(Sorry–couldn’t find a current ‘debt’ thread, though I could swear I just saw one. Mods, please merge if one was in front of my face and I could not see it.)
Pure second-guessing, but it seems that this hostage-taking nonsense the GOP is trying to pull should have been anticipated at some point, and when the Dems controlled the House and the Presidency, couldn’t they have tried the gambit of simply not voting on the debt, claiming the President didn’t have a choice in paying our bills or not paying our bills?
That way, all of this hassle could have been adjudicated in advance, and Congress could have voted to approve it if it was ruled unconstitutional in the courts.
The last time the debt ceiling came up was in 2021. The Senate GOP filibustered but eventually made a deal to kick the can to this point. There’s been reporting that Manchin privately was open to carving out a debt ceiling exception to the filibuster which would have given the democrats free reign to do whatever they wanted with the debt ceiling, and that this threat forced the GOP to cut a deal.
IMO the current crisis was very predictable and anyone on the democratic side who wasn’t in favor of a going it alone to set a higher ceiling is reaping what they sowed.
Manchin (and the problem solvers caucus) are now basically saying bipartisanship is the way out of it, but that can’t happen until they’re willing to negotiate with the dems directly and cut out nihilists like McCarthy.
If they had the votes, I think they would have done it when they controlled both houses. But with Manchin and Sinema, I don’t think they had the votes.
A common ploy, often used by professional pundits, is to say that a current problem could easily have been prevented in the past. Since we have forgotten the details of how it was back then, it sounds plausible.
Again, did they try? I don’t remember it if they did.
Speaking of second guessing, i was reminded that lbj persuaded SC Justice Goldberg to step down so he could appoint his buddy Abe Fortas to the court , which seat ultimately got filled by Nixon. An unforced error A bad one
We saw this during the vote for Speaker. McCarthy didn’t have the votes and knew it. Yet that vote was mandatory: he couldn’t not have it happen. That resulted in public humiliation, blackmail, crazies getting hours of camera time, a diminuation of future power, and disgust by the non-crazy general population in the party and in Congress itself. All because he was forced to “try” a vote he knew he would lose.
Trying doesn’t necessarily mean “putting it up for a floor vote.” You hear a lot about things that Senators and Congresspeople would like to do, often with specifics about obstacles to doing it, either from them or from the people inside their party who object to the idea, and from opponents on the other sde of the aisle who denounce the whole idea as offensive, unAmerican, etc, trying to make political capital by lampooning the other side’s foolish ideas.
I don’t remember this proposal ever coming up from anyone at all, which is odd if it was ever seriously proposed by the Dems. I don’t remember any discussion, either as a positive or a negative. I certainly don’t remember ever thinking about it when the Dems held the majority, though I remember well the GOP pulling this hostage-taking stunt on Obama.
Next time the Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House, they should pass a bill extending the debt ceiling to 25 years past the death of Charles III’s last living descendant. This is bullshit that this brinksmanship only happens during Democratic presidencies. It can and should be done away with next time Dems hold all the cards.
I don’t really know anything, but the latest is that they’re trying to negotiate and have pooh poohed the alternatives. Krugman wrote a blog piece saying how that’s a mistake. Here’s a gift link:
So, it seems the only hope is a negotiated solution, and they’re short on time. The markets are predicting some delay on payments due at the beginning of June – there’s a spike in T-bill interest rates right there, implying a few days delay in payment of principal.
The Nixon appointee who replaced Fortas was Blackmun, who wrote the majority in Roe and began to dissent in all death penalty cases, saying he had given up trying to tinker with the machinery of death.
Disagree. They should just say that all debt covering the deficit is automatically authorized. That way the brinksmanship is put into the debate on spending and revenue bills where it belongs.
I can’t disagree. If only Biden would make an address stating “All this wrangling about the debt ceiling has got to stop. Congress sets the revenues, Congress sets the expenditures, when the debt goes up it’s on Congress, not the executive. Therefore, by executive order I am abolishing the debt ceiling because the 14th amendment states that the debt of the United States shall not be questioned. If you don’t like it, go ahead and take me to court. But before you do, you need to ask yourself- ‘Do I feel lucky?’. Well do you, punk?”
I also don’t understand why they don’t just put a clause in the budget/continuing resolution bill that authorizes the raising of the debt sufficient to cover expenditures outlined in the bill. It would seem that that would be the time to authorize it rather than some 6 months down the road.
Yes, but I thought (maybe I’m wrong) that when the budget was passed, the Dems had enough votes to pass it through reconciliation without Republican support.