Immature children promise they will do their homework tomorrow - the night before it is due - Polidicks

[img]http://imgkk.com/i/zr3w.jpg[/img] [url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/senate-negotiators-search-for-deal-to-avoid-the-fiscal-cliff/2012/12/30/7d546aee-521c-11e2-950a-7863a013264b_story_2.html[/url] [quote=Washington Post]Still no deal. There were signs of renewed effort in the talks to resolve the “fiscal cliff” crisis late Sunday afternoon. For one thing, direct talks had begun between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Vice President Biden. Republicans exiting a mid-afternoon caucus meeting said that McConnell had excused himself to take a call from the vice president. Those two Washington veterans have become the capital’s unofficial closers, hammering out the agreement that resolved a fight over tax cuts in late 2010, and the debt-ceiling crisis in August 2011. But their task could could prove far more difficult this time around. Less than 36 hours remain before a package of painful tax increases and spending cuts start to kick in. Even if a deal is struck, it will have to be passed by both the Democratic-controlled Senate and then the GOP-held House — running the gantlet of a gridlocked Washington on New Year’s Eve. A few minutes before 6 p.m., Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said that negotiations were still going on. “There’s still time left to reach an agreement, and we intend to continue negotiations,” Reid said on the Senate floor. He added, however, that there would be no Senate votes — on a fiscal cliff deal or anything else — on Sunday night. The chamber will be back in session at 11 a.m. Monday. On a gloomy day at the Capitol, that passed for good news. It is a time-honored congressional tradition that any deal must be preceded by hours of doomsaying and pessimism. It’s easier to sell a deal, of course, if you’ve first conditioned your colleagues and the public to fear there will be no deal at all. On the Hill on Sunday, even lawmakers seemed confused about whether what they were seeing was the usual late-stage political theater — or evidence that, this time, there really would be no deal. “The two parties are so close that they can’t afford to walk away,” said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb), calling the fits and starts of this weekend “just normal” posturing in high-level negotiations. “I continue to be optimistic.” But Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) seemed to have the opposite impression. “I’m incredibly disappointed we cannot seem to find common ground. I think we’re going over the cliff,” he wrote on Twitter. Previously, it had been assumed that the most difficult part of any resolution would be gathering Republican votes, given the House’s rebellious GOP caucus. But earlier Sunday, it appeared that Democrats, instead, were the ones standing in the way: Reid said in the afternoon that Democrats were unwilling to respond to an offer that McConnell had delivered to Reid’s office Saturday evening — nearly 19 hours earlier. “I have had a number of conversations with the president, and at this stage we’re not able to make a counter-offer,” Reid said, adding of McConnell’s talks with Biden: “I wish them well.” Senior Republican aides said McConnell turned to Biden after it became apparent that aides to Reid were slow-walking the negotiations. One sign of potential progress came late Sunday, when Republicans appeared to have dropped a key demand that had stalled the negotiations earlier in the day: that Democrats agree to a cost-saving, but politically sensitive, reduction in Social Security benefits. The demand, called “chained CPI,” would effectively reduce the cost-of-living increases in Social Security benefits over time. Previously, the GOP had demanded it in exchange for President Obama’s request to extend emergency unemployment benefits and cancel deep cuts to the Pentagon and other agency budgets. A Democratic aide close to the talks described the request as a “poison pill.” But, late Sunday, one GOP leader said it had been a demand that the GOP had expected to withdraw. A bargaining chip, which they had now given away. “I don’t think anybody ever expected Social Security to be a part of this,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said after leaving the meeting with McConnell. He said McConnell’s aides included it in their offers as a standard negotiating tactic — “start big and get skinny,” he called it. Cornyn said it had always been something that Republicans expected Democrats to object to, and that it would be removed from GOP follow-up offers. As afternoon edged into evening, there was still a good deal of pessimism on Capitol Hill. Reid emerged from an almost two-hour meeting with fellow Democrats and walked straight into an awaiting scrum of reporters: “Here’s the situation: I hear that some Republican senators of the caucus said that they shouldn’t have done CPI and that’s true, they shouldn’t have done that in the first place, it was desperation. We’re still left with a proposal they’ve given us that protects the wealthy and not the middle class. I’m not going to agree to that.” Asked as he departed a meeting of the Senate Democratic caucus whether a deal would be struck today, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) bluntly replied: “No.” “I’d be shocked” if a deal was cut on Sunday, Lieberman said. “I think the parties are much