US shutdown: Senate reaches fiscal deal | Hacker News Reader

US shutdown: Senate reaches fiscal deal

bbc.co.uk

32 pointskiyanforoughi63 comments

Everyone that knows anything about politics knew this is exactly how it would work out. It has been political theater the enter time. That's why the financial markets didn't flinch, they knew it would never come to default. The politicians are playing stupid games with gullible people, and they aren't doing it to serve their constituents. They are doing it to serve themselves and their corporate donors.

If this isn't proof of a broken system that fails to serve the people, I don't know what is.

I've also heard it described as a tactic to ensure the public is grateful for whatever deal is ultimately struck.

Exactly ... and if you're in the US, you really have to think about who you're voting for. I'm not voting for incumbents in November - period! There's no point in having an agenda when NOTHING is working anyway, so we might as well elect individuals (in either party) who might actually do their jobs!

Thats a relatively close minded approach that may destroy America.

Question: did your Representative contribute to the blocking of the bills? Is it really your representative's fault for the shutdown?

Some Senators, such as Senator McCain have gone against his party and tried to support the bipartisan effort to reopen the government. (Demonstrating that maybe McCain would have served as a decent President).

Research your senators, research your representatives. Learn their names, and what they did during the shutdown. DONT blindly elect them away. Actually do your research and make an informed choice.

Too many Americans don't understand politics. No wonder we have so many idiots in Congress.

It was intentionally close-minded, but intended to counteract the huge number of people that simply vote for the incumbent. And if you truly believe your congressman isn't part of the problem (and you've researched his/her positions enough to know what he/she stands for), by all means reelect the lone competent individual. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that they'd each SEEM competent if viewed individually (http://www.despair.com/meetings.html).

How about this instead ... we pick a high-karma HN'er from each district and elect them. At least we could expect some logic (I hope).

I've already contacted the Koch brothers for money to bribe HN members, just in case this happens. :)

You'd also have to wonder whether how the liberal/conservative labels would work out. Maybe IDE users versus emacs/vi (text editor) users?

Adding more close-minded people to the political system will only hurt us in the long run. What we need now, more than ever, are people who understand the political process and are willing to compromise.

The 2010 election is famous for electing a huge number of close-minded people to the House of Representatives. You see, it is your very "anti-incumbent" mindset that has gotten us to where we are today.

HALF the moderate Blue Dog Democrats were voted out of office in 2010. And need I remind you about the rise of the Tea Party in 2010?

Congress is deadlocked today because close-minded individuals destroyed the moderates. Proven Moderates were voted out of office, and American became more extremist from the 2010 elections, and 2012 elections. We need to work together, find the moderates in Congress and reward them for their efforts.

Blindly attacking incumbents is how we got into this problem in the first place. Continuing the dumb, ignorant, "head in the sand" approach will lead to our ruin in the long term.

Stupid voting is stupid voting. Don't vote against the incumbent unless you've done your research.

--------------------

Why can't Representatives get together and hash out a deal? (Even within the Republican Party, they failed to pass a bill this week at all). Maybe... all of the dumb newbies don't know how, they don't have the bipartisan connections that were utterly destroyed as all of the moderates were voted out of office in 2010.

Unfortunately that attitude just incentivizes corruption for any politicians who run against incumbents.

I thought the issue was in the House, and this does not say that the House's game of chicken is over and anything has been resolved there, merely that "some" republicans are joining the democrats. Can someone explain why this item means good news?

Because it's still part of the Republican caucus publicly agreeing to something, so hopefully they can influence some pressure on the Speaker / House.

But yes, this still needs to get through the house, and if it does we've just kicked the can to Jan.

The House has enough Democrats and swing Republicans to pass a bill to avoid the default and reopen the gov't, the problem right now is even the Republicans (who control the house) can't agree on a bill to put up for a vote (or at least agree on one that will pass the democrat controlled senate). There's literally nothing to vote on.

If the Senate agrees on a bill and it gets put up for a vote in the House it will probably get through with all the dems and enough Republicans to pass.

I wonder if this means that the leadership in the House will bypass the Hastert Rule to allow the Senate bill to be brought up for a straight up/down vote.

They've supposedly had the votes for a clean CR for a while, but the Speaker has not permitted a vote to come to the floor due to the GOP's adherence to requiring a "majority of the majority" to approve a vote to reach the floor. If you exclude the Tea Party caucus Republicans, the majority of the majority just isn't there.

Wikipedia lists 4 instances where Speaker Boehner has broken the "Hastert Rule".

