For all you people that think that "the Republicans got what they wanted", here is an excerpt from a liberal newspaper laying it out for you....
Basically, we are all being taken for a ride by all these asswipes in the Federal Government.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug...ssess-20110802
"Indeed, for all the high-stakes political drama and the apparent damage the months-long debate has inflicted on the political standing of both parties and the president, the compromise ? what White House officials refer to as a "lowest common denominator" deal ? achieves relatively little in the short term.
Over the next two years,
the final compromise comes very close to the initial request by Obama ? a "clean" debt ceiling increase that allows the government to pay its bills and does nothing else.
In the government's 2012 fiscal year, the cut would be $21 billion, or less than 1% of a nearly $3.7-trillion federal budget, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The bulk of the projected $2.1 trillion or more of cuts does not start kicking in until after the next election when a future Congress and president could choose to rewrite the plan ? a point that many conservatives have worried about.
"Enforcement is the key to whatever we do. It's always in the out years and it never happens," said Sen. Michael D. Crapo (R-Idaho), using the budget lingo for the latter years of a long-term deal.
The bill almost certainly defers until after next year's election the central choice most budget experts say the country eventually must make: higher taxes or deep cuts"
.