Chinese agency downgrades US credit rating

BEIJING (AP) — A little-known Chinese ratings agency has downgraded the rating of the United States from A+ to A. The move is unlikely to affect U.S. borrowing rates but reflects the pessimism Washington's debt battle has generated worldwide.

President Barack Obama signed emergency legislation to boost the debt ceiling ahead of a deadline to avoid an unprecedented national default.

Still, China's Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. said Wednesday that the deal doesn't change the fact that U.S. debt growth has outpaced its economy and fiscal revenue.

Dagong is little-known outside China but hopes to compete with global ratings agencies Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch.

Moody's has said the U.S. will retain its highest bond rating but with a "negative" outlook.

Bailey Comment: You dimocrats should be happy now, you voted the guy in as president!

Limbaugh: Don't Be Fooled — Debt Deal Means More Taxes

Whether the deal to reduce the government deficit passes or not, says radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, the American people are still going to get a tax increase.

“Any way you slice it you are going to get tax increases. That’s how screwed we are,” he said.

Limbaugh blames the complex accounting done by the Congressional Budget Office, he said on his radio show on Monday.

President George W. Bush’s tax cuts that are due to expire at the end of next year, he says. If Obama extends the cuts, the CBO will consider that a $ 5 trillion reduction in government income which will have to be made up elsewhere. If they expire, that’s a direct tax hike on Americans, Limbaugh said.

“Anyone wanting to tell you there are no tax increases in this technically may be right, this piece of legislation does not have a specific tax increases in it. But what’s slated to happen over the next few months results in one,” Limbaugh said.

“There hasn’t been a significant cut in spending,” he added. “There’s nothing that’s going to affect the rate of growth of government, nothing that’s making it smaller.”


Read more on Newsmax.com: Limbaugh: Don't Be Fooled — Debt Deal Means More Taxes
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Gabrielle Giffords Brings Down the House

WASHINGTON — Emergency legislation to avoid an economy-rattling government default sped through the House Monday night, a scant day before the deadline for action — the dramatic vote made all the more memorable by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' first appearance in Congress since suffering a head wound in a shooting six months ago.
The vote was 269-161, but all eyes were on Giffords, who drew thunderous applause as she walked into the House chamber and cast her vote in favor of the bill.
A final Senate sign-off for the measure is virtually assured on Tuesday.

Giffords made a dramatic entrance Monday night during the crucial debt-limit vote and drew loud applause and cheers from surprised colleagues. They gave her a standing ovation.

As lawmakers stood on the floor, staring up at the vote board, Giffords slowly made her way through an entrance on the Democratic side of the chamber. Applause built and rolled like a wave through the House as lawmakers realized that their colleague had returned.

Vice President Joe Biden was also on hand as she entered the House, escorted by her chief of staff and by Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

On Jan. 8, Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, was shot in the head in the parking lot of a Tucson grocery store while meeting with constituents. Six people were killed and 13 others, including Giffords, were wounded. The man charged in the shooting, Jared Lee Loughner, has pleaded not guilty to 49 charges

On the House floor, Giffords hugged and kissed fellow lawmakers. As time ticked off on the vote, Democrats and Republicans made their way toward her.

She cast her first vote — for the debt-limit bill — and left the Capitol.


Read more on Newsmax.com: Gabrielle Giffords Brings Down the House
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Aimless Ames, A Lot of Numbers and a Tiger

Worth Its Weight In...Straw

With all the news of doom and gloom and threats to halt Social Security checks, you might not have noticed there is a political event coming up that the media will inevitably hype - the Ames Straw Poll. Some Republican Presidential candidates will be falling all over themselves to get a few people to vote for them in a meaningless “event” in the small town of Ames, Iowa.

Why do I say it’s meaningless? Because it is. A look at the history of the Ames poll shows no correlation between the winner and the eventual nominee. More importantly, it shows no correlation between the winner and the winner of the Iowa Caucus. It’s pointless, unless your goal is to waste a lot of money.

The poll started in 1979, so there’s no storied history here, no long tradition of...well, anything. But let’s pretend for a second, shall we?http://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2011/07/31/aimless_ames,_a_lot_of_numbers_and_a_tiger

New numbers, no surprise: Affordable Care Act anything but affordable

We already knew this, but, today, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid released a 10-year forecast that confirms it: National health spending will grow at a rate faster than it would have if Obamacare had not passed. The Washington Times reports:

Total spending is projected to grow annually by 5.8 percent under Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, according to a 10-year forecast by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released Thursday. Without the ACA, spending would grow at a slightly slower rate of 5.7 percent annually. …

The federal government is projected to spend 20 percent more onMedicaid, while spending on private health insurance is expected to rise by 9.4 percent. …

“Simply put, this report states the obvious, that Americans have known for more than a year – the $2.6 trillion law only makes the fundamental problem of skyrocketing health care costs worse,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.

The White House responded to the report in a blog post, spinning the report to emphasize, “National Health Expenditures Reach Historic Low.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Nancy deParle writes:http://hotair.com/archives/2011/07/28/new-numbers-no-surprise-affordable-care-act-anything-but-affordable/

Social Security: Broke at the Beginning

It is an axiom in the insurance business that insurance is not bought but sold. In 1935 Franklin Roosevelt sold Congress and Congress sold the U. S. the Social Security Act, the biggest, most comprehensive, most expensive mass insurance policy ever written. Since then its purchasers, the nation's taxpayers, have had occasion to read their policy carefully and, if they have detected no outright jokers, their reaction has been such that practically every politician in the U. S. from Franklin Roosevelt down has put revision of Social Security at the top of his must list.-  "Pie from the Sky" Time Magazine, Feb. 13, 1939

 “It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature,” said American-born writer Henry James. While generally James has been proved correct, in the case of Social Security, the literature, at least by volume, has swamped the history.

One of the earliest pieces of literature that contributes to the history of Social Security is Time Magazine’s Pie from The Sky, an account of a House Committee hearing called to deal with “reforming” Social Security. The hearing was held four years after passage of the Act and before even a single check was written to old age beneficiaries. The Time article is stunning not because it gives us a quaint, sun-dappled and leaded window into the Norman Rockwell past, but because it provided a pinpoint, spotlight prediction of the acrimonious future of a failed federal program.

It predicted, amongst other things, that by 1980 the “the bond interest” on Social Security “will in turn have to be met by the Treasury, through other taxes.” That is, that the insurance “scheme” was really just a Ponzi scheme that would collapse in time if other taxes to fund it weren’t raised in the future. In fact, the prediction was off by just three years. The solvency of the program was addressed in landmark legislation pushed through by President Ronald Reagan and Speaker Tip O’Neil in 1983. That legislation though only amounted to a twenty-year truce in the Social Security war. The truce ended at the turn of this century.

"Some of the proposals were less than ideal," writes US News, "one that was ultimately enacted into law raised the regressive payroll tax, which hit working- and middle-class Americans harder than wealthier citizens. Nonetheless, the 1983 agreement did succeed in extending the trust fund's solvency for a couple of generations by raising the retirement age to 67 from 65 (to be phased in by 2027); imposing a six-month delay in the cost-of-living adjustment; and requiring government employees to pay into Social Security for the first time."

The Time article also said that the federal government would borrow the money accumulated from the Social Security “reserve” to finance deficit spending and ultimately the public would have to pay the bill:http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2011/07/23/social_security_broke_at_the_beginning