jerseyhoya wrote:As a whatever it is you are, I will blame you because everyone is fucking this up

I have a hard time finding a way to view this that comes back to anyone except the psychos in the Republican caucus that won't listen to leadership.

swishnicholson wrote:Not sure I agree with the conclusion, but I'm thankful to James Surowiecki of The New Yorker* for filling in the history for a doofus like me.

As it happens, the debt ceiling, which was adopted in 1917, did have a purpose once—it was a way for Congress to keep the President accountable. Congress used to exercise only loose control over the government budget, and the President was able to borrow money and spend money with little legislative oversight. But this hasn’t been the case since 1974; Congress now passes comprehensive budget resolutions that detail exactly how the government will tax and spend, and the Treasury Department borrows only the money that Congress allows it to. (It’s why TARP, for instance, required Congress to pass a law authorizing the Treasury to act.) This makes the debt ceiling an anachronism. These days, the debt limit actually makes the President less accountable to Congress, not more: if the ceiling isn’t raised, it’s President Obama who will be deciding which bills get paid and which don’t, with no say from Congress.

*being that it's the New Yorker, I'll add that it's a nice short column, not one of their 20 pagers.

oh dear. I'm glad I'm not someone dependent for my next meal on gummit dough in Cantor's, or Bachmann's, or Gohmert's, or Joe Walsh's districts.

The Nightman Cometh wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:As a whatever it is you are, I will blame you because everyone is fucking this up

I have a hard time finding a way to view this that comes back to anyone except the psychos in the Republican caucus that won't listen to leadership.

The psychos in the Republican caucus won't listen to leadership to pass a bill that has no chance of being the ultimate solution anyway.

What the House GOP is doing is like the Phillies front office coming to internal agreement with itself on what they're willing to give up to get Matt Kemp. Now that they've spent three days on it they've got an agreement, the problem is Kemp isn't available. Meanwhile there is a deadline and there are actual targets out there, but no one has really done a whole lot in making sure things are fixed on time.

The Senate could have tried to pass a compromise bill already, but Reid wanted to wait for the GOP to pass something in the House so he could table it in the Senate before working on passing a compromise bill. He hasn't wanted to take the lead. It's easier to sit back and let the House take the arrows.

The White House could have started working with the Senate and House Dem caucuses to push something like the initial Reid compromise once they endorsed it rather than continuing to focus on things that aren't going to be in the final package, ie tax increases, or put so much effort into pissing off congressional GOP members by asking the American people to call, email, tweet, light bags of dog shit on fire on their front porches, etc. telling them how important it is to compromise.

House Democrats could have attempted to make themselves relevant in the debate at any point along the way in some fashion other than making clear their members were going to vote no on whatever the House GOP wanted to do.

Something is still probably going to get done. The Senate is going to pass something bipartisan in the next couple of days with like 75 votes. Then the House is going to need to find 217 non insane people to agree to it. That'll be fun. Also I'd bet Runyan and LoBiondo are more likely to vote for the final bill than Andrews.

This is probably too clever by half, but I wonder if part of this is motivated by a desire of establishment Republicans to allow the nuts to hang themselves by their own petard.

just invoke the 14th. this is all crap and politics and has nothing to do with the so-called debt ceiling. there is no ceiling.

jerseyhoya wrote:

The Nightman Cometh wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:As a whatever it is you are, I will blame you because everyone is fucking this up

I have a hard time finding a way to view this that comes back to anyone except the psychos in the Republican caucus that won't listen to leadership.

The psychos in the Republican caucus won't listen to leadership to pass a bill that has no chance of being the ultimate solution anyway.

What the House GOP is doing is like the Phillies front office coming to internal agreement with itself on what they're willing to give up to get Matt Kemp. Now that they've spent three days on it they've got an agreement, the problem is Kemp isn't available. Meanwhile there is a deadline and there are actual targets out there, but no one has really done a whole lot in making sure things are fixed on time.

The Senate could have tried to pass a compromise bill already, but Reid wanted to wait for the GOP to pass something in the House so he could table it in the Senate before working on passing a compromise bill. He hasn't wanted to take the lead. It's easier to sit back and let the House take the arrows.

The White House could have started working with the Senate and House Dem caucuses to push something like the initial Reid compromise once they endorsed it rather than continuing to focus on things that aren't going to be in the final package, ie tax increases, or put so much effort into pissing off congressional GOP members by asking the American people to call, email, tweet, light bags of dog shit on fire on their front porches, etc. telling them how important it is to compromise.

House Democrats could have attempted to make themselves relevant in the debate at any point along the way in some fashion other than making clear their members were going to vote no on whatever the House GOP wanted to do.

