“We fought the good fight”

WASHINGTON — Congressional Republican leaders conceded defeat Wednesday in their budget fight with President Obama over the new health care law, agreeing to support a reopening of the government and a lifting of the nation’s borrowing authority in exchange for future budget negotiations.

In a statement issued as the Senate and the House prepared to vote on the proposal, Mr. Boehner said: “The fight will continue. But blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us.”

The Senate is expected to vote on the bill Wednesday evening, with final passage coming late Wednesday or early Thursday.
      

Under the agreement, the government would be funded through Jan. 15, and the debt ceiling would be raised until Feb. 7. The Senate will take up a separate motion to instruct House and Senate negotiators to reach accord by Dec. 13 on a long-term blueprint for tax and spending policies over the next decade.

 

NY Times

"Assessing the Government Shutdown: The Long View"

"The conventional wisdom right now is that the government shutdown ranks somewhere between a debacle and a catastrophe for Republicans, and their abject surrender is expected before too much longer.  I’m not so sure."

... [H]ave there been riots or even public demonstrations against the shutdown?  The political-financial crises in Europe and elsewhere in recent years have seen mass protests and street riots (Spain, Brazil, Greece, Bulgaria, etc).  Where is Occupy Wall Street when Obama needs them?  To the contrary, much more of the political energy appears to be on the Tea Party side right now.  Pretty clearly the shutdown terrifies liberals and journalists—and that’s about it."

... [T]o the extent that shutdown and “government dysfunction” in Washington causes the public to hold Washington in even greater disgust than usual, who does this hurt the most?  Democrats need the public to have some degree of confidence in government for their expansive schemes to succeed."

Power Line,

"New York restaurant has no-talking menu"

"The latest in New York City dining? Eating in silence."

                  

A restaurant in Brooklyn's trendy Greenpoint neighborhood is serving up a four-course meal of organic, locally-sourced food, but isn't allowing any chit-chat.

 

Epicurious.com Editor-in-Chief Tanya Steel says the silent eating experience sounds like yet another facet of the sensory-dining eating out fad. Some restaurants offer diners the chance to consume in the dark. Other gastronomical joints feature the ability to consume not just the food - but the menu on which it is described.

 

***

After having discussions with president Obama regarding the government shutdown and the raising of the national debt ceiling, the republicans quietly slipped out of the white house a short time ago.

 

FoxNY

“We always have enough money to pay our debt service”

WASHINGTON — Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, a reliable friend of business on Capitol Hill and no one’s idea of a bomb thrower, isn’t buying the apocalyptic warnings that a default on United States government debt would lead to a global economic cataclysm.

“You’ve had the federal government out of work for close to two weeks; that’s about $24 billion a month. Every month, you have enough saved in salaries alone that you’re covering three-fifths, four-fifths of the total debt service, about $35 billion a month. That’s manageable for some time.”

A surprisingly broad section of the Republican Party is convinced that a threat once taken as economic fact may not exist — or at least may not be so serious. Some question the Treasury’s drop-dead deadline of Oct. 17. Some government services might have to be curtailed, they concede. “But I think the real date, candidly, the date that’s highly problematic for our nation, is Nov. 1,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee.

Others say there is no deadline at all — that daily tax receipts would be more than enough to pay off Treasury bonds as they come due.

 

“It really is irresponsible of the president to try to scare the markets,” said Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. “If you don’t raise your debt ceiling, all you’re saying is, ‘We’re going to be balancing our budget.’ So if you put it in those terms, all these scary terms of, ‘Oh my goodness, the world’s going to end’ — if we balance the budget, the world’s going to end? Why don’t we spend what comes in?”

       

“If you propose it that way,” he said of not raising the debt limit, “the American public will say that sounds like a pretty reasonable idea.”

And while Representative Trent Franks, Republican of Arizona, conceded that a government that could no longer borrow money would have to curtail some of its contracting, he said Democrats should not get carried away.
       

