Comments

1
poor goldy.

addicts get so testy when you cut off their supply of smack.....
2
Would the ass of congress simply be Boehner's ass since he is the majority leader, or is there some constitutionally mandated fundament into which the coin can be lodged?

3
Don't even tempt fate suggesting Reagan on the coin. The RepubliKKKans want his neo-fascist face on all of our money--as if he were the Queen of AmeriKKKa.
4
If they continue their obstreperous teabagginess, they'll find themselves relegated to governing only Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. So, in the long run, it might be a good thing.
5
Plus the number of movies it would inspire would add at least a couple points to GDP.
6
the GOP already pushed us off the cliff in 2011, engineering a downgrade of our credit rating, and voters kept them in control for the next congress.

the voters must not have known who to blame, right?
7
@6 Gerrymandering has a ton to do with the Republicans hold on the House. That said, a credit downgrade is not the same thing as a government shutdown or a default.
8
The problem with your solution is that it would work. In case you hadn't notices, negotiations over the fiscal cliff, curb, slope, whatever have nothing to do with reducing the debt and everything to do with who will 'own' cutting popular Medicare benefits and other social safety net programs (Social Security is off the table for now, but I would be surprised to see it come back once the dust settles). If Obama can convincingly play the victim, and be ;forced' to accept cuts to Medicare benefits (like raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67) as part of some deficit and debt ceiling Grand Bargain, then he wins! He can plausibly blame Republicans for the benefit cuts, because it was their idea and they insisted. Obama had no choice, don't blame him! Ain't it a shame we had to cut your benefits, seniors, but what are ya gonna do? It's all the Republicans' fault! Now go buy your health insurance on the free market, ya old moochers, like Milton Friedman intended. Obama has been in the pocked of Wall Street from day one and with a Grand Bargain, he can cross his promise to Wall Street of chipping away at Medicare from his list of things to do. Its a win-win!
9
I hadn't heard of this. But I love it.
10
I hate to say this but people continue to not see the ways out of this situation.

A. Reduce health care costs.
B. Let a lot of people die.

That's it. Taxing rich people, though immensely satisfying and useful, won't do it. Cutting defense will help but won't fully get us there(though at 58% of the total budget, we really do need to look at cutting defense spending). Only by regulating health care costs will we be able to deal with the deficit. Or we can just make them fend for themselves for their health care costs. Which would be defaulting to option B, letting a lot of people die. Unless you have $65,000 lying around if you have a heart attack.
11
And as a final touch of irony, he should stamp Ronald Reagan's image on it.

The fact that imagining this gave me soft wood means I should probably stop paying so much attention to politics.
12
Why is the adversary toward disabled Americans and the crazy train that is Uncle Rick claiming that equal rights for disabled Americans via the UN treaty would result in killing crippled children not being discussed on SLOG? It doesn't seem to e making top headlines as it should be.
http://mobile.oregonlive.com/advorg/pm_2…
The NY times had some good pieces on this too.
13
The President should invite Boehner over for a beer.

During a polite conversation, he should take a really large platinum coin out of his shirt pocket, and roll it around his fingers, while otherwise ignoring it.

Problem solved.
14
@10 or, more sanely, Remove the cap on earnings, and extend it to all interest and dividends.

Problem solved. Nobody dies. Rich have to pay same as everyone else instead of artificially low payroll taxes.
15
@8 (screed): Yes, absolutely. Except you probably meant to write, "Social Security is off the table for now, but I would not be surprised to see it come back once the dust settles."

@10 (GhostDog): Yes, absolutely. HR 676 "Improved Medicare For All" would be the no-brainer solution, if Congress and the White House were actually acting in the public interest. But take the second-to-last sentence from screed's comment -- "Obama has been in the pocke[t] of Wall Street from day one and with a Grand Bargain, he can cross his promise to Wall Street of chipping away at Medicare from his list of things to do" -- and substitute "Big Health" for "Wall Street."

Regarding a trillion-dollar coin with Reagan's image, I'm fine with it, so long as Reagan is gussied up in drag as Maggie Thatcher, complete with wig and handbag. Or how about someone from the Project for the New American Century? Cheney? Rumsfeld? Wolfowitz? They plunged us into two unfunded multi-trillion-dollar wars and should be commemorated for it. Or how about Liz Fowler? She drafted the unfunded Medicare Part D pharmacy benefit, with its ban on price negotiations, during her first revolving-door layover at Max Baucus's office. That's gonna cost patients, premium-payers, and taxpayers trillions. She deserves a coin in her honor, too.

Regarding proposed changes to the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare, there's this minor issue -- not a legal issue, mind you, just a trivial actuarial one -- with how long African-Americans live compared to white Americans. On average, Black Americans die eight or nine years younger, at age 69½. African-Americans are already getting pretty badly screwed by an actuarially blind eligibility age, and raising that age is going to screw them even worse. It would be a big win for John Birchers, Klansmen, and Teabaggers (pardon the redundancy), and I suspect it will be delivered by the same Blue Dog in progressive's clothing who sold us the Heritage Foundation health-insurance scheme as "reform."
16
@14

First, I agree that what you are talking about is a good idea(though for mostly economic reasons centered around how investments and personal spending works which is long, rambly, and wonky), but when you compare it to how much health care costs are set to rise it isn't enough.

I myself think "control health care costs" is the way to go either through single payer or the way Obama's health care law worked in its original form.
17
Great idea, until Montgomery Burns steals it!
18
Put me down in favor of the part about the ass of Congress.
19
It would be VASTLY more inflationary than issuing debt, which isn't inflationary at all. Issuing debt is transferring funds from one place to another (in this case, from bond buyers to the federal government), with that money to be transferred back (plus interest) over time. A trillion dollar coin would be 100% new funds, created out of thin air and dumped into the economy. COMPLETELY different, but then I don't, you know, actually expect you to understand how money works.
20
@10 - defense isn't even CLOSE to 58% of the total budget.
21
@19, you realize that economists disagree with you? Read the article.

But then I wouldn't expect you to understand how that works.
22
@16 well, that too. Everything helps.
23
@21 - which economists, and in what article? The author isn't one. Joe Weisenthal isn't one. Jack Balkin isn't one. Erik Hayden isn't one. The only piece that he even linked to that gave an opinion was from the Economist appropriately enough which unambiguously stated that it would be inflationary because, you know, it absolutely would be... but then, I wouldn't expect you to follow your own advice.
24
"There could a long-term inflationary problem, I suppose, if the government fell in love with the idea and used platinum coins to finance ever larger deficits. But that seems unlikely."

lol

Please wait...

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