Good for Patty Murray. I think I am in love.

I'd sure like to see some really aggressive analysis of the facts of both the "Patty Murray" Senate Plan vs the "Paul Ryan" House Plan, followed by consensus and resolution -------> instead of religious-like testimonials based on nothing but tribal belief and babble.

Any hope that will happen? LOL We'll likely bumble and stumble ever onward, round and round the circus of 2-party gridlock; likely muddling through, wasting more time, while critical global problems need to be addressed.

These ten-year projections make no sense -- it's a farce, projecting savings from future budgets over-which this Congress has no control. Just get the next 2-4 years in order and consider this year's work done.

It's time the News Media and the People got into this. If the Senate Budget Committee Plan does indeed make sense, we should mobilize a massive effort to support it, pass it and get on with other business -- with a take-no-prisoners, overwhelming unified effort. This budgeting fiasco has gone on long enough.

HalFonts: Where did you get that little guy grabbing the cup? It's great! I'd love to have one where Dick Cheney grabs someones wallet.

2950-10K #9 writes: "Patty for President someday!"

You got that right. Our long term (1992) senior Senator from Washington State, Patty Murray is good, experienced and ready to do the job. This Budget exposure may be setting the stage for 2016. She deserves very careful consideration. Could happen.

I'd love to see Murray and Ryan repeat 2012.

I agree about the national News Media. I bit my tongue as I wrote it, knowing how unbalanced it is. (I've driven cross-country many times and know what's on the radio most places). In pockets, we have "progressive news" (two stations in the PacificNW); however most places Rust Limberger and the Wanabes, Religion, Country-music and Sports rule the airwaves (thanks to deregulation).

Even in Washington, DC "Inside The Beltway" -- other than neutral NPR Public Radio, there is almost NO Progressive Radio. And, Teevey is the usual mix of drivel and entertainment masquerading as "news".

So yes it's citizens media, mostly on the Internet, where real ideas are being shared and thrashed-out. Folks are waking up; thanks mostly to extreme excess by the Rabid-Right the news is getting out.

My idea is when the Moderates on the Right, Center and Left finally realize we're ALL gettin-screwed by the Mega-Money at the top . . . Then we'll be getting somewhere. However, as long as we're divided Left and Right (same as Suni-Shia; Hindu-Moslem; Protestant-Catholic, Hitu-Tutsi,Black-White, etc-etc) -- the Power-Elites will be running off with the loot. When somehow we The Critical-Masses-in-the-Middle figure it out; then, look out.

Wow more spending. Lets hope the Chinese do not run out of money to give to Obama. Or let's hope they don't raise the interest rates. Ah, what ever what is a trillion more, besides just 12 zeros behind a number. we can always tax the rich.

Oh what a surprise...Look fokes, its that kanook with more pointless dribble. Here's a hanky wipe your chin!

MMmmNachos ~ I just got through responding to your debate with Ken Ware yesterday. Couldn't help it after he mentioned my name. Here's a copy of it for your approval:

Ken Ware Wrote ~ "Your assumption that I did not have an answer and therefore would not reply is typical of the people who see themselves as some type of superior intelligence, like DeAnneMarc and you who think they have all the answers! Ha, are you guys wrong as usual. "

Ken, if you don't want me to put words into your mouth kindly refrain from putting them into mine. I was going to avoid participating in this debate; but, since you've already declared my opinion "wrong as usual" I feel compelled to voice it. (Please let me say something before saying I'm wrong!) HA!

In my most sincere and humble opinion both you and MMmmNachos are correct--that is from your particular perspectives. You both left out one critical fact. The war in Vietnam was STUPID! Allow me to explain.

You do not shove a political ideology down a nations throat by force. This is what cost us the war. Kennedy was wise and correct in how he approached the problem of Communists incursions of South East Asia. He understood that your concerns Ken were valid. Russia and China had a great stake in Vietnam and needed to control the port cities and industrial base. That is why he sent equipment and advisers there. He wanted to even the playing field in a diplomatic way. He was famous for publicly saying the future of Vietnam belonged to the Vietnamese people. It was they who had to win or lose the war.

Kennedy understood that use of our military would seem provocative and threatening to all the people of Vietnam. He realized that alienating the people there would create a quagmire that would turn the majority of the Vietnamese against Democracy and would be a self-defeating action. Unfortunately, our idiot Capitalist and Military Industrial Complex thought other wise. They wanted to inflict Capitalism on the nation and enslave it's people and didn't care who they had to kill to do it. Kennedy was the first of thousands of casualties. Johnson and Nixon were imbeciles themselves. I remember Johnson during a televised interview talking about how comfortably his trousers fit his crotch. What a moron!

