Trump talks to Democrats. Beltway in flames

Congressional Republicans proved they cannot do much, if anything, in the Obamacare repeal.  Obamacare is killing jobs, forcing people to accept part time work, raising health insurance premiums to awful levels, introducing $6000 deductibles which makes the insurance worthless. And Republicans had been promising Obamacare repeal for years.  But they still could not come up the the votes to actually do it.  Too many RINOs, to many extreme right wingers who do not understand "compromise", and too many just plain right wing kooks.
   So, the country needs  emergency funds to deal with Harvey and Irma, and we need to raise the national debt limit so we can borrow to roll the existing debt over.  Schumer and Pelosi  only asked to tie the two bills into one, and limit the debt ceiling relief to a mere 90 days.  This gives them an opportunity to use the debt ceiling as a hammer to get something they want all over again in just 90 days.  PITA from Trump's viewpoint, but doable.  So Trump, figuring he cannot rely on congressional GOPers, said "Deal", and he signed the bill into law yesterday.  Not too shabby. 
   The republican media has been bad mouthing Trump over this deal for the last couple of days.  I haven't heard Ryan or McConnell bellyaching about it, at least not in public, I'm pretty sure neither of 'em are happy, but done is done, and they don't want to get into a public feud with Trump.  They fear they might loose. 

House passes Puerto Rico bill.

The Hill, usually a pretty good source, is fairly clueless on this one.  They give a good discussion of the back and forth tugging to pass it.  Nothing about what's in it.  They give one brief quote from Paul Ryan to the effect that there is no taxpayer money going to Puerto Rico, but that's it.  I hope that's true.   There was talk a few weeks ago, about setting up a special board/commission/bureau in Washington to supervise Puerto Rico's government and it's spending habits.  The Hill didn't say anything about that.
   Such a bill ought to offer Puerto Rico protection for law suits while a bankruptcy court sorts out the island's finances.  Without the customary protection from lawsuits, Puerto Rico and the courts would be swamped as every lender and every supplier, and every union, and every body else sues Puerto Rico for the money they think they are due.  You gotta shut all that off to get any where.
   Was I the bankruptcy judge, with full powers, I would tell the lenders to suck it up.  It's been obvious to anyone for the past 20 years that Puerto Rico had no way, and never would have a way. to repay the loans.  For making dumb loans, the lenders deserve to loose.  I'd  review all the island pensions, and chop them back to barely enough to live on.  I'd  review the government payroll, I understand that a third of the island's residents are on it, and lay off a lot of 'em.  I'd shake up the island's tax collection department and drive them to collect all the taxes owed, by everyone. 

Picking Ryan sends us a message

Romney's pick of Paul Ryan for VP tells us something good.  Ryan stands for balancing the budget by cutting spending.  He even has a plan to cut Medicare spending.  By picking Ryan, Romney is telling us that he wants to cut spending and balance the budget.  Which is a good thing, that up until now, Romney had not been really clear about.  Romney is a nice guy, and his election will be 100% better for the country than Obama, but he hasn't been very clear about just what a  Romney administration will do if elected.  Now we have a better idea.  With Paul Ryan in the administration, there will be spending cuts, medicare reform, and budget balancing.   I'm all in favor.  We cannot get the economy growing again until we get the federal budget balanced.  Right now Uncle borrows 40 cents of every dollar spent.  Our yearly deficit is better than 10% of GNP.  We may not truly balance the budget (get the deficit down to zero) but getting it down to 1% of GNP would be a tremendous improvement.