Of course that perception is wrong, since the executive branch can only spend what it’s authorized to spend by Congress, and will only take in what it’s authorized to take in from various tax laws.
ETA: Not saying you disagree with that, of course.
Congress really can’t bind a future Congress in this way. You could change the rules, but the House readopts their rules every session and there’s nothing to prevent a future Republican majority from jettisoning the requirement.
Yeah, the debt ceiling itself is a statute, a law. You really need to repeal or amend the law, not just the procedure, and a future Congress/Admin can undo that down the road.
And the Executive would rather keep their ability to do bond issues below the ceiling w/o going to Congress to approve them the terms and conditions for every single dollar. Because you just know what would happen in a situation like the current Congress.
There have been attempts to “BRAC” the debt – i.e. have a process where a bipartisan, independent panel would make a slate of recommendations regarding addressing the national debt that would then be put to an up-or-down vote (i.e. no amendments) in Congress. The Simpson-Bowles Commission was one such attempt, but it failed to secure the supermajority of the commission required to move forward with a recommendation. I think it’s safe to say that bipartisan compromise has not gotten easier since then.
It is an expansion of the net number of theoretically eligible people, assuming the unhoused and veteran people were not already theoretically eligible under some other prong. Practically speaking, many of those people already work and so will be unaffected, many have disabilities and so are theoretically already eligible, many people without homes or jobs don’t have addresses and so will have no way to receive SNAP, and most of the people who are theoretically eligible won’t be able to apply.
On the flipside, a bunch of people who were getting money for food will suddenly not be getting it anymore, so even if we believe that theoretically there’s a balance sheet where other people are getting that money, it’s monstrous policy.
Big win for the left wing party.
The reality was always that Biden had to give up something to prevent a default, because Republicans are dumb enough to push things to that level. There will come a day when that will be the only course, but this is not that day.
Biden’s public position “no compromise” was always a posture so he would have room to be flexible when the time came. Had his public position been “I’ll compromise early and vigorously to prevent default” then he would have gotten rinsed by the dumbest, weakest clown-car majority to control the House in recent memory.
The outcome wasn’t perfectly ideal, but it was the best any Dem could have achieved under the circumstances (for anyone who actually fears the consequences of default, of which handing control to Republicans is not the smallest).
Well, at least rich people will be able to avoid frequent audits.
Hard disagree. There are real workarounds – interest-only debt that doesn’t add to the face amount of debt, premium bonds that take in more than they add to the face amount of debt, 14th amendment solutions, platinum coin.
2 points here:
- I stated this political compromise is the best outcome. There’s no world in which these uncertain workarounds, guaranteed to be contested in a legal battle whose outcome is far from guaranteed, would be the “best” outcome.
- As alluded above, nobody knows whether these are “real” strategies. Until fully adjudicated by the courts, they are at best untested. With the current, corrupt right-wing composition of SCOTUS, there’s a very high risk that this test would go the wrong way.
As I said, the day will come when a Dem president will have no choice but to invoke the 14th Amendment and let SCOTUS own the outcome. Someday it will be unavoidable. That day is not today.
I guess we’ll see. There are still a lot of stumbling blocks remaining in the process.
This one sounds like a typical American compromise. Moderates on both sides saying their side won and radicals on each side saying their negotiators gave the store away.
I do not disagree but I also do not think that kind of political spin is uniquely American.
The inescapable reality is that these are the outcomes:
- Default on US debt
- A prolonged and uncertain adjudication of various untested, risky workarounds for the deb limit
- A compromise on raising the debt limit
If you evaluate the deal purely on these terms, this is a good deal. Biden gave away very little, and provided the opposition something colorable as a win. Most of the opposition from Democrats comes from the fact that this Kabuki drama is bullshit, and shouldn’t exist at all, and represents yet another way to end-run the will of the American people as expressed at the polls.
That’s a very valid viewpoint, yet it is separate from the question of whether this deal is a politlcally good one at this point in time. The debt limit needs to be blown up. That needs to happen at this point. It will be ugly and destructive and this isn’t the time for it.
The commercials write themselves…
Frankly, given how much was supposed to be put in this agreement by the R’s (eliminating support for Ukraine, cutting SS/Medicare/Medicaid, etc), this is another exceptional win for Biden.
Stranger, your concerns are valid and noted. However this is America, a country which extracts its pound of flesh one way or another, and the damage… while real… is a lot less than expected a week ago. And like you, I don’t like this facet a bit.
You do know that experts on Economics disagree, right? I didn’t hand wave it away. I said that was one expert. Not to mention he says there are risks, and those risks were worse than the compromise.
Sure, if McC had been unwilling to compromise, then use the nuke option. But Biden didnt have to.
Get a significant majority in Congress (and the White House) and toss the debt limit.
Exactly. The compromise wasnt that bad. McC blinked- he got just enuf to say he didnt lose.
Raging triple digit inflation is more than just “perception”. Weimar Republic, for e.g.
The 80 Billion IRS funding was cut by 1.4 B.
Unless of course the Dems take control of Congress for the near future. Let’s hope.
Is this 50 Senators, the VP, the POTUS, and a majority of Congresscritters, or something more?
When is the time?
This recurring drama reminds me of Lucy yanking the football on Charlie Brown. When will Charlie ever learn instead of going back for more?
Should I bother posting an exactly on point refutation of this from Krugman, a Nobel winner in economics?
Krugman says that experts never disagree?
First you said that far greater legal minds have considered it and told Biden not to try, so I posted an article with a far greater legal mind. Then, you switch to economists for some reason, and of course a very prominent economist thinks that Biden should have done one of the workarounds. And your reply is some weird thing about whether economists ever disagree with each other??
I think our conversation is done here.