farther apart than I hoped they’d be by now, and that the country thought they’d be when negotiations started on Friday.” McConnell presented Reid with his first proposal Friday evening. Democrats then waited until 3 p.m. Saturday to respond and, after a flurry of activity Saturday evening, went dark after receiving McConnell’s latest proposal at 7:10 p.m. Most, if not all, of the GOP proposals sought to change the measure of inflation for Social Security, senior Republican aides said, adding that Democrats had not indicated until Sunday that it was a deal breaker. “There’s no single issue that remains an impossible sticking point,” McConnell said on the Senate floor earlier Sunday. “The sticking point appears to be the willingness and interest or frankly the courage to close the deal. I want everyone to know, I’m willing to get this done, but I need a dance partner.” The abrupt developments in negotiations came after a brief interlude of unusual optimism. The Democratic aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations, said Democrats had shown flexibility over the weekend on the major sticking points involving taxes. They had not ruled out maintaining the tax on inherited estates at the current low rate, as Republicans prefer. And they had been open to a deal that would allow taxes to rise on many fewer wealthy households than Obama had proposed. Republicans were seeking tax increases only on income higher than $400,000 or $500,000 a year, while Obama wanted to set the threshold at $250,000 a year. But Obama was pressing for $30 billion in new spending to keep unemployment benefits flowing to the long-term unemployed, and he wanted to postpone roughly $100 billion in automatic spending cuts set to hit agency budgets next months. In exchange for those items, Democrats said, McConnell continued to insist that Democrats put cuts to Social Security benefits on the table, noting that Obama had offered to do so as part of the big deficit-reduction package he had been negotiating earlier this month with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio.). Senate negotiators have been laboring over the weekend on a last-ditch plan to avoid the fiscal cliff, struggling to resolve key differences. By Sunday, however, negotiators had yet to resolve the two key tax issues, and the extension of unemployment benefits was still up in the air, according to people close to the talks in both parties. Obama has sought to keep the pressure on Congress to act, including taping his appearance for “Meet the Press.” “What Congress needs to do, first and foremost, is to prevent taxes from going up for the vast majority of Americans,” Obama said on the show. Failing to reach a deal for funding the government will slow the economy and harm most families, he said. He has advocated a plan that would raise taxes on the wealthiest 2 percent. “There is a basic fairness that is at stake in this whole thing that the American people understand and they listened to an entire year’s debate about it. They made a clear decision about the approach they prefer, which is a balanced, responsible package. “They rejected the notion that the economy grows best from the top down. They believe that the economy grows best from the middle class out. And at a certain point it is very important for Republicans in Congress to be willing to say, ‘We understand we’re not going to get 100 percent. We are willing to compromise in a serious way in order to solve problems’.” His appearance on the NBC News show is just his second as president. McConnell’s spokesman Don Stewart responded to the president’s remarks on Sunday by saying, “While the President was taping those discordant remarks yesterday, Sen. McConnell was in the office working to bring Republicans and Democrats together on a solution.” Negotiators also were trying to resolve a dispute over the estate tax, a critical issue for Republicans who have dubbed it the “death tax” and argue that it punishes people who build successful businesses and family farms. In an agreement brokered between McConnell and the White House in 2010, estates worth more than $5 million are exempted and taxed above that amount at 35 percent. Republicans want to maintain that structure, while Democrats want to drop the exemption to $3.5 million and raise the rate on larger estates to 45 percent. Aides close to the talks predicted that the two sides might split the difference, with Democrats swapping the estate tax for the $250,000 threshold. Next up is a debate over the federal debt limit, which is $16.4 trillion. With the debt set to hit the limit on Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has signaled that he can juggle the books for about two months before the nation runs out of cash to pay its bills. Republicans have vowed to use the debt-limit fight, as they did in the summer of 2011, to demand deep federal budget cuts, this time focused on Medicare and Medicaid, the federal health programs whose costs are soaring as the population ages. But with the fiscal-cliff talks likely to produce less than half the new tax revenue Obama is seeking, Democrats are likely to demand additional tax increases as well. That sets the stage for more of the same in Washington, with uncertainty over fiscal policy hampering economic growth and taking energy away from other critical issues, such as immigration and gun control. Rosalind S. Helderman, Ed O’Keefe and Peter Whoriskey contributed to this report.[/quote]

