Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Um... You've got some "interesting" reading skills there Joph.
By which you clearly mean "literacy".
Hah! Funny!
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They quite clearly said that unless congress could come up with an agreement which would reduce the deficit by the amount they indicated they would downgrade the US credit rating.
"We believe there is a material risk that U.S. policymakers might not reach an agreement on how to address medium- and long-term budgetary challenges by 2013; if an agreement is not reached and meaningful implementation is not begun by then, this would in our view render the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of peer 'AAA' sovereigns." By 2013. Remember you insisting that this meant they were going to downgrade the US if a clean debt bill was passed in 2011? Remember? Remember you saying this April report just proved it? Remember that? What part of "by 2013" means "in 2011" to you?
Um... Joph? Agreement reached
and meaningful implementation begun by 2013. Not just agreement reached by 2013. Read the whole thing, not just the bits you like. They also say this:
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We view President Obama's and Congressman Ryan's proposals as the
starting point of a process aimed at broader engagement, which could result in
substantial and lasting U.S. government fiscal consolidation. That said, we
see the path to agreement as challenging because the gap between the parties
remains wide. We believe there is a significant risk that Congressional
negotiations could result in no agreement on a medium-term fiscal strategy
until after the fall 2012 Congressional and Presidential elections. If so, the
first budget proposal that could include related measures would be Budget 2014
(for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2013), and we believe a delay beyond
that time is possible.
This is them saying that if agreement isn't possible prior to the 2012 elections, then meaningful implementation cannot occur until 2014. Then then follow that a few paragraphs later with the statement you quoted about requiring agreement *and* meaningful implementation to begin by 2013. Someone with decent reading comprehension skills should then conclude that the triggering determination of their rating is based on whether agreement can be reached prior to the 2012 election.
Right? Don't just read the words as though they're all separate bits, but read the whole freaking thing. The downgrade is because S&P does not believe that congress can come to an agreement on deficit reduction prior to the 2012 election. The fact of that inability to agree didn't change because of GOP actions. It existed before hand.
The disagreement itself involves both parties, not just the GOP. The Dems are just as guilty of disagreeing. However, the GOP at least attempted to put deficit reduction into play. The Dems wanted to just ignore the issue and hope it would go away. I don't see how we lay the blame on the GOP for this. Not unless you think it would have been better to just pretend that we could reach an agreement "someday" right up until we get downgraded anyway? Again, don't you think that raising the debt ceiling without any deficit reduction plan at all would have clued the credit rating folks off a bit?
The Dems were pursuing at best a childish path on this. The GOP is acting like mature adults. Yes. That means taking responsibility for the actual bad state of the economy instead of pretending that everything is just rosy and hoping no one notices. How long did the Dems think they could just put this off?
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Feel like admitting you're wrong yet?
'
Since I'm not wrong? Lol!
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All the GOP did was attempt to comply with S&P's requirements Joph.
S&P said they were looking for
"Some compromise that achieves agreement on a comprehensive budgetary consolidation program". You think this is what the GOP was attempting? Seriously?
Yes. What part of "let's cut spending 3-4 Trillion dollars" fails to meet the criteria S&P put out there? You do get that if we just done exactly what the GOP has been saying for the last 3 years, we wouldn't be in this mess, and if we did what the GOP is saying now we could get ourselves out of this mess. It's the Dems who've been on the wrong side of this the whole way through. I know you don't like this fact, but it's the truth. They're the ones who grossly overspent, over the objections of the GOP. And now, we're supposed to give them a pass because the wanted to just stay quiet about the lack of any plan to fix the deficit?
You're kidding, right? That's the kind of plan a 5 year old might come up with. I would hope we expect a bit more of our representatives. Maybe we conservatives hold ours to a higher standard though.