Gary Varvel for September 20, 2013

Congress makes the budget.

Obama, “Anything that I have said in the past is an oblivious lie made up by Republicans and conservatives in an attempt to discredit me and show me as incompetent.”

@Genome

The first and ninth panel is virtually the same statement. Your Kool-Aid vintage 2006 must really be keeping you buzzed for how fuzzy you see things. It’s amazing how blind you are.

Truly disappointing. I wonder how different this would have sounded had Mr. Romney won the election and made good on his promises to cut taxes while significantly boosting military spending.

Two bad candidates. One of them had to win. Deal with it. We survived 8 years of Dubya; we’ll survive 8 years of Obama.

The need to raise the debt limit signifies a failure of the federal government to get its house in order. It has to happen, if for no other reason than to keep our interest rate from rising due to credit downgrade, which will surely happen if either (or both) the debt limit is not raised or the government is shut down.

It is well past time for all involved to put aside party politics, posturing, and blame, and do the work that they were elected to do. This has happened way too often and the can is just continually kicked down the road.

The only way to rein in spending is to examine who’s spending what, determining how much (if any) spending should be cut in that department/agency/etc. If so, the hard part comes: what gets cut, who loses, and what are the consequences to the country at large.

For instance, Medicaid just reduced payments for an eye exam by about $20 each in Virginia. The upside: costs are lower. The downside: more doctors will refuse to participate, with more needy people ending up in the emergency room as a result. At this time, there is not a single eye surgeon in my area who will see a Medicaid patient, regardless of need. Net savings or loss?

The biggest surprise(?) is that there are too many people (directly and indirectly) on the government payroll. Some people will have to lose their jobs. In this economy, no one is willing to be the one to cut jobs, even if this will benefit us in the long run. So no one will do anything, because keeping their position is far more important than serving their country. And that means they are not worthy of re-election. Remember that when you decide to throw your bum back in on election day. He/she may be good for your district in terms of pork, but are his/her policies helping the nation, or just your district? And what’s more important to your children and theirs?

“investor class” Sounds like you have no investments and are upset that someone has more than you do. We do have to pay out debts, but without borrowing more money other non-essential services have to be cut. Take an economics class and you will understand that money is finite.

The deficit has dropped 60% since 2009. http://news.investors.com/blogs-capital-hill/112012-634082-federal-deficit-falling-fastest-since-world-war-ii.htm

What has really raised our debt ceiling, for decades? Wars.

Rockngolfer said, about 8 hours ago “Congress makes the budget.”-The Democrat Senate has not written or passed a Budget for years. They keep spending the Fed.Reserve’s imaginary “money” (at $85 Billion each month) for a phony “credit balance”…..the Treasury stopped the Debt Clock but the true debt and annual deficit continues to RISE.-This administration is Looney Tunes in charge; corrupt practices that would put private citizens into jail.-The “norm” for Obama and his cabinet is to ignore every law and constitutional “no-no” that Congress enacts laws, by amending and changing laws on the books, including Obamacare….19 changes todate. That is evidence of a Keystone Kops “enforcement of law” regime. Why are so many Americans (who have a duty to hold elected officials accountable) just quietly allowing this Chicago-style Thuggery to continue???

Do you nimrods still not understand that raising the debt ceiling is only agreeing to pay the money that we’ve already SPENT?

Wow, I point out one fact, and have several people tell me I am wrong.I wish you all could go off into your fact free universe away from here, and be happy Somalians.

@NightGaunt….Texas or Maine does not have an earned reputation of being Thuggery Regimes!-more evidence of Obama’s chosen Looney Tunes rulers, this time in the Court System=http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/19/Senate-Judiciary-Committee-Approves-Radical-Pro-Abortion-Law-Professor-For-D-C-Circuit-Court-Nina Pillard, just approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Cmte, for the D.C. Circuit Court.She has a career-long record of being radical and sneers at Motherhood’s traditional standards. She was approved on a Party line vote of 10 Democrats to 8 GOP righteous votes.-The article is filled with links to evidence of her record.Her views are to the left of MAO TSE TUNG in my opinion.“US Cnstn grants a right to abortion” and “abstinence education is un-constitutional” and “her 2011 paper was titled ’Against the New Maternalism” (by which) "society is creating a ‘self-fulfilling cycle of discrimination’, " and her expressed opinion that ultra-sound “manufactures a deceptive images of fetus-as-autonomous-being that the anti-choice (anti-abortion) movement has popularized…”-case closed.

OK, do you understand that the House controls the purse strings? You know, the GOP controlled House?