White House insists looming debt ceiling crisis be dealt without conditions
business-standard.com/article/international/white-house-insists-looming-debt-ceiling-crisis-be-dealt-without-conditions-123011800104_1.html
January 18, 2023
The White House on Tuesday insisted that the looming debt ceiling crisis be dealt with without conditions and there is no room for negotiations on this.
This should not be political brinkmanship. We should be dealing with the debt ceiling without conditions. It is important. We're not going to work our way around this; we're not going to negotiate on this. This is the basic duty of Congress, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at her daily news conference.
In the last administration, the Democrats and Republicans were able to deal with the debt limit three times. Let's not forget that, she said.
Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a letter to Congress raised the red flag on an imminent debt crisis. Given the sharp differences between the ruling Democrats and the opposition Republicans, who enjoy a majority in the House of Representatives, not handling the issue on time might result in the United States defaulting on its debt commitment, which has never happened in the past.
Republicans have so far insisted on not raising the debt limit which currently is USD 31.381 trillion as approved by Congress last month. This debt limit is the total amount of money that the US government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations and is scheduled to reach its statutory limit on January 19.
The United States is the only industrialized nation to have such an arbitrary institution as a debt ceiling, but the players who keep ending up in the same standoff aren't exactly looking to kill it, Time magazine said Tuesday.
The New York Times warned that a default would most likely rattle markets and carry big risks, no matter how the Federal Reserve and Treasury try to curb the fallout.
In her letter to the Congressional leadership, Yellen asserted that it is critical that Congress act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit. Failure to meet the government's obligations would cause irreparable harm to the US economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability, she warned.
Indian American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, who is a Democrat, has called for an increase in the debt limit. If we don't raise the debt ceiling, we'll go into default, and only one default is enough to nuke the economy, he said.
Opposing an increase in the debt limit, Republican Congressman Ralph Norman, said that USD31.4 trillion is a massive amount of debt. The government owes this money because politicians in Washington simply will not stop spending. This has been the case for decades, and Republicans are just as much to blame as Democrats, he said.
We'll have to see how negotiations play out, but the bottom line is this: Republicans need to see some degree of incremental spending cuts in these debt ceiling negotiations. An agreement without some reasonable cuts is unacceptable, Norman said.
Our national debt is approaching a level not just harmful to economic growth and irresponsible to future generations, but dangerous to our national security today. We are entering treacherous waters and must couple any debt ceiling increases with real reforms, said Congresswoman Victoria Spartz.
Huge amounts of politically directed spending and crony capitalism have created a significant oligopoly problem in nearly every market sector - not much different from oligarchs ruling in post-socialist countries, she said.
''Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a joint statement said that Congress must act on legislation to prevent a disastrous default, meet America's obligations and protect its full faith and credit.''
A default forced by extreme MAGA Republicans could plunge the country into a deep recession and lead to even higher costs for America's working families on everything from mortgages and car loans to credit card interest rates, they said.
America pays its debts. Period. There should be no political brinkmanship with the debt limit. It's reckless for Speaker McCarthy and MAGA Republicans to try and use the full faith and credit of the United States as a political bargaining chip. A default would be catastrophic for America's working families and lead to higher costs, Schumer said in another statement.
Nunes memo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunes_memo
'' The Nunes memo (formally titled Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation) is a four-page memorandum written for U.S. Representative Devin Nunes by his staff and released to the public by the Republican-controlled committee on February 2, 2018.''
The memo alleges that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) "may have relied on politically motivated or questionable sources" to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in October 2016 and in three subsequent renewals on Trump adviser Carter Page in the early phases of the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
Nunes was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at the time and was a supporter of the FISA surveillance extension. Former Trump campaign CEO and chief strategist Steve Bannon has described Nunes as Trump's second-strongest ally in Congress. In April 2017, Nunes stepped aside from chairing the House Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation while the House Ethics Committee conducted an inquiry into whether Nunes had violated applicable ethics rules with respect to his apparent secret coordination with White House officials. Nunes then began his own parallel secret investigation. The Ethics Committee investigation ended in December 2017, after which Nunes claimed that he had never recused himself.
Republican legislators who favored the public release of the memo argued that the memo presents evidence that a group of politically-biased FBI employees abused the FISA warrant process for the purpose of undermining the Donald Trump presidency. These congressmen alleged that there was excessive and improper dependence on the Steele dossier, which was funded in part by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee when the Justice Department applied to the FISA court to conduct electronic surveillance on Trump aide Carter Page during the course of the campaign.
