March 28, 2024

Clock Is Ticking for Recess, and for a Deficit Deal

WASHINGTON — Budget talks between the White House and Senate Republicans have gone nowhere since Congress began its summer recess, increasing chances of a fiscal stalemate that could lead to a government shutdown in October or the threat of a government default later in the fall.

Negotiators who had hoped for a summer breakthrough say the chances for a major deficit reduction deal are rapidly slipping away. While many members of both parties say they would like to avoid either a shuttering of the government as of Oct. 1 or a default caused by failing to increase the federal debt limit, no acceptable solution has emerged. Lawmakers say the consequences could be severe.

“It ends badly for the American people and the Republican Party if we shut down the government,” said Representative Reid Ribble, Republican of Wisconsin and a member of the House Budget Committee. “I hope grown-ups get in a room and behave like grown-ups, not simply actors on a political stage.”

In search of a compromise, a group of Senate Republicans are scheduled to meet with top White House officials next Thursday, the first such meeting since Aug. 1, when negotiators promised that staff and high-level talks would continue throughout the month.

“Nothing has occurred since that time, nothing whatsoever,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and one of the eight lawmakers involved in the talks.

Given the lack of progress, those involved say Speaker John A. Boehner will need to play a crucial role in finding an agreement. House Republican leaders consulted with their rank and file via a conference call Thursday night to sound out their ideas to avoid a fiscal crisis as early as Oct. 1. Mr. Boehner pressed gingerly for a straight short-term extension of funds to avoid an immediate government shutdown in October, but faced immediate opposition from conservatives demanding that funds be stripped from the health care law. One thought is to use a short-term spending bill to keep the government running into November, when Congress must raise the government’s statutory borrowing limit. That way, with both a debt default and government shutdown looming, Republicans could apply maximum pressure on the White House to either agree to scuttle President Obama’s health care law or accept significant changes in programs like Medicare and Social Security.

“We’re looking for leverage on a lot of things. Obamacare is just one of them,” said a senior House Republican leadership aide.

Mr. Obama personally pushed back hard on that idea Thursday and stuck to his position that he would not negotiate over the debt ceiling.

“We’ve seen a faction of Republicans in Congress suggest that maybe America shouldn’t pay its bills that have already been run up, that we shut down government if they can’t shut down Obamacare,” the president said in Buffalo. “That won’t grow our economy. That won’t create jobs. That won’t help our middle class. We can’t afford in Washington the usual circus of distractions and political posturing.”

Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, speaking in the San Francisco area on Thursday, also called on Congress to increase the debt limit to avoid damage to the economy.

With so much political tumult roiling Republicans and more conservatives pushing to cut off financing for the health care law, both White House officials and Congressional Republicans are scaling back expectations that Senate-White House talks will produce the kind of grand bargain on the deficit that will win over House Republicans. Most of the federal government will shut down Oct. 1 unless Congress acts to keep money flowing. By late October or early November, Republicans believe the Treasury Department will exhaust its ability to borrow money if lawmakers fail to lift the government’s debt limit.

Senate Republican negotiators are divided over how big a deal they can accept. White House officials are increasingly concerned that any agreement they can strike will not fly in the House. And House Republicans have only just begun to address the pending showdown.

“We don’t know the end of the story here,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “The way things are shaping up right now, it’s looking very messy.”

The so-called sounding board talks with the White House, led by Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, grew out of Mr. Obama’s overtures last winter toward Senate Republicans. Ultimately eight senators coalesced into a group to sound out the White House, report back to other senators and try to find a way forward on deficit reduction talks that foundered after automatic spending cuts known as sequestration kicked in March 1.

But even that small group has splintered. Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both defense hawks, have adopted a position that they would accept a small deficit deal — perhaps $200 billion to $300 billion — to cancel the next two to three years of sequestration, spare the Pentagon further cuts, and build good will for a broader deal.

Senators Corker, Isakson and John Hoeven of North Dakota have adamantly rejected that, saying they could never cancel spending cuts now for more gradual but less certain cuts stretched over a decade. That group has held out for a broader deficit deal that would shave trillions of dollars from the growth of entitlements like Medicare and Social Security.

