s implement a prescription drug giveaway for Seniors, without having money for it! Yay!

    Oh NO! The Democrats have taken the Presidency! Don’t these people understand that we have too much DEBT all around us to implement any new programs??? Oh NO!!! the sky is falling! The world is ending! Time to put on the funny hats and take our country back from all these welfare queens and special interests that waste all our money! Oh HEAVENS!!! If we don’t act now, our children will never forgive us!!!

  8. Rick Bentley

    HEAVENS TO MUGATROY!!! The world is ending!!! I see the evidence on FOX News, every single day!!! The “S.P.”‘s are taking over our schools, and the liberals are bankrupting us! Oh, God! The horror, the horror! The shame of it all! WHY DOESN’T SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING???!!

  9. Rick Bentley

    (Republicans are starting to remind me of the father in the first episode of “The Shield”. He sells his daughter to a pe*ophile ring, for crack money. In interrogation, coming down from his high, he tells the detectives what he had done, then looks up at the camera and plaintively wails, “Why didn’t anybody stop me?”. No, wait. Actually, that character has more self-awareness and takes more responsibility for his actions than most Repuiblicans that I know).

  10. @Rick Bentley
    Yay…. spending too much is just fine under Democrats! Heavens to Betsy that the progressive doing the spending is a Republican when its BUSH!

    Notice….the Tea Party thinks that Bush spent too much too.

    Notice…..the entire discretionary spending fund is UNFUNDED. This myth of unfunded wars is getting old….don’t you have anything new to lie about?

    And when you increase the debt even faster than Bush….problems.

    But you actually misunderstand me. I’m now celebrating. I’ve joined the “winning” side. Print money. Spend it. Yay!

  11. @BSinVA
    AND THAT is the way to be politically active.

    Just think…if it wasn’t for the Tea Party….you wouldn’t be doing that. Good for you.

  12. @Moon-howler
    Entitlements is that section of the budget over which it is mandatory to spend without changes. The NON-discretionary spending, with automatic increases every year. The section that completely uses up our entire tax base.

  13. Rick Bentley

    “Notice….the Tea Party thinks that Bush spent too much too.”

    Yet they didn’t put on their funny little hats when he was President. Much less take glee in trying to hurt America and hurt Americans.

  14. Censored bybvbl

    @Cargosquid

    BS and I have always monetarily supported causes and candidates we believe in and punished those we didn’t by supporting their opponents. We also fund causes we believe in – so nothing new there.

  15. Pat.Herve

    Well, the fiscal mess is postponed for a few months. And we get to see what was in the bill that had to get done. $2 Billion more for a dam project on the Ohio river (Ohio (Boehner) and Kentucky (McConnel). Lautenberg’s widow – $174K. For the State’s that kicked in to open federal parks – we are reimbursing them, with interest, for the costs. Fed Workers will be paid for the shutdown time.

  16. Starryflights

    @Cargosquid

    Entitlement spending does not eat up our entire tax base. In fact, social security is running a surplus.

    Social Security Has “A Large and Growing Surplus”
    May 31, 2013

    16
    NANCY ALTMAN, naltman at socialsecurityworks.org
    Altman is co-director of Social Security Works, which today released an analysis of the Social Security Trustees report titled “Strengthen Social Security, Don’t Cut it: Key Points about the 2013 Social Security Trustees Report” [PDF].

    http://www.accuracy.org/release/social-security-has-a-large-and-growing-surplus/

    That’s the problem with these tea party goobers. Most don’t know wtf they are talking about.

  17. @Starryflights
    Each year the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds report on the current and projected financial status of the two programs. This message summarizes the 2013 Annual Reports.

    Neither Medicare nor Social Security can sustain projected long-run programs in full under currently scheduled financing, and legislative changes are necessary to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers. If lawmakers take action sooner rather than later, more options and more time will be available to phase in changes so that the public has adequate time to prepare. Earlier action will also help elected officials minimize adverse impacts on vulnerable populations, including lower-income workers and people already dependent on program benefits.
    http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
    Social Security and Medicare together accounted for 38 percent of federal expenditures in fiscal year 2012. Both programs will experience cost growth substantially in excess of GDP growth through the mid-2030s due to rapid population aging caused by the large baby-boom generation entering retirement and lower-birth-rate generations entering employment and, in the case of Medicare, to growth in expenditures per beneficiary exceeding growth in per capita GDP. In later years, projected costs expressed as a share of GDP trend up slowly for Medicare and are relatively flat for Social Security, reflecting very gradual population aging caused by increasing longevity and slower growth in per-beneficiary health care costs.

    Wrong.

    1. So exactly what do you propose to do about it?

      I would up that ceiling cap on social security faster than a jackrabbit. I would also take a serious look at creating a separate fund for disability with more verifiable requirements. Maybe we need to verify what really comes out of the social security fund.

