The vote by the House to raise the debt ceiling has been placed on hold!! The vote which was supposed to happen three hours ago was abruptly placed on hold by Speaker of the House John Boehner. The reason, you ask? Well, Boehner can't even get enough members of his own party to agree with the bill. The Upper part of the House, the Senate has already decided that they will vote the Boehner plan down. This is causing many more problems for Boehner’s plan. According to Luke Russert, Republican senators have told him "if the bill is going to be voted down by the Senate, why should we get our constituents mad?" Now some of you are wondering what the big deal is about this debt ceiling. Well, if the debt ceiling isn't raised, the world's number one superpower, the United States of America, will default on its debts. It will ruin American credit, and like people, bad credit can ruin lives. If it isn't raised by Aug 3rd, the treasury will be forced to decide who gets paid. Herein lies the problem. The treasury has to pay $306 billion in bills (could you imagine?), however, it only has $172 billion dollars. So who gets paid? Well, when you have 80 million checks to dish out, you pay in order of importance. First you pay interest on your debt (so you don't meet the "definition" of default), then Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, Defense Vendor, and finally Unemployment. Five programs don’t sound so bad, right? I mean it's only five programs; we should have at least some money to help regulate other programs...right? WRONG!!!! Who remembers the two figures I gave earlier referring to the money we have in bills and the money we have to pay said bills. (If you don't remember, I said there are $306 Billion dollars worth of bills, and only $172 Billion dollars to pay them with...) Now let me show you the problem, those five programs, those five necessary programs, when paid add up to $172 billion. See the issue? Find out more and comment Beyond the Break (Click the Read More Button)
Here's what goes unpaid
Active Military
Veteran Affairs
Federal Salaries & Benefits
Dept. of Education
Dept. of Labor
Dept. of Justice
Dept. of Food & Nutrition (which helps provide food to low income families)
Etc...
Yet, even with all that, people are forgetting the little things (or actually really big things) infrastructure. Infrastructure often goes overlooked in media, yet, here in NYC you can see the damage ignored infrastructure can bring. Google "Bronx water main break". You should see a story of a 103-year-old water main breaking and flooding the Bronx - water up to hood of cars ruining basements etc... Water mains, bridges, and of course levees… all a part of infrastructure. Had infrastructure gotten the proper funds the levees in Louisiana wouldn't have broken! The debt ceiling is a MATTER of LIFE and DEATH.
[As of 10:30 it was announced there will be no vote tonight].The republican party has been criticizing our President over a "lack of job creation". They have been trying to appeal to the Blue Collar man, lamenting his loss of jobs in manufacturing and construction. Oh please! They have offered no tax cuts to those in a lower tax bracket, attempted to raise taxes to those in said tax bracket, and now when INFASTRUCTURE, a job that encompasses both AMERICAN manufacturing and construction is place on the table they ignore the chance to vote it up!
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