Collective Action Problems

The United States is currently about 1.5 trillion dollars in debt. The government has tried raising the debt ceiling higher to make up for all the spending, and only now are politicians trying to come up with a solution to reduce the debt. This debate is a perfect example of the three social dilemmas: collective action, agenda setting, and principal agent problems.
Representative John Boehner and President Obama butt heads in this heated debate dealing with creating ways to lower the debt. Boehner says the only way to do this is to cut government spending on unnecessary things, and trim down entitlement programs to make them simpler. But Obama proposed the American Jobs Act, in which he wants to highly increase taxes on the wealthy to get the government more money to work with. This disagreement has been going on for a considerably long period of time, but neither side has come to a compromise, or even made much progress to an agreeable solution.
Collective action problems stem from situations in which a political group makes a decision that benefits them and their supporters, but does not help the people as a whole. The debate over the federal budget displays Congress making a plan that helps their side more than the general population, and President Obama's budget plan is more beneficial to his side also. Congress's proposition will make programs like Social Security and Medicare not as convenient and accessible to Americans, and saves the government money, and Obama's plan will take money away from the wealthy citizens, which will probably anger them and lead them to not vote for him in the next election. Republicans in Congress do not agree with robbing rich people of their hard earned money because of the government's mistake (Republicans just do not want to see the President victorious as well), and Obama does not want to cut spending and go backwards in his plan for America's future.
This debate is also reflective of agenda setting problems in that the...