  18. Rick Bentley

    I used to think that it would be interesting if we could divide the US into two nations, based on Red State/Blue State. It would be interesting to see who would prosper more over time.

    The Red States would have an advantage in that they have strong work ethic and frown on the welfare system. But the Blue States are able to view reality through a pragmatic lens, and are better at investing for the future. It’d probably teach us a lot if we could conduct this experiment and see the pluses and minuses for each extreme.

    However, I’ve become increasingly convinced that if we did this, it wouldn’t be long before the Red States started a war with the Blue States over some issue or another. They seem to need an enemy to hate; they’re not capable of looking in the mirror and accepting responsibility, but rather need a scapegoat to rail against. Before we knew what had hit us, they’d have missles in the air at us and President O’Reilly would be on their TV stations announcing that he’d taken a preemptive strike against the “S.P.”‘s, in defense of Christmas.

    1. I’ll bite…what are SPs? I know I should know this.

      I don’t agree that all the red states would have a strong work ethic. There are some toothless wonders out there who vote the big R all the time who probably haven’t worked in 2 decades. Bad back syndrome and all. I would use the word many but there are some dead beat Rs the same as deadbeat D’s.

  19. Rick Bentley

    “Secular progressives”. It amuses me that O’Reilly talks about them and their supposed agenda to the point that on his show he just says “S.P.”s. The SPs are the people (more or less like me) who want to keep religion out of schools and, I’m told, are waging a war on Christmas.

    1. Silly me. SP’s. NOw I remember. I think I am one also. I too don’t want religion in public school. Does that make me a godless sinner bound for the firy pits of hell?

  20. Rick Bentley

    You may be right Moon, but to be fair the Red States would be less likely to support a lenient form of welfare, so if they governed themselves I think that some of those toothless wonders would have to go get jobs.

    1. Yea, probably. I respect that. I don’t think either group has much tolerance for ne’er do wells who sit around in front of the grocery store on the 50 pound bags of dog food or mulch, squandering the day.

  21. Rick Bentley

    Apparently Big Bill codified his feelings about the traditionalists and the SPs in his best-selling 2006 book “Culture Warriors”. Keep in mind that Bill is the MODERATE voice in the FOX News lineup. From wikipedia :

    According to O’Reilly, the “Secular Progressive Movement” is a minority left wing group of Americans whose non-traditional ideals have become a talking point in recent years for conservative commentators. O’Reilly states that the movement is led by media billionaire George Soros, who provides large amounts of money to liberal (and as O’Reilly defines them, secular-progressive) organizations such as moveon.org. Although no organization defines itself as secular progressive or as part of a secular progressive movement, O’Reilly has identified the groups and organizations he considers apply to this label, including Hollywood liberals, Al Franken, UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), whom he considers a threat to traditional American society.
    Also, O’Reilly goes on to identify the various members of the “secular-progressive army”. Specifically, he contends that the ACLU and similar legal organizations form the “shock troops,” who have “blitzed the legal system” in an attempt to “secure secular policies without having to go to the ballot box.” According to O’Reilly, these troops are aided and abetted by “mainstream media enablers,” who provide “aid and comfort to the frontline troops and are invaluable in getting their message out to an even wider audience.”
    This secular-progressive image of the ideal America, according to O’Reilly, is modeled on modern Western Europe.

    1. And yet another conspiracy theory. O’Reilly must just want to sell books. He isn’t a stupid man.

      I guess he has Jon Stewart as an SP also?

  22. Rick Bentley

    Okay, I’ll admit it! I’m part of the SP Army! And we’re going to take Christmas down this year.

    I look forward to a day when rather than write letters to Santa, children more properly petition President Obama for “entitlements”, and learn to suckle directly at the feet of Big Brother. We must indoctrinate them into a world of secular progressivism and atheism, so that they learn to associate themselves and their lives with the collective goals of our evil minority. Yes we can!

    And we would have acheived our aims by now … if not for the infernal mechanisms of Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz …

    1. Si se puedo!

      Don’t leave out head cultess, Michele Bachmann.

  23. Rick Bentley

    Were it not for them we would have acheived our aim of turning all children gay by now. And enacted black masses in schools. Curses be upon them and their Jesus and their Santa Claus.

    1. I thought Santa was also an SP? I KNOW Rudolph is.

  24. @Moon-howler
    All good ideas.

    I would like to separate the SS fund completely out of the general fund. No more borrowing from SS. OR to it. It either supports itself or goes broke.

    Since it was passed as a tax and not a benefit…because back then, the gov’t could not force you to buy a product…..
    it CANNOT be privatized. It would have to be cancelled. The only thing to “privatize” it would be to allow people to opt out.