“It’s like everything else here,” he said. “People on both sides of every argument seem to employ hyperbole when they could just state the truth and it would still be of significant consequence.”

 

NY Times

"Where’s Joe Biden?"

"When President Barack Obama laid out his strategy for the current debt-limit fight in a private meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this past summer, Reid stipulated one condition: No Joe Biden."

And while Biden attended the White House dog-and-pony show meeting last week with congressional leaders, Reid has effectively barred him from the backrooms, according to sources familiar with the situation."

Biden was once Democrats’ deal-maker-in-chief, designing budget pacts with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the summer of 2011 and New Year’s Eve 2013."
Both Reid’s office and the vice president’s office declined to comment for this story.
But the Reid-Biden tension stands out because the two men spent so much time together in the Senate — 22 years — and because they’re on the same team. It is also yet another example of how deteriorating relationships among the nation’s top political leaders are making it harder to game out a solution to the fiscal crisis."

Read more at Politico

#Shutdown Showdown Showcase

@DLoesch ...and shut the valve on Niagara Falls. Cage all the Grizzlies in Yellowstone; and fill in that grand canyon; in Arizona

— UpSetVet68 (@upsetVet68) October 4, 2013

@DLoesch Post "Deadly Force Authorized Beyond This Point" signs from old ICBM bases outside the WH & Capitol! @ASavageNation @IngrahamAngle.
— Walter Kowsh (@Ronin4Hire) October 4, 2013

@DLoesch This is the most jobs Obama has created in 1 week throughout his whole term.
— Jeff Stevenson (@stevenjj2002) October 4, 2013

Now the Obama admin is shutting down scenic views: http://t.co/oS5qgHrhEj
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) October 4, 2013

"The shutdown, the White House argues, ..."

Obama adm officials tell Ezra Klein they've already compromised all they're going to. http://t.co/iVMqhgxLLr
— Byron York (@ByronYork) October 4, 2013

"The Obama administration bristles at the idea that they've been unwilling to negotiate or compromise. They went on a widely covered "charm offensive" back in the spring.... 
And so the White House says that their position is simple, and it will not change: They will not negotiate over substantive policy issues until Republicans end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling."

The Washington Post

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste"

 

 

“It’s on the president’s head, he’s got to lead, he’s got to talk”

"So let me be clear about this.  An important part of the Affordable Care Act takes effect tomorrow no matter what Congress decides to do today.  The Affordable Care Act is moving forward. That funding is already in place.  You can’t shut it down.  This is a law that passed both houses of Congress; a law that bears my signature; a law that the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional; a law that voters chose not to repeal last November; a law that is already providing benefits to millions of Americans in the form of young people staying on their parents’ plan until they’re 26, seniors getting cheaper prescription drugs, making sure that insurance companies aren't imposing lifetime limits when you already have health insurance, providing rebates for consumers when insurance companies are spending too much money on overhead instead of health care.  Those things are already happening."

*** 

Woodward on MSNBC Morning Joe...

 

Woodward: If Shutdown or Debt Ceiling Causes Economic Crisis, It’s on the ‘President’s Head’

 

 The Washington Free Beacon, Morning Joe 

“I don’t think (Obama) wants to compromise”

"[S]aid Victor Davis Hanson of the conservative Hoover Institution. “In the past, he’s always done better when he can accuse somebody of some terrible thing and go campaign against them. I think he wants to say that Obamacare is working ... He’ll want this war to continue.”

Democratic strategist Jason Stanford said the latest offer is a sign of GOP weakness, “tacit-ly admitting that they’re not getting what they were going for.”

“The president has said he is not negotiating on this and the House continues to try to negotiate on this,” Stanford said. “I think the government’s going to get shut down and Republicans will initially say, ‘See, this is no big deal.’ The stock market will have another opinion. This will hurt the economy and people will feel it in their 401(k)s.”

The Boston Globe, Bloomberg video, via Intapundit