Nixon was a well educated fool. I believe he swallowed hook and line the domino theory and earnestly believed his own rhetoric. I on the other hand was infuriated by it. He had no common sense or sense of diplomacy whatsoever. He was the perfect mouth piece for the Capitalist and military interest. I remember listening to one of his State of the Union speeches when I was 7 years old. I wanted to throw my Legos at the TV set in rage. My parents thought it was cute and laughed at me. That only pissed me off even more. I've never been so ;pissed off in my life.

MMmmNachos, it is important to realize what the country was like back then. High paying, good jobs were plentiful. Rent was low. We manufactured everything you could imagine and produced goods superior to any other country. Most households had only one wage earner and did fine. People could afford to live and live well. It was easy to convince the populous that Communism was evil and that anyone would rather live in a Democracy like we do. Intellects like John Kennedy or myself aren't common; and, back then they weren't very popular. (They're not that popular today either.)

MMmmNachos, you should go easy on Ken. He was a patriotic and brave young man who believed he was doing the right thing for his country and the Vietnamese. That is all there is to that. There is nothing wrong with doing what your heart says is right. After all, that is what we are all doing right now. We are all good people. We are all human. No one is perfect. If you want to vent, vent on the irresponsible leaders and their crooked, bumbling benefactors of death who lied and cheated this country into a war that tainted the ideology of Democracy all over the world. They are evil and they are STUPID! Don't blame the victims. Don't blame the people. Whatever you do, don't alienate those people on your own side. There's been enough of that nonsense in our recent history already. Its only a recipe for failure. Divide and conquer. Don't help the enemy.

That's my two cents!

PS Hope you feel better Ken

I'm sorry everyone! I must have missed something. The way everyone is celebrating the news of this Senate bill can I assume it already passed The House? After all, it's The House where all great ideas go to die, right?

Maybe I've been too distracted by the Papal Conclave and missed The House vote. If so I apologize. If not, wake me up when President Obama signs the thing into law. Till then its toilet paper with a fancy letter head.

And your 2cents is well received. DanneMarc, let me first start by saying that I do not consider KEN WARE my enemy; not that you implied diferently. The issue I have with him is more about his refusal to except the truth. Yes you are right back then (during the Viet Nam war) lots of Americans got on board with the Government believing they were doing right. As they did during WWII and as many did after 9/11. When will we stop being duped and start holding our Government accountable for all its lies and corruption. How many more American lives are we going to allow our government to waste just so they can continue to spread their brand of Capitalism.
I much more appreciated yours and HalFonts insight regarding the questions I was asking KEN WARE, because they were not some patriotic flag waving tale, and came around full circle. For christ sakes we are living in the "information age" and it upsets me when someone, especially someone who experienced first hand a huge moment in our history but does not have the capacity to admit they got suckered by our Government. to me that is one of the very factors as to why we keep making the same mistakes...Americans - in general - are unwilling to accept and admit that our own government has many times been the enemy. Its as if it is unAmerican to admit when we are wrong. And people wonder why so many - here and over seas - see us as tyrants.
DOES ANYBODY UNDERSTAND THAT I LOVE AND SUPPORT DEMOCRACY...THAT I AM A CONSTITUTIONALIST...THAT for the most part I SUBSCRIBE TO JEFFERSONIAN PHILOSOPHY, as well as BUDDISM, and GANDHISM...I CANNOT SUPPORT A COUNTRY THAT IS SO ARROGANT TO THINK THAT THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO INVADE AND OCCUPY ANOTHER SOVERNING NATION...LIVING BY THE CREEDO "BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY...THAT THE ENDS JUSTIFY THESE VIOLENT AND HOSTLE MEANS" IS VERY MUCH THE DEMISE OF OUR WAYS!!!DOES ANYBODY UNDERSTAND THIS!?!?

Sure Ken Ware proudly served, so did my grand father, my two uncles, and my dad, ...But the full truth is they all got suckered, as have all those serving today. But that doesn't mean I blame them for not seeing through the smoke and mirrors. I myself when I graduated high school in 1990 was going to join the Navy, but thanks to my grand father, and serviving uncle (the other one was killed in Korea), and their brutal honesty regarding our government and its ill intentions, I chose not to and went to college to get my degree in education and American History.

