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Comment by cdoxsey | Hacker News Reader

Politics in America have always been ideological, bitter and partisan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLj6yY4P_Rg). 150 years ago this country split in two over ideological issues and then we fought a horrendous war to figure out who was the winner.

And everyone keeps talking about default, but failing to raise the debt ceiling does not cause us to default. There's plenty of revenue, and plenty of other spending to cut before we get there.

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How casually you throw away the institutions you were very fortunate to inherit, with no understanding of what you're doing.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/10/14/the-default...

>>> There's plenty of revenue, and plenty of other spending to cut before we get there.

The sequester should take care of some those spending cuts. Getting a Democratically controlled government to cut spending is pretty hard considering they believe the way to stimulate growth is to spend and increase taxes.

EDIT: Not saying Democrats are the only ones who like to spend - Bush pushed the debt up quite a bit while he was in office so Republicans are not blameless either. However, most Republicans believe in smaller government, less taxes, and being fiscally responsible.

Republicans only pay lip service to those ideals, once in office they're far bigger and more irresponsible spenders than democrats. Democrats reduce deficits, republicans increase them, that's the reality.

Your reality is strange.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.ht...

EDIT:

I would question the downvote, considering my post is just a link I grabbed from the first google search on 'deficit spending by year', but then I realized that cognitive dissonance is a harsh mistress. I won't judge if you lash out with your mouse. Aaand I just broke my own rule about replying to downvotes...

No, my reality is factual and your link supports what I said, it shows Bush ballooning the deficit and Obama reducing it. You'll find the same thing with the previous Bush and Regan ballooning the deficit while Clinton reduced it.

Hah, this is a laughable claim. The final year of the Bush administration (partially shared by Obama, fiscally) being higher and Democrats 'reducing it' is a word game. So are you saying if Democrats give themselves a 1 trillion deficit (via their own policies) and then reduce it by half, this is somehow better than Republicans giving themselves a 500 billion deficit and reducing it by 10 percent?

Bush reduced the deficit over several years too, did you ignore that? Gods, you partisans are hilarious.

Thanks for the down vote without a shred of evidence supporting your claim. Very typical of how Liberals argue.

Your bias is showing. I didn't down vote you, as I replied to you I'm not even allowed to down vote you. And to then presume I did it because I'm liberal, you're clearly not the type for a rational discussion.

It's pretty typical of how humans argue. This doesn't make it a good idea, but painting your opponents with it is a cheap shot. You can find plenty of examples of this on every side of any issue.

Who considers defaulting to be fiscally responsible?

Unfortunately, the computer systems used for government payments do not have the capability to prioritize payments, so that wasn't an option. We would stop paying at least part of our debt, and that puts us in a state of default.

Granted, government-run computer systems have not impressed lately, but a claim that they are this outrageously awful should link to a reputable source. Otherwise it just seems like you pulled it out of your ass. No private corporation would tolerate an A/P system that fails to provide a prioritization and approval process.

"Pulled it out of my ass"? Harsh words for something that's common knowledge, especially as it's almost constantly mentioned (albeit often ignored) anytime anyone brings up prioritization of debt payments.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-shutdown-treasury-debt...

If you're so out of the loop that you haven't already heard about this issue, you get dozens of resources with a simple google.

Thanks for the operating the Google! I don't normally read the LA Times. The crux of it seems to be the proposition that bills are paid without human approval. I simply don't believe that. I realize the government has anti-fraud options unavailable to the private sector, but such a house of cards would have collapsed a long time ago.

"Lew would not commit to prioritizing payments on government bonds if the debt limit is not raised. He said the decision would be up to Obama."

No, I don't have a source to back up any of this. Sorry about the "ass" comment; I shouldn't have phrased my point in that manner.

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