Political allies of Donald Trump attempted to use the memo to pivot attention away from the Special Counsel investigation of the Trump presidential campaign's role in Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Prior to the release of the memo, news media reported that Trump told his associates that the release of the memo would discredit the investigation.
''A social media campaign, under the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo, emerged in mid-January 2018 to publicly release the memo despite some of its classified contents. ''
Journalists and national security advocacy groups reported that Russian-linked bots on Twitter helped spread the controversial hashtag. Trump approved the release of the Republican document over the objections of the FBI and the U.S. Intelligence Community. The FBI issued a rare statement expressing "grave concerns" about factual omissions and the accuracy of the memo. Within Congress, the anticipation of the release of the memo sparked controversy, mainly along political lines. House Republicans released the memo on February 2, 2018.
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee prepared a classified 10-page rebuttal of claims in the Nunes memo, which was initially blocked for release. After the Nunes memo was released to the public, the House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously to release the Democrats' memo. On February 9, Trump blocked the release of the Democrats' memo, saying the committee should redact classified and sensitive material before releasing it to the public. A redacted version of the Democratic memo was ultimately released on February 24.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180921061353/https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/memo_and_white_house_letter.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20180921061353/https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/memo_and_white_house_letter.pdf
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Is NZ part of 5 Eyes?
PF68
2X Suicide watch.
JFK
John Forbes Kerry
Born 11 December 1943 (age 79 years), Fitzsimons Army Medical Center, Aurora, CO
Mueller & Kerry, sittin' in a tree…
upper crust Robert Mueller, the son of a DuPont executive, went to a Waspy New England prep school where he was John Kerry's lacrosse captain
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4611302/Trump-probe-Mueller-s-elite-prep-school-revealed.html
https://www.npr.org/2006/04/25/3875422/transcript-kerry-testifies-before-senate-panel-1971
Following is a transcript of John Kerry's statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, in which he criticized the Vietnam War.
Mr. Kerry: I would like to talk, representing all those veterans,and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.
May 28, 1995 — Teresa Simoes-Ferreira Heinz and Senator John Forbes Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, were married on Friday evening at the bride's summer …
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4685276
John Kerry: A 'cheap' aristocrat
nbcnews.com/id/wbna4685276
April 7, 2004
World
Before he married Teresa Heinz, the heir to the food empire, John Kerry had little more than his annual Senate salary of $133,600 and a trust fund valued at $50,000 to $100,000.
Kerry grew up in a world of elite private schools and vacations on a French estate. Here he poses with his siblings, from left, Cam, Diana, and, right, Peggy. AP
Rosemary Forbes Kerry left many things to her son John: a flinty New England resolve, a worldly view of politics, and a middle name that conjures up images of a childhood drenched in wealth.
The Democratic presidential candidate grew up in a world of elite private schools and vacations on a French estate, something most Americans could only dream about. His parents, a U.S. diplomat and a homemaker, turned to a wealthy, childless great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, to help pay the bills.
Before he married Teresa Heinz, the heir to the food empire, Kerry had little more than his annual Senate salary of $133,600 and a trust fund valued at $50,000 to $100,000. When his mother died in 2002, he inherited trusts with $300,000 to $1.5 million in assets — a pittance compared to his wife’s estimated $500 million.
Social prominence and affluence etched Kerry’s early life.
His mother, Rosemary Forbes, was a member of the Forbes shipping family and a descendent of John Winthrop, who helped found Boston in 1630. She was one of 11 children, which thinned the family fortune somewhat. Her father was an international businessman, and she spent her early years in France at the family’s estate.
The finances on the Kerry side of the family were more modest. Kerry’s grandfather, a Czech-Austrian Jew and brewery worker named Fritz Kohn, changed his name to Frederick A. Kerry in 1902 and emigrated to the United States. In 1921, apparently despondent over mounting debts, he shot himself in a restroom at Boston’s Copley Plaza Hotel.
Kerry’s father, Richard Kerry, was a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. Invited to the Forbes estate in France by a friend, Richard Kerry met Rosemary Forbes. They married, and he later took a post in the diplomatic corps, bringing home the salary of a government worker while his wife volunteered for community service.
A Denver native
John Kerry, born in Denver in 1943, lived in Groton and Millis, Mass., before the family moved to Washington when he was 7. He spent part of his youth in Swiss and New England boarding schools thanks to his aunt’s largess.
Kerry has blamed his rootless childhood for his perceived aloofness. But those years also taught Kerry the difference between wealth and status, and how to rely on the latter when money was tight.