Until the Ken Wares start to realize that its okay to have been young and gung ho, but to deny reality, only endangers future generations of the consequences that come from deniing reality.

This is the wrong approach in both the Democratic and Republican proposals.

Our economy's recovery is impeded by structural factors whose components are not susceptible to a Keynesian diagnosis or to a Keynesian remedy such as strictly more stimulus financed by debt without stipulations as to who owns the resulting new productive capital output capacity. Structural changes have been exponentially occurring in the U.S. economy due to tectonic shifts in the technologies of production. We suffer a demand shortfall because the base of "customers with money" is being depleted because of these tectonic shifts, large-scale offshoring of jobs, decline in the demand for low-skilled workers, skill inadequacies, broken and/or outdated infrastructure and the impact of rising fossil fuel energy costs not yet off set by sustainable, renewal clean energy production. Structurally, the shortfall in aggregate demand is due to the exponential disassociation of production and consumption, and the reason that ordinary citizens must gain access to productive capital ownership to improve their economic well-being and become "customers with money" to support the full potential of the future economy. Yet ownership of productive capital is never discussed out in the open and addressed as an issue in the national media or by academia or our elected governmental representatives. Without a policy shift to broaden productive capital ownership simultaneously with economic growth, further development of technology and globalization will undermine the American middle class and make it impossible for more than a minority of citizens to achieve middle-class status. What is needed are various kinds of targeted public investment spending that simultaneously expands private ownership of productive capital formation and creates "customers with money," not simply aggregate demand financed with debt that benefits only the few who already own America.

The purpose of production in a market economy is the consumption of products and services by the consumers who make up the economy. But without income, the non-capital ownership class, the 99 percenters, cannot afford to purchase the products and services they desire. But when incomes rise among consumers who have the need and desire to improve their material standard of living, the market demand for products and services strengthens, which in turn increases production and results in a growth economy.

You can’t have mass production without mass human consumption. It is the exponential disassociation of production and consumption that is the problem in the United States economy, and the reason that ordinary citizens must gain access to productive capital ownership to improve their economic well-being and consumer earning power.

The ONLY viable solution to the economic decline of America is for our leaders, academia and the national media to recognize that all individuals to be adequately productive cannot do so when a tiny minority (capital owners) produce a major share and the vast majority (labor workers), a minor share of total output of the economy's products and services. The system must be reformed to create a world in which the most productive factor of the FUTURE—physical capital—now owned by a handful of people––is owned by a majority—and ultimately 100 percent—of the consumers, while respecting all the constitutional rights of present capital owners.

A balanced Just Third Way approach to building a FUTURE economy that supports affluence for EVERY American is presently not in the national discussion. It appears that the President of the United States, the elected Congressional representatives and Senators, academia, and the media are oblivious to this principled solution that has the ingredients to power economic growth at double-digit GNP rates.

This goal requires investment in FUTURE income-producing productive capital assets while simultaneously broadening private, individual ownership of the resulting expansion of existing large corporations and future corporations. Not only is employee ownership the norm to be sought wherever there are workers but beyond employee ownership the norm should be to create an OWNERSHIP CULTURE whereby EVERY American can benefit financially by owning a SUPER IRA-TYPE Capital Homestead Account (CHA) portfolio of income-producing, full-voting, full-dividend payout securities in America's expanding corporations and those newly created to produce the future products and services needed and wanted by society.

If I were in a position of influence, I would reach out to President Obama and the leadership of his Organizing for Action as well as to other political leaders, and call for them to convene a national discussion using the national media and social media, and our educational institutions, to open up a discussion on EVERY CITIZEN AN OWNER opportunity. We need fresh and inspired leaders who can educate on this issue at this time because academia, the media, and our so-called leaders are not addressing how people make money and the significance of OWNING income-producing productive capital assets. We need to get people to understand that as with today, in the FUTURE we will continue to experience tectonic shifts in the technologies of production, which will destroy and devalue jobs. This is a crucial understanding because at present for the 99 percent of the nation a JOB is the ONLY source of income to support themselves and their families. We need political leaders who will commit to a government policy focus on OWNERSHIP CREATION, not JOB CREATION, which will result and naturally follow as the economy revs up to double-digit GDP growth and fully applies technological innovation and invention to shift from unnecessary labor toil to human-intelligent machines, super-automation, robotics, and digital computerized operations. The Federal Reserve to stop monetizing unproductive debt, and begin creating an asset-backed currency that could enable every child, woman and man to establish a Capital Homestead Account or "CHA" at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income. Steadily over time this will create a robust economy with millions of "customers with money" to purchase the products and services that are needed and wanted.