Really, the "rule" is common sense for the Speaker of the House. If the Speaker wishes to keep his job, he should follow the rule. But as demonstrated in the past, Boehner is willing to break the rule to get some bills passed.

Boehner is subject to two masters: the 8th district of Ohio, and the Republican Caucus. The first keeps him a Representative, and the second keeps him the speaker of the house. Keeping both pleased is necessary if he wants to continue working as Speaker.

But none of that has changed. All along the house has had enough votes to pass a bill exactly like this. The catch has been that the Speaker of the House has a policy (not a house rule at all) of not bringing anything up unless he knows it will get passed with no democratic votes at all. This policy is what prevents moderates from both parties from reaching some reasonable agreement.

The primary reason the House has been a deal-stopper so far is more because of Boehner's resistance to bring bills to the floor unless they would be supported by a majority of the House Republicans regardless of whether they'd pass a floor vote.

It's assuming (IMO correctly) that it will be too politically difficult for Boehner to prevent the Senate's bill from coming to the floor of the House and being voted on.

In the House vote, it's likely the most conservative House members will still vote against it, but there should be more than enough votes for it to be passed (with the House votes coming from moderate Republicans + all/nearly all Democrats).

Boenher's refusal to bring the bill to the floor has been frustrating. Equally frustrating has been Harry Reid's refusal to bring bills to the Senate floor.

Both sides were standing firm by their "ideals". Neither side made any sincere efforts to find an actual solution.

Republicans didn't know how to compromise here. Allegedly, they want to open the government. All Democrats want to do is open the government.

Apparently, both sides want to open the government. So... why should Democrats cede the Republicans on issues? Compromise is when both sides give up something to meet in the middle. But Republicans haven't "given up" anything in any of their deals.

I agree 100%. I mentioned "Both sides" in my post. I am equally frustrated by the republicans and the Democrats.

When the Republican leader of the house refuses to bring bills to the floor AND the Democratic leader of the Senate refuses to bring bills to the floor they're both playing politics.

I'm not arguing that democrats are to blame. I'm arguing that BOTH sides are involved in these games, and BOTH sides should have been willing to bring more to the table.

I'm disappointed in how quickly HN is heading towards Reddit in its down voting. You can't even try to keep the conversation factual and mention the issues on both sides. Either you jump in with the current media story of how it's all republicans fault or you get down voted.

"It remains unclear whether the Senate bill can muster enough votes in the Republican-led House to pass before the 17 October deadline."

The US has actually defaulted a couple of times. During the War of 1812 (duh, war) and in 1979 (glitch?!?). About half the debt limit raises have had other terms ("dirty").

I should mention debt limit and paying service on the debt are separate things and the US still has enough income every month to service the debt, but they tend to get put together to add to the stress.

That's a false equivalence. Almost all bills have "dirty" attachments, but no party has ever held up the debt limit bills until the last minute like this, or attempted to extort concessions. The Republican talking points are trying to compare Obama show-voting against the debt limit, or Tip O'Neil negotiating with Reagan, but in those circumstances, there was never the threat to take the government to the edge of the deadline.

Prior to the recent crop of idealogue Republicans in the House, much political compromise came about by horse trading legislation, earmarks, committee appointments, et al, behind closed doors. Now with earmarks mostly gone, Tea Party republicans have nothing to show off to their constituents except for achievements in idealogical concessions from the other side. This is a new and dangerous precedent because "compromise" on idealogy appears as a loss to one's radical constituents. Your congressman used to go home and brag about an earmark for a local library or bridge, now he goes home to brag about how to overturned a Obamacare.

In no way is the current disfunction "the way it's always been" or "business as usual"

Also, the idea that the US can prioritize payments like that is false. First of all, the Republicans have tried numerous times to actually ban the practice of prioritizing payments to avoid default. Secondly, the Treasury's ancient computer systems can't just be updated overnight to hand these kinds of changes, secretary Jack Lew said as much.

Republicans have no faith the government can fix healthcare websites, but somehow are willing to risk the health of the US economy on the treasury to be agile and fast moving enough to both update computer systems as well as navigate a legal morass of contractual obligations to avoid potentially missing debt repayments.

Trying to downplay a default IMHO is pretty irresponsible. We don't need to run this experiment.

"No party has ever held up the debt limit bills until the last minute like this"

You might want to check the history on that.

"Prior to the recent crop of idealogue Republicans in the House, much political compromise came about by horse trading legislation, earmarks, committee appointments, et al, behind closed doors."

We cannot keep paying for those. Even the sequester is a joke for spending cuts.

