Seriously? Seriously? We’ve wasted three whole days, with national default* on our legal obligations mere days away, for this?!?
House Republicans will link passage of a balanced-budget amendment to Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) last-ditch debt-ceiling plan, which GOP lawmakers said would move the measure to passage in a high-stakes vote later on Friday. …
Republican lawmakers say the Boehner framework would still pave the way for the debt limit to be raised through the 2012 election in two chunks. But it would also mandate that the second hike of the ceiling could only occur after a balanced-budget amendment passed both chambers of Congress and went to the states for ratification.
Mind you, that would require a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress. In a divided government. And “if” that doesn’t happen, then we default in a few months. F***ing brilliant.
This is completely insane, and does not represent a remotely serious attempt to resolve the debt-limit crisis. This “revamped” Boehner bill has, by design, literally zero chance of success. Any journalist who reports this development in a way that credulously treats it as a serious attempt at pertinent legislating is deceiving his or her readers. This is sheer nonsense. But don’t believe me; believe Paul Ryan, yesterday:
What I never really agreed with is the idea that we would expect Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to deliver 40 [and] 15 votes from Democrats for our version of the Balanced Budget Amendment. You know, I just never thought that was realistic, to demand Democrats vote against their conscience for our version of the Balanced Budget Amendment. So I just never thought that would work.
Or, if you prefer, John McCain:
I will take back seat to none in my support of the balanced budget amendment. Thirteen times I voted for it. I will vote for it tomorrow. But what is really amazing about this is that some, some members are believing that we can pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in this body with its present representation, and that is foolish. That is worse than foolish. That is deceiving. …
That is not fair to the American people, to hold out and say we won’t agree to raising the debt limit until we pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. It’s unfair, it’s bizarro. And maybe some people who have only been in this body for six or seven months or so really believe that. Others know better. Others know better.
I know what the right-wing chorus will say: “Well, at least the Republicans have passed a bill! Where is the Democratic bill?” But both of the Republican bills — Cut, Cap & Balance, and now this — are completely meaningless as actual attempts to legislate and govern, because they were passed with 100% certain knowledge of failure. They are the equivalent of the Democrats passing a debt-ceiling bill that would cut the deficit by way of a carbon tax, and tie future increases to the passage of a constitutional amendment confirming that the individual mandate is permissible. Imagine if a Democratic House, responding to a request by President Romney and the Republican Senate to raise the debt ceiling, passed such a bill as a condition of raising the ceiling. Would you be impressed? Or would you recognize it as total baloney? Such a bill would obviously have no chance of becoming law in a divided government, and would not represent an actual attempt to govern, but rather, pure political posturing and pandering. This bill is the same way. So, yeah, there’s a “Republican bill,” and there will soon be two of them — both designed solely to score points with to a radical base that lives in an alternate universe. If you think the raw number of bills passed by each party is significant, ask yourself: would we be materially closer to a resolution if there was a “Democratic bill” along the lines I just proposed? Of course not. It would be a pointless, if not counterproductive, piece of legislation. So is this. The House GOP is not even attempting to govern at this point. These people are a joke, and a disgrace.
F*** you, Washington. F*** you, Tea Party.
P.S. *Or “semi-default,” or whatever you want to call it. I realize we wouldn’t immediately default on our debt, presuming Treasury can & does prioritize payments, and the markets don’t freak out so badly that we’re unable to “roll over” short-term debt. But we will certainly “default” on legal obligations of one kind or another, not making payments that are required by law. (What ever happened to conservative respect for the rule of law, by the way?)
P.P.S. Via the indispensible Megan McArdle, center-right economics writer and noted RINO (I kid!), here’s more on what a failure to raise the debt ceiling would actually look like.
UPDATE: Don’t believe Ryan or McCain? How about arch-conservative commentator Bill Kristol?
Last night, Speaker Boehner toyed with adding a gimmicky balanced budget amendment provision to the Republican budget bill in order to try to get the final handful of votes he needs for passage. He thought better of this last night, and didn’t do so. He should continue to avoid pointless and embarrassing gimmicks to try to secure a last-gasp victory on the House floor. Such a tainted “win” would truly be dead on arrival in the Senate. And it would do nothing to increase McConnell’s leverage, or Boehner’s own, if and when a Senate-passed bill comes over to the House this weekend.
RINO. [/sarcasm]
Lighten up, Francis. BBA is a throw-away for Reid et al. to strip out. The question then is whether, when it goes back to the House, the number of Dems that get on board outnumber the number of Republicans that don’t support it so that it eventually gets to the Bystander-In-Chief. God forbid the party in power actually start working towards something rather than against everything …
I for one like the idea of making pols explain what is so bad about a BBA. Of course, most of them would first have to explain why they never got around to attending to that middle B …
This is completely insane, and does not represent a remotely serious attempt to resolve the debt-limit crisis.
Because of course, presenting no plan, and threatening to veto or table without debate the only plan anyone else presents is sane and does represent a serious attempt to resolve the debt crisis……..
Joe Mama – yer ruining our blog-host’s riff re yer repetitive returns to reality …
(Is it Talk Like A Pirate Day yet ?)