Our leaders need to put on the table for national discussion this SUPER-IRA idea and the necessary reform of our tax policies that would incentivize corporations to pay out fully their earnings in the form of dividend income and issue and sell new stock to grow. The CHA would process an equal allocation of productive credit to every citizen exclusively for purchasing full-dividend payout shares in companies needing funds for growing the economy and private sector jobs for local, national and global markets,

The shares would be purchased on credit wholly backed by projected "future savings" in the form of new productive capital assets as well as the future marketable goods and services produced by the newly added technology, renewable energy systems, plant, rentable space and infrastructure added to the economy.

Risk of default on each stock acquisition loan would be covered by private sector capital credit risk insurance and reinsurance (ala the Federal Housing Administration concept), but would not require citizens to reduce their funds for consumption to purchase shares.

Essentially, the pressing need is for everyone in a position of influence to encourage President Obama to raise the consciousness of the America people by making his NUMBER ONE focus the introduction of a National Right To Capital Ownership Bill that restores the American dream of property ownership as a primary source of personal wealth.

This is the solution to America's economic decline in wealth and income inequality, which will result in double-digit economic growth and simultaneously broaden private, individual ownership so that EVERY American's income significantly grows, providing the means to support themselves and their families with an affluent lifestyle. The Just Third Way Master Plan for America's future is published at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797.

Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm

I must be wearing orthodics Kend, cause I stand corrected!. But seriously I do agree with just about everything you say. Though I will argue that of course I "forgot the word 'hardworking'"; how would I know to call you that!? Anyyyywaaaay, I do like the concept of the Canadian banking system, at least for how you described it.
Its sad that our financle system is set up to keep people in debt; more money more debt. The U.S. Banking use to function more like what you point out; "We [didn't] loan money to people that could not affoard to pay it back" But everything was different then. As I mentioned; "wages were more in tune to the cost of living...The job market was robust...We actually had an industry...There was a strong middle class...Majority of house holds could comfortable thrive on one income. None of that can be said about todays economy...All the way back to Reagan, (I don't blame him...he was just a Wall St. puppet saying what he was told to say).

As for your opinion on government spending being wasteful...I do hear what you are saying, however, I do not agree that it is the time - morally and ethically - to cut financle aid programs, when unemployment is 14% and there is about 35% that qualify as underemployed and rely on food stamps and medicare, and government assisted living. Don't get me wrong I am not for creating dependency and allowing people to manipulate and abuse "the system"...But isn't that what Wall St did??? Infact yes it is, and our government looked the other way, while CEO's and Captains of Industry stole hundreds of billions of dollars, to the point that the Government had to bail out the banks, and left the bill to the;"underpaid, over taxed, hardworking middle and poor class". Right now there are over 68 million people that are homeless here in the U.S. That is 18% more than before 2008. Now just isn't the time to cut our social programs. now is the time for all these so called "Job Creators" to start creating good jobs...How!?!?Heres a thought bring back the jobs from overseas. Pay workers a liveable wage (that's about double the Fed. min. wage). If these so called ivy league buissness men are so smart they should be able to do this and still keep their yacht, beach house mansion, and at leat one of the Bentleys.
In other words before you start cutting social programs you better get a Jobs Creation bill passed first.
Now for "Green Energy"...I agree that the U.S. has failed misserablely in writing and enacting a functioning policy...but that isn't do to a lack of technology, resources and consumer demand...It is more about poor managment, and money from the BIG oil lobby to keep Washington inline with a love for BIG OIL. No Green Energy isn't cost effective right now, but we are also 30 years behind where we ought to be. Several other countries; China, Germany, Australia, Japan, have been active in the area of Solar, Wind, and Bio Diesals since the mid 80's with Germany already advancing their Energy policy to being Nuclear free within the next 20 years. Yet the U.S. is still talking about coal and advancing Nuclear, even though it proves wrong in everyway, and dispite how we have even better conditions for Solar and Wind then Germany. I could go one even further about Green Energy; My wife works for a solar company, I have a friend who has operating and expanding a green algae farm for bio fuel, and my brother that has lived in Germany since '78. who lives in a 25 unite appartment complex that uses PV pannels for power and solar water collectors for hot water. And guess what? IT WORKS!!! Sound to me like there is an American Industry waiting to take off, creating jobs Jobs, JOBS! All while getting us away from Coal, and Nuclear.