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NAVY YARD SHOOTER’S TROUBLED PAST DIDN’T STOP HIM FROM BUYING GUNS |
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Tag Archives: United States
Dumb And Dumber
The federal government is hurtling toward two critical deadlines where a failure to act will be extraordinarily damaging to the US economy. But Republicans think it’s okay to play political games even if it means sabotaging our economy.
Deadline 1: To avoid government shutdown, Congress needs to pass a spending bill to fund the federal government by September 30. Republicans have been engaged in a civil war for weeks over how best to use this deadline to manufacture a crisis. Those on the far right, led by Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, insist they shut down the government unless the budget fully defunds Obamacare, even touring the country to promote a shutdown. And now there are reports that House Republican leadership is following their lead in allowing such a bill to come to a vote.
The consequences of a government shutdown are severe: social security checks might not go out, our troops might not get paid, and the economy would take a huge hit. Indeed, some fearful Republicans have warned their constituents as much.
A majority of Americans will blame Republicans if the government shuts down. But Republicans are still unable to let go of their obsession with repealing Obamacare, and are now barreling towards shutdown. That’s just dumb.
Deadline 2: The U.S. government will default on its obligations sometime in mid-to-late October unless Congress extends its borrowing limit. This would have catastrophic consequences for not just the United States economy; it could cause a worldwide crash even worse than we faced in 2008. But House Republican leadership — that’s right, not just some of their crazier members — want to use the debt limit to force Congress to delay Obamacare for one year. Speaker John Boehner, who previously insisted he would not use the debt ceiling for political leverage, has promised “a whale of a fight.”
We’ve been down this road before. Paying our bills on time is non-negotiable. Congress needs to pay the bills Congress itself racked up. Period.
Even among those that oppose the health care law, more than half want their elected officials to make it work as well as possible. So if Republicans truly think the American people support their threats of default instead of doing the hard work of governing, well…that’s dumber.
BOTTOM LINE: Americans are tired of the fighting and of having their economic security put on the line time and time again. Harming the economy to refight old political battles won’t help middle class families.
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a message from David Simas
Hello, everyone —
In the early hours of September 15, 2008, five years ago last Sunday, Lehman Brothers announced it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Lehman was a giant of the financial system — the fourth-largest investment bank in the US, a firm that employed thousands of brokers and analysts, with billions in assets that were suddenly worthless — and its collapse sent shock waves through the global economy.
Suddenly, it was obvious that the next president of the United States would inherit a staggering economic crisis. But the challenge that President Obama was forced to confront didn’t just begin in 2008. Even before Lehman Brothers, middle-class security had been slowly eroding for decades as jobs became obsolete or were shipped overseas.
So as we mark this anniversary, we’ve asked senior staff from across the Obama administration to sit down and talk about the moment when key decisions were made — the factors they weighed, the results of the actions that President Obama took. What we’ve put together is a behind-the-scenes look of the decision-making process that you won’t find anywhere else.
Check out the story of America’s recovery, then share it with your friends.
By the end of 2008, the economy was shrinking by an annual rate of more than 8 percent, our businesses were shedding 800,000 jobs a month, and credit was frozen for families and small businesses. We were in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. On the day that I first began working in the White House in 2009, the auto industry was on the brink of collapse and the President was wrestling with how to help the millions of families in thousands of communities who would have been devastated if the motor companies died.
That’s the lens through which President Obama saw his responsibilities, and it’s a consistent theme in all the stories we’ve collected. Every decision he made was meant to stop the economy from spiraling out of control, put people back to work, and reverse the trends that had buffeted middle class for decades. The task was nothing short of monumental — to clear away the rubble of the crisis and lay down a new foundation for sustained economic growth in the United States.
There’s no diminishing the severity of the challenge we’ve overcome together, and we’ve got a lot more work to do to rebuild an economy where everyone who works hard has a chance to get ahead. But five years after Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, we want to help everyone get the context and see the full picture.
Take a minute to learn more about where we are five years after the start of the financial crisis:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/five-years-later
Thanks!
David
David Simas Deputy Senior Advisor The White House @Simas44
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sabotage our economy … Ask Republican members of Congress
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