Ten days to go, and nothing much is happening.
Heh. Ten days to go, and you’re expecting something to happen before there is one day to go? If they can’t pass it in a minute, they can pass it in a minute and a half.
Yeah, but they have to move fast with all the preliminary kabuki of passing something that gets vetoed or doesn’t make it through the Senate, and whining about how it’s really Obama and the Dems who are threatening to blow up the country, and doing a few other gyrations to convince the base they’re not really folding, before they fold and pass a clean debt limit increase.
And that’s a minute and a huff, thankyewverymuch. 
I would be very interested to see the debt limit challenged in court - if anyone would have the standing to do it, which is a challenge. It doesn’t seem like according to the 14th Amendment that Congress can not pay for spending it authorized otherwise.
Right. Because if the Senate Democrats filibuster a debt ceiling increase, or even if Obama vetoes it, that’s just evidence of “Republican obstructionism.” :dubious:
Curses! He wields the Amulet of Liberal Hypocrisy plus 10! We are undone, comrades! Slink away!
Absolutely! ‘You meet our demands or we blow stuff up’ is a path of action traditionally associated with terrorists and criminals.
So the GOP’s choice is to either pass a clean debt ceiling extension, or try to use it (‘it’ being the fact that we really don’t know what sort of economic chaos will ensue if we don’t raise the debt ceiling) to get their way on a bunch of other stuff in a manner that involves the functional equivalent of terrorism.
So if they pass a debt ceiling extension that also repeals Obamacare, defunds Planned Parenthood, and a bunch of other stuff on their wish list, yeah, they’re acting like terrorists. Merely calling it “Republican obstructionism” is being too kind.
No, that’s political tactics. The Republicans want to threaten default to get their way and sink various things like Planned Parenthood. The Democrats want to pass things and go forward as normal, and not use the US economy as a bargaining chip.
As a principle, there should be no negotiation with this tactic of threatening default, no matter what. That legitimizes the tactic. So, IMO, the Democrats are behaving in the appropriate way by not negotiating over the threat of default, which would do damage to the country.
I still maintain that the debt ceiling doesn’t exist. Congress sets the spending level, and Congress sets the tax policies that determine revenue. If the revenue is less than the spending, then there is a debt: That’s just simple mathematics. For Congress to try to legislate otherwise is as silly as trying to legislate the value of pi (much sillier, actually, since even politicians should be able to understand the math involved).
Right. The Congress instructs the government to collect certain taxes, allocate certain funds, and borrow a maximum amount of money. If the math doesn’t add up, the executive will have to break one of those Congressional instructions (*). It’d be interesting to see how it actually plays out in reality, though I’d be happy to never find out.
(*) I guess there is the minting a trillion dollar coin idea, which the Obama administration rejected last time. I wonder if the debt ceiling is not raised on time if the administration would have to take this option, as every other choice violates some aspect of law.
A person’s roommate comes into his room, dick in hand, and says, “I won’t pay rent this month unless you suck it.”
That person refusing to suck it makes him the one responsible for defaulting on the rent? Interesting worldview.
Yes, if the person refuses to negotiate with the roommate down to a handjob or something.
What, without rolling a saving throw?
Don’t worry; under Republican math, the save DC would be negative.
I know you said “default” and not “shutdown”, but the same point can be made about both. There have been several Democratic shutdowns, including at least one where the Congress and the President were of the same party. Were those Democrats “behaving appropriately,” or is this a new rule for Republicans?
I agree.
I think it’s absolutely appropriate to threaten, and even follow through on, a refusal to pass a budget. Having passed a budget, it’s not appropriate to threaten to refuse to implement that budget by necessary changes to the debt ceiling.
The time to stand firm on spending principles, in other words, is when you tell the waiter to bring you the steak, not when the waiter brings you the check.
I think you’re trying to conflate “shutdown,” and “debt ceiling,” and in my view they merit quite different analyses.
Bricker for House Speaker!
That may be true in general, but in this specific instance conflating the two seems reasonable. It’s the debt ceiling issue that will lead to the shutdown and not some other cause.
I concur.
A government shutdown is hardly an ideal way for this country to resolve its political disputes, but it’s a known quantity of limited consequence.
We really don’t know what sort of financial chaos would be set off by the U.S. government defaulting on its obligations. But chances are it would make a government shutdown look like a walk in the park. The notion that it could be in any way responsible, let alone patriotic, to threaten this sort of harm to this country in order to achieve one’s parochial goals, would be ridiculous if we didn’t keep getting to the verge of its actually happening. Which makes it dangerous rather than ridiculous.
These are the actions of Robespierres of the right.