"Also, the idea that the US can prioritize payments like that is false. First of all, the Republicans have tried numerous times to actually ban the practice of prioritizing payments to avoid default."

The House passed a bill to prioritize payments that was not allowed to be voted on in the Senate. This is just plain a false statement.

"Tea Party republicans have nothing to show off to their constituents except for achievements in idealogical concessions from the other side."

They have showed how alike the party leaderships are and are making a lot of people think about third parties. The 2012 election also showed that the 2012 convention problems were not a fluke.

"The House passed a bill to prioritize payments that was not allowed to be voted on in the Senate. This is just plain a false statement."

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/10/10/house-debt-ceiling-...

The actual bill passed in the House is H.R.807 - Full Faith and Credit Act, which was buried in the Senate. It provided for continue servicing of the debt.

> the Republicans have tried numerous times to actually ban the practice of prioritizing payments to avoid default.

I was with you up until this point, but saying "the Republicans" want to ban prioritization of payments is false. Most appropriations laws do not specify that the executive can spend "up to $X" on a given thing, but must spend exactly $X on that thing. To wit:

> Regarding the spending power, the picture is a bit more nuanced. In

> the early years of the Republic, Congress passed laws that authorized the

> president to spend “up to” certain sums of money, and the president was

> accordingly able to carry out his constitutional duties while spending

> money in amounts not precisely specified by Congress.

> In most areas of the federal budget, however, that practice has long

> since ended. Congress now typically specifies precise amounts of money

> (or, in the case of so-called entitlement programs, precise formulae to

> determine amounts of money) that the president must spend for each

> authorized program.

> When Congress appropriates the money necessary to fund those authorized programs, it effectively orders the

> president to spend no more and no less than those amounts. It would be

> odd, indeed, if a president were to assert that he could choose to, say,

> send Medicare beneficiaries (or their medical care providers) less money

> than they would be entitled to receive under the relevant statute. [1]

I agree with your other points. But the illegality of spending prioritization is (1) not a creation of Republicans and (2) a much bigger issue than changing some Treasury software.

1. p1199, http://www.columbialawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/...

Defaults are as much a matter of perception as of fact. Nobody blinked in 1979 because it was a technical glitch that did not reflect a lack of willingness to pay. Refusing to increase the debt ceiling is tantamount to saying "we're not going to pay any more money," which is not generally the kind of thing that makes debtholders and potential future debtholders very comfortable.

Not raising the debt ceiling and defaulting are two separate issues. We make them one issue to scare people, but one can go on without the other. In fact, both parties over multiple times have passed bills to pay the debt service (the House did this time) without increasing the debt limit.

1979 is interesting because of all the run-up that led to the glitch. 2006 is basically a reverse of today's position.

> the US still has enough income every month to service the debt, but they tend to get put together to add to the stress.

As I understand it, hitting the debt limit will nearly certainly quickly cause default due to timing issues of revenue and debt obligations combined with the fact that you then can't issue debt in advance to of obligations to address these timing issues.

The "problem" is that the House, the Senate, and the President (unless a veto is overcome) all have to agree- and so far, that hasn't happened. The Dems have a pretty good PR department, and are doing a good job of spinning it as though it is a problem with the (Republican led) House, though.

> The Dems have a pretty good PR department, and are doing a good job of spinning it as though it is a problem with the (Republican led) House, though.

This is funny. Even funnier is that the Republicans don't realize that most of society doesn't share their values or opinions.

http://www.taylormarsh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Obama_...

Your comment is extremely disingenuous. House Republicans have failed at all efforts at blocking the ACA/Obamacare, and are now attempting to play chicken against global markets in order to effect the outcome they desire.

They should be dragged to a public square, tarred and feathered.

Nobody needs PR crew to spin it that way. Only a lunatic could have honestly believe that a president would abandon his most significant achievement since taking office. So either Boehner and the minority of Republicans he is working with are lunatics, or else they are willing to risk ravaging an already suffering economy for the sake of undoing a single law.

Few of the Rethuglicans actually expect the President or the Dems to completely abandon ObamaCare. They would like a few concessions, perhaps merely offering a delay for a year in the individual mandate while the dust settles on the health exchanges, would have been enough. Up until a few days ago, the dems refused to even talk to the rethuglicans about it.

> The Dems have a pretty good PR department, and are doing a good job of spinning it as though it is a problem with the (Republican led) House

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) -- who has characterized the shutdown as something the Republican-led House (and the House leadership, particularly) did at the prompting of Republican Senator Ted Cruz --- would probably be pretty surprised to find that he was a Democratic PR operative.