“He exuded more worldliness and sophistication than your average Yale undergraduate,” said William “Chip” Stanberry, Kerry’s debating partner at Yale and now head of a health care technology firm in Houston. “But he didn’t come from generations of wealth, and he certainly didn’t act like it.”
Harvey Bundy, Kerry’s roommate at Yale, remembered a young man who was “on the go 110 percent of the time” but spoke little about wealth and privilege.
“He ran in circles with money, but money was never an issue for John. He was cheap,” said Bundy, a Chicago investment manager.
In their freshman year Kerry got a car, even though freshmen weren’t supposed to have cars, but he didn’t want to rent garage space. The solution? Let Bundy’s girlfriend take it back and forth to Wheaton College.
Bundy and Kerry took a no-frills tour of Europe in 1963. “We slept in ultra-cheap hotels,” he said. “It was one of those $5-a-day tours.”
In 1970, a year after returning from the Vietnam War, Kerry married Julia Thorne, who wore a wedding dress handed down from an ancestor whose nuptials were attended by Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. Thorne came from a wealthy Long Island, N.Y., family and, like Kerry, spent long periods of her youth in Europe.
As Kerry struggled to launch his political career, Thorne used her wealth to help support the family. He was a private lawyer and prosecutor in Middlesex County, Mass., before running for lieutenant governor in 1982, the year he and Thorne split. The financial terms of their 1988 divorce were not made public.
After two years in state government, Kerry was elected to the U.S. Senate. Bruce Droste remembers a Kerry too frugal to hire movers during what friends called his “gypsy days.” He bounced from apartment to apartment, sometimes staying with his daughters when his former wife was away or with buddies from his Vietnam years.
“I had a big vehicle at the time and we’d move him,” said Droste, a longtime friend. “He was paying hefty tuitions for his daughters in school. … This is a man who understands a value of a dollar.”
Second marriage
In 1995, Kerry’s fortunes changed dramatically when he married Teresa Heinz, the widow of Sen. H. John Heinz III of Pennsylvania. His next disclosure report to the Senate included dozens of pages detailing Heinz’s financial portfolio and some of the wedding presents they received, including a mirror with their wedding announcement framed on top from “Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Schwarzenegger” and a Baccarat flower vase from actor Clint Eastwood.
Kerry’s wealth has been a political asset. In 1996, he lent or guaranteed his campaign $1.7 million to fend off a challenge from Massachusetts Republican Gov. William Weld. Late last year, he lent his campaign more than $6 million by mortgaging the six-story brick town house he owns with his wife in the tony Beacon Hill area.
Political foes have mocked Kerry’s blue-blood image. An ad by a conservative advocacy group mimics a popular credit card slogan: “Another rich, liberal elitist from Massachusetts who claims he’s a ’man of the people.’ … Priceless.”
Kerry’s campaign acknowledges that while he grew up in a family that provided him with an Ivy League education, he chose to dedicate his life to public service.
“Before he even graduated from Yale he made the choice to sign up for war,” campaign strategist Michael Meehan said. “He committed himself to public service when he had a lot of other choices available.”
The finances on the Kerry side of the family were more modest. Kerry’s grandfather, a Czech-Austrian Jew and brewery worker named Fritz Kohn, changed his name to Frederick A. Kerry in 1902 and emigrated to the United States. In 1921, apparently despondent over mounting debts, he shot himself in a restroom at Boston’s Copley Plaza Hotel.
Does this clearly explain something that seemed unexplained?
Guess who's married to John Kerry's daughter?
Did you know that in 2009 the daughter of Secretary of State John Kerry, Dr. Vanessa Bradford Kerry, married an Iranian physician named Dr. Brian Vale Nahed? No mainstream media reported this. Guess who was the best man at the wedding? Mohammad Javad Zarif. So who is Mr. Zarif? Zarif is the current minister of foreign affairs for Iran.
He was Kerry’s chief counterpart in the nuclear deal negotiations just concluded. Mean Kerry was dealing with his daughter's father-in-law? Cozy?
Isn't this a lovely picture?
As Front Page Magazine pointed out several months ago, the nuclear talks with Iran were a tragic farce, choreographed and orchestrated by Iran. And unfortunately, we are going to have to live with the consequences. When (not "if") the bomb blows.
Can you say "conflict of interest" ..after of course, "breach of national security" … and "aiding and abetting " one of our principal national enemies?
But then what's new? Even though Muslims make up just 1% of the country, Hillary's top aide is a Muslim, as is Obama. Is it any wonder Obama wants to bring in thousands of young Muslims as refugees even though his security people say they cannot properly vet them? Then too, Obama also spends much time defending Muslims? Not so much defending other minorities, Jews, Blacks, etc.??