Something is still probably going to get done. The Senate is going to pass something bipartisan in the next couple of days with like 75 votes. Then the House is going to need to
find 217 non insane people to agree to it. That'll be fun. Also I'd bet Runyan and LoBiondo are more likely to vote for the final bill than Andrews.

If Obama winds up with the clean debt ceiling bill he always wanted (and Lawrence ODonnell has predicted since heaven knows when), well, that'll be something, won't it?

Boehner speaking on the House floor right now; sounds like someone who someone has tried, only partly successfully, to sober up with some coffee, walking around, etc

it sounded like there were people there taunting him...?

Boehner was fired up there

we gon default

We did it. Not the Republicans fault anymore.

oh as long as it wasnt the republicans fault everything is okay

pretty much that's all that matters!


it's previously been raised a million times, but THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT!!!!

jerseyhoya wrote:We did it. Not the Republicans fault anymore.

that hole your tongue just punched in your cheek is gonna make you that much more attractive.

Tuned into Fox for their take on the passage. Gotta hand to them; they went almost immediately to a story about how much a rating downgrade would cost "you, the viewer".

They put it at about 0.5% on a typical consumer loan; so your rate would go from 4% to 4.5%

Said another way, your cost of borrowing just moved up 12-13%

but more importantly, John Boehner may - just may - get to remain House Speaker. Mission accomplished, John!

jerseyhoya wrote:Boehner was fired up there

firewater'ed, it seemed

mentioned himself about 37 times; did he mention the American people?

I never thought I'd live to a point where the Dems were trying to convince the Reps to settle back at a middle called: "Reagan policies".

"...You have probably been hearing about "the debt crisis." I can't open a newspaper or turn on the radio or TV without hearing about "the debt crisis." Well stop calling it that, because that isn't what is going on. There is no debt crisis; the only crisis going on is the threat of several members of the House to vote against raising the debt ceiling if they don't get their way, thereby sending our country into default. They are trying to get around the rules of democracy and force deep cuts in the things We, the People do for each other while keeping taxes really low for the wealthy.

The Fight

There is a fight going on in Washington over whether we should have a democracy that works for all of us, or a plutocracy that runs things for the benefit of the already-wealthy. ..."

full article

"...This phony debt crisis has now passed through the looking glass into the realm where madness reigns. What should have been an uneventful moment in which lawmakers make good on the nation’s contractual obligations has instead been seized upon by Republican hypocrites as a moment to settle ideological scores that have nothing to do with the debt.

Hypocrites, because their radical free market ideology, and the resulting total deregulation of the financial markets, is what caused the debt to spiral out of control this last decade. That and the wars George W. Bush launched but didn’t have the integrity to responsibly finance. The consequence was a banking bubble and crash leading to a 50 percent run-up of the debt that has nothing to do with the “entitlements” that those same Republicans have always wanted to destroy. ..."

full piece

We are now faced with a nontraditional, radical view of "democracy" coming from the Republican Party. It says that "democracy" means that nobody should care about anybody else, that "democracy" means only personal responsibility, not responsibility for anyone else, and it means no trust. If America accepts this radical view of "democracy," then all that we have given each other in the past under traditional democracy will be lost: all that we have called public. Public roads and bridges: gone. Public schools: gone. Publicly funded police and firemen: gone. Safe food, air and water: gone. Public health: gone. Everything that made America America, the crucial things that you and your family and your friends have taken for granted: gone.

the rest

TenuredVulture wrote:This is probably too clever by half, but I wonder if part of this is motivated by a desire of establishment Republicans to allow the nuts to hang themselves by their own petard.

I like how the world at large has to put up with the economic cost of brinksmanship within the republican party.

Here's another thing I don't get jerz. In trying to reach a short term solution on the debt ceiling, and using the tool to put more pressure on the obama administration in 2012 during election season, you're moving the decision on raising the ceiling to an even more volatile and fraught period.

How do you think that is going to play with the financial markets, with their longstanding preference for avoiding volatility? The situation in the EU won't go away in part because they have not put in place a long term structural solution to the debt problems of greece, ireland and potentially portugal and spain. the republican solution is no better. You're just kicking the can down the road, in the hope you can use it to bring further pressure on your opponents. At a time of extreme economic fragility. This isn't the 90s when you could pull that shit and the world economy wouldn't notice.

The shortsightedness in the name of political gain is pretty sickening. I'd suggest it might be a good thing to have done with the debt ceiling as a tool altogether, because although in theory it can be used to prevent someone go buck wild on spending, it's real use is for political gain. 50 years ago, I don't care about the US debt ceiling. Now I very much care.