Too little, Too late from Bennet and Udall

by: Zappatero

Thu Aug 04, 2011 at 13:02:17 PM MST

WASHINGTON - Colorado Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet and Mark Udall? both voted Tuesday to couple a debt-ceiling increase with more than $2 trillion in cuts and deficit reduction over 10 years - a compromise that disappointed them.

Udall said it wasn't the bill he wanted because it didn't include revenues or elimination of tax breaks for billion-dollar corporations, which would have ensured "that the wealthiest among us will help shoulder the burden of balancing our books."

[...] "It will protect our economy from crisis and make a down payment on our debt, two critical first steps."

Bennet called the last four weeks in Washington "disappointing."

Both Michael Bennet and Mark Udall have caved on issue after issue since coming to office. Both complain about the results, but both have done nothing that would have changed those results. If they are being team players on the Obama re-election campaign, they better figure out this crap ain't working and that President Obama, sadly, may end up the primary casualty in Mitch McConnell's terror campaign:  

U.S. stocks plunged on Tuesday as fears about a weak U.S. economy were inflamed after investors got another disappointing economic report - this time on consumer spending.

The selloff was so broad and so deep it pushed the S&P 500 into negative territory for the year and bond yields to their lowest levels in nine months.

"Now that we have solved the debt ceiling issue the market has moved onto the other data, which has taken a significant turn for the worse," said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist with Schaeffer's Investment Research.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) plunged 266 points, or 2.2%, to close at 11,867. The Dow was dragged lower by the industrial and manufacturing heavyweights of the 30-member index: Alcoa (AA, Fortune 500), General Electric (GE, Fortune 500), United Technologies (UTX, Fortune 500) and Boeing (BA, Fortune 500).

This was the eighth-straight day of declines for the Dow -- a losing streak not seen since October 2008, when the financial system was in the depths of the crisis. The Dow has fallen roughly 6.7% since the sell-off began on July 22.

NOTE: Dow down 512 today.

As Atrios says, the market shouldn't be an indicator and shouldn't be the primary tool to gauge whether some economic policy is working. But that's what they use it for in Washington and by that measure this deal is a P.O.S.

There's plenty of data, guiding principle, history on hand to convince voters that this deal was not going to work. Bennet and Udall couldn't communicate that to citizens and have failed to break the anti-tax, anti-government, anti-worker and anti-middle class jihad of the Tea Party Republicans.

Both our senators have failed at their most basic job as a politician: convincing citizens of the proper policy with facts and rhetoric. But they will continue to get paid their $180,000 salaries and receive their wonderful health care as the rest of us dip into another full-blown recession. If our senators are too cowardly to do the work required by the job they ran for - and were given by Colorado's citizens - they should resign and find something less demanding. With a Republican at least we know what we'd get.

With these guys, all we know is there isn't a single Democratic principle they'll stand for.