Another GOP Senator Breaks With Party On Debt Ceiling - Susan Collins (R-ME)

[Tx4obama]

Another GOP Senator Breaks With Party On Debt Ceiling

Reality seems to be enjoying a sudden burst of momentum this afternoon, as more Republicans and conservatives are coming out and acknowledging the debt ceiling will have to be raised. The latest: GOP Senator Susan Collins.

Collins spokesman Kevin Kelley emails me:

Senator Collins recognizes that the debt ceiling is going to have to be raised because the U.S. cannot default on its obligations to pay for spending that has already occurred.

But she is frustrated that the Administration, time and time again, keeps putting off the hard decisions on spending that our country must confront.

-snip-

Full post here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/01/15/another-gop-senator-recognizes-the-inevitable/

Earlier today Senator Lisa Murkowski broke with the GOP on the debt ceiling issue, info regarding Murkowski below:
Murkowski rejects GOP's debt-ceiling hostage strategy
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/15/16526453-murkowski-rejects-gops-debt-ceiling-hostage-strategy?lite

[Proud Liberal Dem]

1. Blah.......blah...blah...big spending......blah.........

Republicans: Bring a f*****g bill to the floor of the House and Senate with all of your spending cut proposals and let's have a vote on it already- or STFU!


Here is what Republicans are really saying when they talk about him "not leading" or "not being serious about the budget deficit": YOU (President Obama) submit a budget to Congress with cuts to Social Security and Medicare so we can reject them and run against your party on them in 2014!

[freshwest]

5. Yep.

[Cali_Democrat]

14. Exactly

[Paulie]

2. It's not up to the President to give you cover for gutting the safety nets

Vote for the specific cuts if its such a big problem. Tell my mom the $12/mo net increase she got this year on her SS check (while her rent went up $20/mo) that she needs to take a big hit to pay for military spending and the unpaid bush wars. In other words Susan coward, fuck you.

[freshwest]

6. Yeah, she doesn't get it. Showing her true colors as she rides off into her aristocratic sunset.

Can you talk your mom's landlord?

Where I live they know i'm on a fixed income and don't charge as much as the COLA when the renewal comes.

It's not subsidized or anyting, they just like to keep good tenants.

[pacalo]

3. Any Republican who has the gall to say they're "frustrated at spending" after approving Bush's two

wars is fooling no one but themselves.

The two costly wars, plus Bush's lavish tax cuts for the wealthy, put us into this mess.

[freshwest]

7. Yes, Collins is showing her elephant behind.

[pacalo]

10. Yes, indeed, & "spending" is their code word for "helping the poor".

From the time I began working, it made me feel good that my tax dollars were being used to help those who needed it. How pathetic they are.

[freshwest]

12. I was brought up that way, Depression era family. They were union, felt it was a gift to have job.

How many of our fellow citizens, do not have honest work to see them through, or are too old to work, disabled or living where there is no work.

I was told to be 'proud to have a job and enough money to pay taxes.' I never, ever regretted my contributions to my fellow citizens. My thoughts were, there are so many people I don't know that need help - I can't help them - paying my taxes very least that anyone can do. If one gets the chance to do more in their community, great.

Where I used to live, grocery stores had a big barrel at the end of the check out lines. Everyone was encouraged to separate groceries on the line. The clerk put what we donated in bags into the barrel. Then hand what we were taking home in our own bags. It was normal, not a word said, just do it.

If you are in the prime of life and have little time off to do things, that is the least you can do. I've been down and out a number of times and didn't ask for help, and it's not an easy thing to do at any time.

But there are people who can't make do, people with other mouths to feed, and we are their kindred and that's the American way, or I think so.

[pacalo]

13. ...

(This is why I love DU so much. It's comforting to have a "meeting place" for kindred minds in such god-forsaken times.)

[Hekate]

15. I seem to be a bit younger, but I always felt that way. Always.

I missed the Depression, and was born after the War, so I am no longer young myself.

I never earned much myself -- had the good fortune to marry someone who did better than I! -- but no matter how poor I was as a student and later as a single mom, I always knew there were folks who had it worse by far, and I never begrudged my taxes going to help them. How could anyone be so cold-hearted as to not want to help others? I knew it was taxes that built and maintained the roads and bridges, the schools and colleges and libraries -- how could anyone be so pig-ignorant as to not understand that?

During the knock-down drag-out fight over Obamacare, one British columnist wrote that there is "a streak of meanness that runs through America" and I felt ashamed. We used to be known as a generous people.

Thanks for what you said. I hope this country can find its way again.

[freshwest]

16. We will. We have thirty years of this destructive mindset to overcome.

[Hekate]

4. Murkowski, Collins, and now let's start the count as the sane ones peel away

I don't care if they whine about "frustration" with Obama -- all I care about is that the GOP starts to splinter into a million tiny pieces.

[freshwest]

8. That would be a relief for all of us.

[Tx4obama]

9. Along w/ Murk and Collins - Scott Brown and Olympia Snowe used to vote with the dems quite often

... but those two folks are gone now - so it will be interesting to see who else will be coming over to the democratic side this year if anyone.

[pacalo]

11. Yes, I apologize to Tx4Obama for not sticking with the point. I feel the same, Hekate!

[Filibuster Harry]

17. The R party is in shambles. A good time for someone -- a woman -- to try to turn this

party around. These two know it is political suicide to not raise the debt ceiling. Trying to be the voice of reason.

[BlueDemKev]

18. Ladies...

...you are welcome in the Democratic Party any time you feel you've had enough of the extreme right-wing.