Jon Kyl: Debt Ceiling Hike Should Be Paired With $2.5 Trillion In Cuts
WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans are aiming to cut at least $2.5 trillion over the next decade in a deal to raise the federal debt limit, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said on Tuesday.
Kyl, who is representing Senate Republicans in bipartisan debt talks, told reporters that his party is seeking "$2.5 trillion -- at a minimum -- in savings" over the next 10 years in exchange for raising the debt ceiling by about $2.4 trillion. Kyl's remarks echo House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) calls for cuts equal to the amount the debt ceiling is raised.
Although those participating in the talks have said they have been productive so far, Kyl cautioned that negotiators could fall short of coming to $2.5 trillion in cuts before Aug. 2 -- the date the government will begin to default on its loans. The government reached its debt limit -- currently set at $14.29 trillion -- on May 16, but Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
has said the agency will not begin to default on its loans until about Aug. 2.
In that event, Congress might need to pass small, short-term increases on the debt limit while the details of a larger deal are ironed out, Kyl said.
"If we don't get to that $2.5 trillion, I don't think there would be much of an appetite on our side to raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion," he said.
The bipartisan debt ceiling group is aiming to finish its work "sometime in July," Kyl said, throwing water on a call by Boehner to raise the debt ceiling by the Fourth of July.
Labels: politics
Bush’s troubles grow
Bush’s troubles grow: "Bush’s troubles grow"
Published Sep 28, 2006 1:23 AM
You know that the president and his closest advisers are in a lot of trouble when the “intelligence” agencies of his government will no longer provide the backup he needs to sell his foreign policy to the people.
That’s what is happening right now between Bush and all the secret police agencies of the U.S. government, from the CIA on down.
The National Intelligence Estimate, a classified document, was recently leaked to the press. The New York Times and the Washington Post broke the news about it on Sept. 24. The document had been kept under wraps since its finalization in April and is “the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government,” according to the Times.
Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte had to approve it. His hard-line background, especially his role in the Contra war against Nicaragua and his stint as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, make its conclusions all the more remarkable.
In brief, the document’s judgment is that the Iraq war, instead of making the U.S. safer, has made it more likely to experience a terrorist attack. “A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks,” was the way the Times summarized it.
Anyone with a clear sense of what is going on already knew that the horrible war crimes committed by the Pentagon in Iraq had made the Bush regime hated all over the world. But no one in the U.S. government would say that openly. Even this document, of course, does not refer to the invasion and occupation as war crimes.
Nevertheless, the damage was done. Bush’s main theme, repeated endlessly since before the war began, has been that he was acting to protect this country from terrorism. He, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have all tried to justify the war by linking Iraq somehow to al-Qaeda and 9/11—a link that never existed.
Because of this kind of hard sell of the war, many young people joined the Army, Marines or National Guard, thinking they were helping to protect their families and communities. But as the fighting and occupation have ground on, enlistments have gone down and skepticism about the aims of the war has risen in the general population.
At the same time, it has become very clear to many in the capitalist establishment, but outside of Bush’s narrow circle, that the war is making things worse for U.S. imperialism in the world. It is not terrorism they fear the most, but popular resistance by oppressed peoples—and it is growing throughout the Middle East and elsewhere.
The release of this document just weeks before the midterm elections is yet another symptom of the bitter struggle going on within the capitalist state itself. It forced Bush to selectively release part of the document for public scrutiny—but only so he could put his own spin on it and claim that it supports his policies.
No one should think that the government’s spy agencies have suddenly become dovish. The CIA is still the CIA. They all just want to promote the Empire more effectively and see Bush and his group as incompetent CEOs who either have to change their ways or step aside so the company can become more profitable.
This article is copyright under a
Creative Commons License.
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Chicago Tribune news: Exelon kept leaks quiet, files show
Chicago Tribune news: Exelon kept leaks quiet, files show: "Exelon kept leaks quiet, files show
Advertisement
By Hal Dardick
Tribune staff reporter
March 19, 2006
Exelon officials took several steps that for years kept the public in the dark about radioactive tritium spills at a Will County nuclear power plant and the groundwater contamination the spills caused, public records obtained by the Tribune show.
Recent company disclosures about four tritium spills between 1996 and 2003 at Braidwood Generating Station came only after the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency pressured Exelon Nuclear to test for contamination, following prodding from the plant's neighbors.
The disclosures of spills triggered lawsuits last week by the Will County state's attorney, the Illinois attorney general and neighbors of the plant accusing the company of not being forthcoming.
The public documents show Exelon Nuclear officials in 2001 and 2002 opposed public discussion of tritium and the release of documents about tritium spills. They also opposed legislation to mandate groundwater monitoring at nuclear plants and a permit review that led to discovery of the contamination, the records show.
'It's apparent that this all points to obfuscation of radioactive material releases at the Braidwood plant,' said Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog Project at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an anti-nuclear group that has obtained many of the records independently."
United States Equestrian Federation, Inc : News
United States Equestrian Federation, Inc : News: "Hay is for Horses: Equine Groups Band Together to Provide Feed for Hurricane-Affected Areas"