    1. I totally oppose privatizing it. The crash of 2008 is the lesson there. There has been a lot of borrowing from the fund over the years. I think that has pretty much stopped now.

  25. Rick Bentley

    I agree with Moon. If we are going to take that money from people by force, we have a responsibility to keep it safe.

  26. Pat.Herve

    @Cargosquid
    cargo – the SS Trust fund is not part of the general fund. The only place for the trust fund to invest is in US Treasury bonds – and over the years Congress has spent those funds. So to those that want to cut SS to pay for say an Air Craft Carrier – they are misled (mostly because of how Congress talks about it) – in that the Trust fund is quite solvent til 2035 and has a funding stream.

    What some want is to reduce the SS benefits so that they can stretch that date out beyond 2035 but what they really want to do is to reduce the amount of funds that they need to pay back the trust funds of all the money spent over the years.

  27. But the funds are taken from the SS. SS is then paid by the general fund. Separate it out completely. No borrowing. The SS is shown as part of the budget. Make it so that SS funds stay in the fund and ONLY pay SS. I agree…. SS funds should not be shorted to pay for anything else.

    When I look up “the budget” social security should not even be mentioned. But it is included in total spending. 45% of the 2012 budget was SS and health care entitlements.

    This is a quote from the trust fund: “Neither Medicare nor Social Security can sustain projected long-run programs in full under currently scheduled financing, and legislative changes are necessary to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers.”

    That tells me that it is going broke. If it cannot be sustained forever, then it won’t be. We cannot continue to borrow 42% of the budget.

    Oh…wait…I forgot. I’m on your side now….. Go for it. Raise the limit. Deficits? Debts? Who cares? In fact, we need to increase the QE and raise the stock market prop to 100 billion per month. If a little works…more is better!

    1. Now I am pissed off. Do not address “health care entitlements” on this blog. If you want to talk about Medicare, then call it that. workers pay into that program their entire lives. Medicaid is what I have paid into also but not for myself unless I end up indigent. To couple those two programs together as entitlements is just dead wrong and very insulting.

      At some point it is going to get unhealthy to insult baby boomers.

  28. Pat.Herve

    @Cargosquid
    Fixing SS long term (and Medicare) is a concern. But it has nothing to do with our spending. Yet, those in Congress want to fix the rest of the budget by tinkering with SS and Medicare – ie rob from the SS Trust fund to pay for other programs.

    You can look back to 1983-1992 to see many changes in how SS was maneuvered around the budget reporting process – most notable the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act

    “Debts and Deficits do not matter” – Dick Cheney

  29. @Moon-howler
    No one is “insulting” anyone. They are called ENTITLEMENTS because you are ENTITLED TO THEM because you paid into them. The LAW calls them entitlements. Congress cannot affect them in discretionary spending.

    If I meant WELFARE, I would say WELFARE.

    @Pat.Herve
    Thus I stated that the SS fund should be, dare I say it…put into a LOCKBOX, so that it cannot be borrowed from. But even then….the income from SS payments will not suffice to keep it solvent.

    And I happen to disagree with Cheney. He’s just another progressive.

    1. Oh Dear God. If Cheney is a progressive then I am Lenin. Cargo, statements like that just knee-cap your credibility.

      I left off something on entitlements–How would you classify Medicaid? You said health entitlements. I feel fairly certain you were including Medicaid. Plenty of people get Medicaid who haven’t paid into it. I don’t give a crap what the law says. I know what popular terminology means and has meant for decades.

  30. Pat.Herve

    @Cargosquid

    Lockbox – but you voted for the other guy.

    I agree with Moon – if you think Cheney was a progressive you are not credible and I think you say some things just to get a rise out of people.

  31. @Moon-howler
    Statists are ALWAYS progressive. Cheney certainly isn’t a “small gov’t” politician. Thus progressive.

    As for the terminology, I was just using the term from the budget pertaining to payments that one is entitled to and cannot be changed in the discretionary budget. Its not a big thing for me…its a short cut.

    @Pat.Herve
    I’m defining him as progressive because he is a statist that seeks to grow government. He’s not “liberal.” But neither is he conservative.

    1. All sorts of words are technically correct but are offensive to those the words are being used about. Alien springs to mind.

      Cargo, seriously, why do you have to swim upstream with terminology. Do you want to confront or sell your brand of thinking? Calling Cheney a progressive is just laughable. I don’t even know what a statist is. Why not go out and donate a day at a soup kitchen in Richmond rather than go all nutso over political vocabulary. Esoteric ocabulary is so abstract and meaningless to most people.

  32. @Pat.Herve
    I forgot..

    Yes, I voted for the other guy. The other guy ALSO promised some sort of lock box.

    I expected neither party to give up all that free money.

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