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin and the fiercest deficit hawk in the group, keeps insisting that the nation faces a cumulative deficit of $70 trillion over the coming decades, and negotiators should be working toward a $70 trillion solution.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/us/politics/chances-of-a-deficit-deal-are-rapidly-fading.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Bucks Blog: Monday Reading: A Week at a Fat Camp for Grown-Ups

December 30

Friday Reading: Municipal Cutbacks Leave Residents in the Dark

A discount retail chain shuts down, manufacturing jobs return with lower wages, municipalities try to balance their budgets by shutting off streetlights and other consumer-focused news from The New York Times.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7da0ffd0a2c0991f8335b1113e3cab85

Your Money: Too Young for Finance? Think Again

Until recently, however, few people made much effort to get children this age to think hard about money. Why go all pecuniary on a child who has barely mastered counting?

In the wake of the financial crisis, however, and the realization that individuals share at least some blame for the bubbles, a number of people and organizations have taken up the cause of helping the next generation of grown-ups form better habits at an earlier age.

The JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy recently expanded its target age group to include the pre-kindergarten set. A new book called “Pretty Penny Sets Up Shop” tells the story of a young girl who sets up a “small mall” in her grandmother’s attic to pay for her grandmother’s surprise party.

And then there’s Sesame Street, which has a broader reach than any nonprofit group, publisher or even the Head Start program. This week, Sesame entered the fray, too, with a series of videos and other material aimed at teaching its audience about spending, saving and sharing.

There is no definitive proof that any of this will make a lasting impact. “It would be 20 years before we would know the results,” said Laura Levine, JumpStart’s executive director, who served on Sesame Street’s advisory panel.

But the beauty of watching young children absorb these lessons and answering their questions is that it can make you more aware of the financial examples you set. Every shopping trip and holiday gift can become a teaching moment about hard choices, patience and generosity.

So here are how the lessons break down:

SAVE The title of Sesame Street’s package of videos also serves to sum up its component parts: “For Me, For You, For Later.” The literal representation of it are the three labels that come with the DVD in a kit that you can pick up free at any PNC Bank, which is Sesame Street’s partner in the project. You can also download the labels and other print materials on the Web; I’ve linked to the Sesame and PNC sites from the online version of this column.

The three labels read “Spending,” “Saving” and “Sharing.” Children are supposed to affix them to three clear plastic jars where they can drop their coins and bills.

None of this is particularly new. In fact, a company called Snigglezoo Entertainment has been using puppets called the Money Mammals for years. They sing about the virtues of saving, sharing and spending, the very same terms that Sesame Street uses.

John Lanza, Snigglezoo’s self-described chief mammal, said he was still processing the similarities and declined to comment further. Jeanette Betancourt, Sesame Workshop’s senior vice president for outreach and educational practices, said it had been aware of Snigglezoo’s (and many other) trademarks around the terms and noted that the words were in wide use. Nevertheless, she added that Sesame used the words in a unique way for its own specific purposes.

But only Sesame has Elmo, and millions of children are very likely to try to mimic his behavior. In the video, he’s trying to save $5 to buy a “stupendous” ball from a street vendor. At one point, he turns down ice cream so he doesn’t lose ground on reaching his ultimate goal.

This moment goes by in a flash, but it is a crucial one. It isn’t easy for a child (Elmo is perpetually 3 1/2 years old) to give up something pleasurable in the moment in exchange for something bigger and better later on.

If you need evidence of this, pop some corn, grab the family, flip on YouTube and search for the (absolutely hysterical) marshmallow tests. Researchers put the confection in front of small children and tell them they can have one now if they’d like, though if they leave it on the table they can have two later on. Then, they leave the room and flip the switch on the camera to see what the children do.

Many devour the marshmallow before the tester even leaves the room, but that doesn’t have to be a permanent condition.

“I think there is a lot about this process that is a learned skill,” said Russell N. James III, who teaches in the financial planning division at Texas Tech University. “It’s like soccer or other physical skills, where you can coach them. And you want to give them opportunities where they can exercise those skills.”

That’s where the piggy banks and the jars come in. And when Mr. James’s 6-year-old daughter coveted the Nook e-reader that her older sister got for Christmas, he told her that if she did not touch the holiday money she had received from her grandparents for 30 days he would give her the rest of the money she needed for the Nook.

“A year would be too long,” he said. “Because you want them to practice a lot and do it several times under different circumstances.”

SPEND This is the easy part for children, at least at first glance. What’s much harder, however, is determining what different things are worth.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=e9dce0d237b4cf529605c9cbd540b656