Predictable response, but in this thread it’s only liberals who are making assumptions about Republicans that turned out to be completely wrong, and continue to hold onto those assumptions even after a deal is struck.
Let’s be clear, the reason we’re even talking about this is because of an epic nonsense failure by the GOP.
Claiming that the GOP isn’t driven by stupidity, when it takes all the Dem votes and the few, few GOP votes that are in the safest districts in the country, forgets that GOP stupidity is why this is even happening.
It’s not normal to threaten the world economy. In the old days the debt ceiling was a chance to bloviate about how spendthrift the other party was. But since the morons in charge of the GOP today have had the reins, it’s a ticking time bomb, and they let it count down to within a second or two before enough non-idiots can join ALL THE DEMS in doing the right thing as stewards of such power.
So a deal doesn’t mean the GOP isn’t stupid. A deal means Boehner has been fed up with the tantrums of his masters, and he’s willing to push a few wobbly types to join all the Dems in doing the right thing.
Paul Ryan should kiss Boehner’s ring for this one. He doesn’t have to try herding cats to avoid defaulting on the debt. Boehner took away all the leverage that the Free-Dumb Caucus has for the remainder of Obama’s term.
No, in this case there was a genuine dispute over spending levels. There was never any question about defaulting or having a shutdown.
Actually, the safe GOP votes are the ones who are stupid. It’s the moderates and party elders that will mainly be voting for the Democrats. But yeah, I agree that the GOP has acted stupidly in Congress.
What a deal does mean is that the GOP isn’t just out to make Obama fail. And that they are in fact willing to make deals for the good of the country. Obama’s going to need the Republicans if he wants TPP passed.
Never any question. Interesting that you know better than the people who rate America’s credit worthiness. Maybe you should have sent them a stern letter about how there was never any question.
Again, the reason the defaults didn’t happen, is that there were a few GOP members that joined all the Dems. A few. All the Dems.
And if there was never a chance of default, then the GOP was holding a hostage at banana-point.
When I say safe, I mean safe from likely TP primary challenges, obviously. The most moderate GOP members.
Not “just make Obama fail”, but it’s the main directive. A deal means that some small number of the people you help vote into power are willing to have a moment of reasoned clarity. It doesn’t mean that fucking Obama isn’t the central motivation of the GOP today. It’s the central motivation of the GOP Base.
Sure. So? That doesn’t make the GOP not hate Obama.
This is absurd. The only reason there was any discussion about spending levels was the leverage that the bomb-throwers had from the threat to blow up the economy.
If there was never any question about defaulting, then there would have been no discussion of spending levels.
No, what it means is - ASSUMING the votes are there - that 30 Republicans can be talked into making a deal for the good of the country - although they’re probably the ones who might have lost their seats if default had happened and the GOP was held responsible. So they are motivated by self-interest, and not just the good of the country. 30 Republicans aren’t just out to make Obama fail, but are willing to try to make Hillary fail instead at this point, given that we’re less than 15 months from having a new President in office.
And funny thing about how these deals always seem to expire in odd-numbered years. Guess they don’t trust the voters to realize they’re making all these threats for the good of the nation.
Looks like the deal will also take the Dec. 11 shutdown date off the table. The Freedumb Caucus is going to be really pissed about that, because they figured that, if nothing else, they’d be able to make Paul Ryan preside over a government shutdown if their demands weren’t met. Sucks to be them. 
[QUOTE=adaher]
Predictable response, but in this thread it’s only liberals who are making assumptions about Republicans that turned out to be completely wrong, and continue to hold onto those assumptions even after a deal is struck.
[/QUOTE]
Assumptions like that most House Republicans will vote against this deal? Am I going to be proven wrong there?
So Congress passes a Raise the Debt Ceiling AND repeal Obamacare" bill or a “Raise the Debt ceiling if the Administration admits that the deaths in Benghazi were Clinton’s fault” bill; Obama vetoes it, and that’s Democratic obstructionism?
The GOP better get busy with their veto-forcing agenda. GWB vetoed 12 bills (with 4 overturned); Obama has vetoed only 5, none overturned.
And I do hope those attempting to play the “Your side is just as partisan and malicious as ours” card with post an essay in IMHO discussing how their position is supported by Congressional scrutiny of Benghazi compared with scrutiny of GWB Administration lies and mistakes related to Iraq.
A couple of links: the full 144-page bill, and an official 15-page summary.
I haven’t had time to read them; I just found out about them via Steve Benen. But I figured I should share the links with y’all.
By that logic, if I read it right, nobody would ever borrow money for any reason.
There’s nothing wrong with public debt. In fact, it’s a good thing. It’s just too much that is a problem, just as with you and me.
There is a traditional form for the required kabuki. They derive the required number of Republican votes and assign those votes to those Representatives who are safest from the Free Dumb Caucus. Those selected might have been inclined to vote for it anyway, but safety for their all-important incumbency is foremost.
Still could be tricky. Some Republicans who are not entirely terrified by the FD Caucus still want to be on record as opposing Planned Parenthood’s Abortion and Tupperware Party plans, for instance. So the counting has to be very carefully done, and it can’t have anything in it that would arouse unanimous revulsion amongst the Dems. Or even the relatively sane Republicans, either of whom might bolt.