smurfy's titles remain best [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Off-topic post" - Megafan))[/highlight]

Title caught me off guard... More than usually so. [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Off-topic post" - Megafan))[/highlight]

Goddammit smurfy [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Off-topic post" - Megafan))[/highlight]

They should amend the emergency controls enacted once the US goes over the fiscal cliff to include throwing all of congress into the grand canyon

I fell for one of smurfy's titles. [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Off-topic post" - Megafan))[/highlight]

I was thinking this was some shorta High School kids thing

Everyone says they fell for the title; this is the first time I've actually predicted what the article was going to be about.

[QUOTE=Lonestriper;39034528]They should amend the emergency controls enacted once the US goes over the fiscal cliff to include throwing all of congress into the grand canyon[/QUOTE] Maybe cover them in pitch and set them on fire, as a lesson to any other [del]legionaries[/del] politicians.

[QUOTE=DaysBefore;39034672]Maybe cover them in pitch and set them on fire, as a lesson to any other [del]legionaries[/del] politicians.[/QUOTE] I understood that reference! [sp]That's fucking Inception-reference right there[/sp]

[QUOTE=The Worm;39034586]I fell for one of smurfy's titles.[/QUOTE] T-shirts and badges to this effect will be available in the gift shop at the end of the thread

[QUOTE=smurfy;39034773]T-shirts and badges to this effect will be available in the gift shop at the end of the thread[/QUOTE] I'd probably buy a "smurfy's title's" shirt if you made them.

The pic goes nice with the title, gotta love politics.

Now if only I was corrupt as hell, then I'd have a future in US politics.

I was about to say something about procrastination being somewhat of a vice, but then I realised it was about Congress. So yeah; when done by politicians, procrastination is Human Degeneracy(tm). I just wish all these old men would just have cardiac arrests already, or at least have them take their GOD-DAMN MEDICATION! Old men, running the world; a new age? More like "old men, [B]ruining[/B] the world; a [B]dark[/B] age!

10/10 would read misleadingly again [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Meme reply" - MaxOfS2D))[/highlight]

The fiscal cliff won't have any impact on these people (as far as I know) so of course they're not gonna feel any urgency to fix the matter.

[QUOTE=ironman17;39034974]I was about to say something about procrastination being somewhat of a vice, but then I realised it was about Congress. So yeah; when done by politicians, procrastination is Human Degeneracy(tm). I just wish all these old men would just have cardiac arrests already, or at least have them take their GOD-DAMN MEDICATION! Old men, running the world; a new age? More like "old men, [B]ruining[/B] the world; a [B]dark[/B] age![/QUOTE] Whenever I think about that, I always fall in a mini-depression. Our hope is that once the people who are in power are... Gone, one way or the other, the people who replace them would be us, right? The minds of our day and age, who know what the problems are and are savvy enough to fix them. But... They won't. They'll just be replaced with the [I]next[/I], but not necessarily [I]our[/I] generation and in the end nothing will change. Sure - one day, we'll be in power, but from the viewpoint of the generation after us, we'll be the old farts they want gone. Though, the US Congress is an appallingly stupid bunch by every generation's standard.

Watch it not get fixed.

-snipped-

OKAY, we fucking get it, Smurfy had a good title. Now please, let's talk about the topic. Republicans are going to fuck everyone over with their bullheadedness, seriously fuck them

Happy Fiscal Cliff guys, also new years or something.

Why is Congress so stupid? This wasn't supposed to ever happen, the fuck. Also, [QUOTE=Stopper;39034763]I understood that reference! [sp]That's fucking Inception-reference right there[/sp][/QUOTE] [sp]Fallout New Vegas. Not even close.[/sp]

They aren't stupid, they're incompetent. And they're incompetent because of the way the system- both electoral and legislative- works. Congress knows that it's incompetent. But they can't do shit to change it. And it's not like we can fix the problem- no one thinks it's their congressmen who are the problem, it's everyone else's. "Don't blame my congressman, he help me! He got me tax breaks and that road we wanted, and now I can sell that extra bushel of wheat and piss on the lamppost because of him." And electing them all out will just place more of them in that have to adhere to this same standard. If we simply elect congressmen who won't spend their time appeasing their electorate then we'd be electing new politicians every election and there would be no experienced people in. Because each congressman is tied to his constituents in order to survive in his occupation, he has to argue against the guys across the aisle. So nothing gets done. So yes, yes, Congress isn't doing its job, but you can really thank the American people at large for driving us farther apart in Congress and forcing congressmen to kiss ass or face the music.

[QUOTE=purvisdavid1;39035378]Why is Congress so stupid? This wasn't supposed to ever happen, the fuck. Also, [sp]Fallout New Vegas. Not even close.[/sp][/QUOTE] Their lives aren't on the line so they're in no hurry to get this dealt with. "Our lives are in your hands and you have butter fingers" comes to mind. Now we just need some Dilophosaurs to kill all of Congress. But since we're short on non-avian Dinosaurs we can just turn loose a bunch of Cassowarys in there and lock the doors till the screaming stops.

smurfy, do these titles come naturally to you or do you sit for 5 minutes to think of them? [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Off-topic post" - Megafan))[/highlight]

That should serve as a warning. No more posts about how great smurfy's titles are, it's self-evident as it is.

[QUOTE=Megafan;39036264]That should serve as a warning. No more posts about how great smurfy's titles are, it's self-evident as it is.[/QUOTE] oh my gods i thought this would never happen thank you

Edit: Snipped, Megafan's post didn't show up until after I made mine. Yaaay, more evidence Washington is in a bad need of a format-and-reinstall. We really should amend the terms of the fiscal cliff to include "All members of congress who fail to come to an agreement to avert the fiscal cliff will be paid $10/hour for their services until the economy recovers. They also forfeit their cushy government pensions, that funding is part of the cuts, and they also get taxed at 125% whenever receiving a 'campaign contribution'. No exceptions." That would light a fire under their asses I think.

I'm for HR 1505 the "Install Giant Toilet Handle on the Side of Congress, Flush" bill.