A TRULY "balanced" bill would require General Fund deficits from military spending, etc to be either

[Faryn Balyncd]

...cut, or balanced with increased General Fund revenues, that is, from income taxes, NOT by continued raiding of the payroll taxes in the Social Security Trust Fund.

Yet even the "balanced" approach favored by the WH relies cutting SS benefits, which has the de facto reslts of continued the raid on payroll taxes to subsidize ventures (primarily military) which should, by all rights, be funded by income taxes (or other General Fund revenue sources).

By allowing the unprecedented linking of the debt ceiling with Social Security, we have allowed framing which assumes the same combined budget accounting which enabled the raiding of SS payroll taxes to subsidize the rich (via income tax cuts) in the first place.

It would seem that the only approaches which do not involve the continued plundering of the SS Trust Fund by the plutocrats are a clean debt limit raise, or the 14th amendment.

[Faryn Balyncd]

1. But that would require "difficult choices", wouldn't it?

[ProfessionalLeftist]

2. Yes. "difficult choices" that Obama doesn't want to make for all his bluster about it

It's easy to make "difficult choices" when YOU and yours are not the ones suffering from them. What a freaking coward.