Or perhaps, he's a politician trying to distance himself from the negative public opinion that has resulted from that PR?

False equivalency.

It was only the House Reps who were claiming the moral authority to hold a gun to the head of our economy, in order to squeeze concessions that they cannot possibly win by any normal legislative procedure.

Senator Reid could choose to do so. He does not, because it would be stupidly disruptive to create a crisis for a debt ceiling.

American economy will slide till https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma is resolved.

Stay tuned for part 2 in February.

Then part 3 later in 2014.

Sadly the elections won't fix this because of gerrymandering which is worse than any amount of money in politics.

The House will always be toxic because of it. Senators cannot play that game which is why they tend to be slightly more sane.

I still don't understand why we don't use algorithms to fix gerrymandering.

https://code.google.com/p/redistricter/

It's because you are thinking logically.

Politics sadly has nothing to do with logic, it's a popularity contest.

Because gerrymandering isn't the problem -- as evidenced by the fact that states that have non-partisan redistricting processes haven't managed to reduce the problem. There is no method of apportioning single-member districts whose representatives are elected in FPTP elections that has good results. Gerrymandering is politicians working to direct the way in which such a system fails in their own favor, but such a system is going to fail one way or another.

Because as far as the politicians who benefit from gerrymandering are concerned, it's not broken.

More's the pity--would've been nice to have an excuse to maybe kick all the bastards out of office.

Vote early, vote often.

The fact that it came to this point isn't enough?

Its come to this point quite often and probably will in the future. Both parties use the debt ceiling as a time to try to get what they want. Read each parties statements in the 2000 - 2008 era for a laugh at how they switched (almost word for word) this time.

I don't remember Democrats ever using threats over the debt ceiling. It seems to be specifically right-wing phenomenon [1]. In fact there are some for whom the endgame seems to be to force the government to default and assume it won't be catastrophic for the economy (one wonders if these folks have significant short/call positions).

[1] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/for-many-hard-l...

Look at the run-up to the 2006 bill. 1999 was also a very weird one.

Can you provide some links or analysis? I don't find any threats.

it is. but unfortunately we don't have an alternative..

All the bastards didn't cause this.

It's true, it's true...some merely went along with it.

Voting is how these people got in office to begin with. The problem is them, and the problem is us.

Exactly, this whole fiasco has really highlighted that there exists some fundamental problem in the system today. Normally the system of checks, and balances actually works so no individual can exploit the entirety... and if they do, they only have a limit time span to cause havoc, at which point the people vote them out.

however there's two flaws. A lot of people are putting emphasis on gerrymandering. Which I suppose is a practical problem that at least has some semblance of possibly being solved. However to me gerrymandering is really just exposing an even deeper problem, which is a large uneducated populous that is not only becoming uninformed but misinformed... and since we all live in our own bubbles, its really easy to gain confidence that the misinformation we have is true. Remember that Ted talk a few years ago about the filter bubble? This is a practical reality of its effects...

The thing that scares me on a personal level, is I have no clue if the information I take for granted is true or not... and i may very well be just as guilty in voting for the wrong candidates.

When you to want reform an institution, you need to make sure you don't replace the bad with the worse.

The main asshat in Congress stirring the pot and helping cause this dissention is a first term senator: Ted Cruz. What we have is a bunch of new regressive "reformers" that are actually being funded by the Koch brothers and people of their ilk, that think destroying the government is a good thing.

unconstitutional?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origination_Clause

The Origination Clause, sometimes called the Revenue Clause, is part of the United States Constitution. This clause says that all bills for raising revenue must start in the House of Representatives, but the Senate can amend them as in the case of non-revenue bills.

What revenue is being raised? This is a hike of the debt limit, and allocation of funds for spending. No new taxes to speak of.

Ironic that in 2006 Senator Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling for many of the same reasons that the GOP is voicing today.

One of Ronald Reagan's most famous quotes was from a propaganda piece against Medicare, about how it would end freedom in the country... but when he became president he expanded it. Being President has a way to change one's perspective.

Utter nonsense, a more plausible and realistic explanation would be Presidential candidates say anything to get themselves into power, and then it becomes abundantly clear that the President is little else than a figurehead.

The goals, perspective, opinion, etc of the President are irrelevant -- they are (and always will be) a puppet.

As we know appr. 2 405 510 175 users in internet. If we send 1-2 dollar to US it can help. I can send something to save US.

because world depends from US and back.

Lets open kickstarter or something else.

I'd send a dollar but only if it went towards a swift kick in every single American's ass.

save ass its good facility

Reply on news.ycombinator.com