Certainly, not a stellar day for democracy. Damn sight better than it might have been.
I’m a liberal, and though I disagree with Boehner on many issues, I’ll admit that he’s a responsible legislator who takes seriously his duty to govern. This is no surprise to me at this point.
I do think it says something bad about many of the Congressional Republicans that I’m in a position of praising Boehner for something that really ought to be true of every member of Congress.
I read Ravenman’s post as including the issuance of debt in “raising revenue” rather than as a diatribe against deficit spending.
It just did, AFAICT.
This bill wouldn’t raise the debt ceiling; it suspends it between now and the Ides of March, 2017:
[QUOTE=bill summary at the link, pp.11-12]
Subsection 901(a) provides for the temporary suspension of the limit on public debt through March 15, 2017. Subsection 901(b) further provides that on March 16, the public debt limit will be increased, but only to the extent that: (1) the face amount of obligations issued and the face amount of obligations whose principal and interest are guaranteed by the federal government (except guaranteed obligations held by the Secretary of the Treasury) outstanding on March 15, 2017, exceeds (2) the face amount of such obligations outstanding on the date of enactment of this Act.
[/QUOTE]
If there’s anything in that language that prevents the Treasury from borrowing more than it actually needs between now and 3/15/2017, I’m missing it.
Anybody see any reason why the Treasury couldn’t issue additional debt to keep them in funds for another 9-10 months, so that ‘extraordinary measures’ would run out in August or September, 2018, a bit closer to an election than these things have been expiring?
At least we don’t have to pass them to find out what’s in them. 
Selling debt is just another form of raising revenue. Sure, we can sell too much debt and experience economic problems, but we can also raise taxes too high and experience other economic problems.
I’m simply saying that revenue – from whatever source you like, taxes, borrowing, royalties, user fees, anything – has to be raised in order for money to be spent, regardless of how much money it is.
In other words, you’re inferring things that I’m not implying. I do not believe the budget needs to be always balanced. National debt is not an inherently toxic thing.
No, it suspended the official dollar amount but then goes on to say that the debt can only be increased to cover expenses that were incurred that require payment before 3/16/2017. This is an example of where the summary doesn’t give you sufficient information on the bill itself.
You are missing it Sec. 902 of the bill states (from the full bill text, not the summary):
What this effectively does is guarantees there will be no more debt ceiling debates between now and then, but Congress still controls the “rough” dollar amount of the debt–they control the taxes and the amount that can be spent. What they’ve done is avoided a strict dollar amount for the reasons I mentioned above–revenue and spending are always just estimates. Revenue can be a decent bit higher or lower than expected, spending the executive can’t deliberately say, spend $50bn more on new DoD weapons or something without permission but some programs may incur unexpected expenses under the law. What this does is it means if revenue for example is lower than expected and the President needs to issue debt to cover budgeted spending he can do so, because they aren’t instituting a strict dollar amount.
What they also didn’t do is just raise the cap hugely, which would be another way they could’ve avoided a debt ceiling fight until 3/16/2017. Their approach actually results in essentially the “minimum possible” issuance of debt, because they’re always going to issue enough debt to fund budgeted spending (at least they have for 230+ years), this law just makes sure that some weird quirk in incurred expenses or revenue shortfalls won’t result in an unexpected debt ceiling fight if they had pegged the debt ceiling only high enough to cover what they’ve budgeted.
At the end of the period the law automatically reactivates the nominal debt ceiling, but sets it at an amount automatically high enough that it covers all debt issued in this interim period. They’ll at that point need to raise it again to cover new obligations after that.
OK, gotcha.
OK. Other than the fact that, per the language of the bill, the debt limit would be automatically exceeded on March 16, 2017 by whatever sort of “normal operating balance” it maintained on that date, per the language of 902(b), it seems to make sense. And that flaw is related only to the fact that there’s an end date for this arrangement.
In fact, it seems to make such sense that it answers the objection you raised earlier about getting rid of the debt ceiling, as it prohibits the Treasury from engaging in excess borrowing.
So why not just do this permanently? The only utility I can see in having a debt ceiling is (a) the opportunity it used to provide to grandstand about the national debt and Federal spending (pre-2011), and (b) creating opportunities to hold the U.S. economy hostage and demand ransom in return for not giving the U.S.A. a good fucking-over (2011-present and beyond). And the utility of (a) is trivial, and that of (b) is disastrously negative.
There wasn’t historically a need to enact such a provision “permanently”, because it used to be always a matter of course that at the same time Congress passed the budget it’d also raise the debt ceiling to cover expected outlays plus usually a reasonable cushion. Before the Obama Presidency I can only remember during the 95-96 government budget debate/shutdown, Gingrich threatened to not raise the debt ceiling but I believe the first continuing resolution ended up raising it, when the CR expired the government shut down for 22 days but IIRC they weren’t in danger of hitting the debt ceiling at that point.
I’m unclear on the history of how we “severed” this linking of budgets/CRs with debt ceiling, maybe in the failure to pass budgets for most of the Obama Presidency and all the short CRs it just incidentally happened. I do know that it felt like the “first” debt ceiling crisis of the Obama Presidency snuck up on us, but once the Tea Party saw they could refuse to raise it to cause national crises there developed political desire to keep the ability to cause these crises.