Eastsiders, call Riechert and tell him you want Congress to pay the bills that it racked up over the years.

"What the hell is wrong with you people?!?!?!" works too.

@1, you are insane. You are uninformed. There is no "moocher class".

The compromise has already been made. In fact, it's more than a compromise, because the plan Boehner is trying to sell is already a compromise between the moderate Republican plan (Obama's) and the right-wing Republican plan (Boehner et al.). The stalemate is coming from the crazies, period. The Tea Party extremists have destroyed their party, which is funny, and are destroying America, which is not.

One one way out is possible: split the Republicans. The Democrats can make a majority with the non-crazy Republicans to actually do their jobs, and let the Tea Party crazies go sulk in the corner. This will mean the death of national Republican ambitions, though, so they have to choose: party or country.

Again, Congress: "What the hell is wrong with you people?"

Again, Tea bagging, nihilist douche bag Republicans: "What the hell is wrong with you people!"

There, fixed it.

The "moocher class" presumably is everybody on Social Security and Medicare, aka old people. They vote more than any other group and they're gonna be pissed at somebody when that monthly check doesn't come.

Turns out a lot of us don't want a bipartisan compromise, we want you to quit your bitching and use your 14th Amendment powers all-fucking-ready.

Asking the sadistic Tea Klux Klan-crazed American People about the kuntree’s problems is pointless. We’d receive the same answers after schlepping down to the local mental health clinic and asking an unmedicated schizophrenic what he thinks about the TED spread.

Ask yourselves, would we be in this crisis in a McCain adminstration?

Raindrop: Yes, yes we would. Did you have a point to make?

@8, in a McCain administration, every Republican would be absolutely forbidden from ever breathing a word about debt, and the debt ceiling increase would pass instantly without comment, just like it did the hundreds of times it's been raised by Republicans. "Deficits don't matter" is a Republican slogan, not a Democratic one, remember?

@ 8,

No because McNumbnuts would've gone on one of his deranged, senile, apoplectic tirades after the Chinese ambassador looked at him cross-eyed and started World War III after less than a month in office. Then Sarah Palin would've been the Queen of the Danged, mercilessly ruling over her irradiated, poisoned realm, while demanding via the stone tablets that replaced Twitter to know why billions of the world's dead keep victimizing her.

I find it amazingly frustrating that our choices are laid out as:
1. Add more debt
2. Cut spending and keep the tax cuts on the rich.
3. Cut spending and remove a little bit of the tax cuts on the rich.

The real solution is to start to seriously tax the rich. We need capital gains to be taxed the same as income, and we need post-depression levels of taxes on the rich, with the money spent on social programs to get our economy moving.

@8, we wouldn't have this issue with McCain since he would have already died due to the stress of being the President and Palin would have already started a nuclear war with China.

So it's true we wouldn't have the debt ceiling crisis but we would have other more ..... pressing issues. Like radiation sickness and vaporized cities.

@ 12,

You'll never read that in the corporate owned AmeriKKKan media. Nor about cutting some of the $1 trillion we spend each year on the Pentagon and its failed wars. No, because asking the billionaire$ to pay 3% more in taxes to strengthen the country that enabled them to become wealthy would be worse than 1,000 simultaneous holocausts.

I just voted against a tax hike for this thing called a Tunnel.

But, last I checked, we still have more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than when Obama ran against Bush.

Bring them home this month - there's your Deficit.

@15, that's something we aren't supposed to talk about on Slog....remember we endorse the Democrat no matter what they do!!!

The only way the Repubs win back the presidency in 2012 is if the economy is in ruins. Tanking the nation isn't a BUG, it's a FEATURE.

@18 - "continuing to give away tax dollars to make shit free for lazy bums who won't work to pay for their own shit just pisses me off "

You don't like social security, eh? Fuck you, you're insane.

@8 - I can't believe you actually went there. I mean, I see you doing it, but holy shit.

What the fuck damaged you so much as a person to make you this way?

@19 - Then I suggest you march on washington demanding that the Social Security retirement age be raised to 75, that all benefits be cut by 50% across the board, and that you're willing to serve the US in the military for free.

Shared sacrifice, right? Definitely don't want to tax all those job making rich people, as they're the only ones that can create jobs. We know that for a fact since we're all now fully employed since those 2001 tax cuts a decade ago OH WAIT.

Fuck you Allegedly/Period Troll/Bad Haiku Writer.

I am see that @19 understands the economy...well in Herbert Hoover type frames that Obama and the rest of Washington endorse to some degree. Of course, don't let pesky things like the fact that Congress appropriates the money spent by Treasury get in the way.

But yes, let's cut demand in the middle of a depression. It's always worked in the past.

@23: I opened up a question for commentary. That's all.

@26 - Uh huh. You sure did.

Did you get the answers you were looking for?

I finally emailed my house and senate representatives.

Is there someone else I should be emailing?