I think McCain and a few other smart Repubs have this right. It’s okay to pass symbolic bills just to put your beliefs on the record. But it’s insane to think that anything the House passes will be fully ratified. And many Repubs seem to think that. They think that Obama is so weak he will do whatever they want to raise the debt ceiling. I saw an NRO poll where 80% of people thought Obama would never veto the Boehner plan. In that sense, this is Obama’s fault for projecting weakness.
Obama should have gone on the record right at the beginning and said, “I will unconditionally veto any legislation that links budget policy to the debt ceiling in any way. Period. Any effort by Congress to do this is purely a waste of time. Congress already has full control over the budget. It does not need to jeopardize our national credit in order to exercise that control.”
But it’s insane to think that anything the House passes will be fully ratified.
Then why hasn’t the President or Senate proposed a plan? By your definition sitting on the sidelines waiting for the House to act is insanity.
Obama should have gone on the record right at the beginning and said, “I will unconditionally veto any legislation that links budget policy to the debt ceiling in any way.
He did. (Before he changed his mind) That is why the House offered a floor vote on a clean debt ceiling bill. The Democrats didn’t support it.
They think that Obama is so weak he will do whatever they want to raise the debt ceiling. I saw an NRO poll where 80% of people thought Obama would never veto the Boehner plan.
He’d be an idiot to veto whatever comes out of conference once both the Senate and House have voted on competing bills.
Obama should have gone on the record right at the beginning and said, “I will unconditionally veto any legislation that links budget policy to the debt ceiling in any way. Period. Any effort by Congress to do this is purely a waste of time. Congress already has full control over the budget. It does not need to jeopardize our national credit in order to exercise that control.”
Um, that’s more or less exactly what he has done — threaten a veto (first for anything that wasn’t a clean debt-limit raise, and then for anything that didn’t include tax hikes). Now he will soon be in a situation where he will be forced to carry through on that threat and immediately turn his attention to prioritizing government payments. IOW he will be forced to either capitulate, or shoulder the majority of the blame for a government shutdown.
Frankly, the president approached this entire episode the complete opposite of what would have been effective. He’d have been better off capitulating far earlier and working a bill, than starting off with a fierce position and slowly having to backtrack and eat his words. Now his entire base is upset with him as evidenced in his slipping poll numbers, and things won’t get better for him politically once the government has to start slashing payments.
“Then why hasn’t the President or Senate proposed a plan? By your definition sitting on the sidelines waiting for the House to act is insanity.”
Because they have:
http://t.co/3f8zqm4
http://t.co/KEeUjNQ
Or do you mean put out a unilateral bill that has no chance of succeeding and is just wasting our time?
The GOP hasn’t put out SHIT, actually thats incorrect all they HAVE put out is shit. Completely partisan, one sided, bound to fail, political theater bills are NOT solutions.
Standing on one side demanding that you get everything your way OR ELSE is not leadership, its not compromise, and it is not in the best interests of the country or its people. It is absolutely and unsupportably irresponsible. The rights intransigence on this issue has allready caused harm to the economy, yet people like you continue to defend their completely indefensible actions.
We are a nation with different priorities among different people and two parties sharing control of the legislature. The mature adult way to resolve differences in a situation like that is to form a compromise which gives both sides SOME of what they want, while accepting that neither side is going to get EVERYTHING they want. The Republicans (or most of them including the leadership and the idiotic Tea Partiers) are demanding that its their way and they want it ALL their way, without acknowledging that at least half the country (and according to various polls, well more than half) don’t want it that way.
The GOP agenda is being driven by extremists who would gladly see the American economy damaged and real peoples lives harmed on the off chance it hurts Obama’s reelection chances. They live in a fantasy world and its damn time we stopped pretending like they were offering legitimate, reasonable leadership and instead call them out for what they are, dangerous extremists whose actions represent a very real threat to our nations economic future.
The only reason we are even having a conversation about reducing the rise in spending of the government (nobody is actually talking about actually reducing spending) is because the American people elected the Tea Party candidates last year.
ROFLMAO … then please count me among those who David K. calls idiots and extremists. Evidently it’s neither idiotic nor extremist to spend the country into oblivion and make promise after never-ending promise benefiting politicians at the expense of taxpayers, demagogue American businesses, turn the purchase of toxic assets into a blank check to redistribute wealth to companies that tow the line for your policies, bail out lending institutions whom you’d goaded to be irresponsible and then rewarded for it, and of course shun any deal that would avoid supposedly impending doom if it might make it harder for The One to get reelected in 2012. If that is being mature and responsible, then those adjectives have no meaning.
By the way…what is everyone’s opinion about he so-called 14th Amendment solution? In my opinion, not only is it ridiculous, but the mere fact that the Left is actually proposing and in some cases calling for it is dismaying.
The cynical process of deliberately obfuscating and distorting the clear meaning of a Constitutional provision for short term partisan gain is disgusting.
The one thing President Obama has done in this mess that I approve of, is follow the advice of his lawyers and dismiss the idea.
#12: “The one thing President Obama has done in this mess that I approve of, is follow the advice of his lawyers and dismiss the idea.”
This, and some of the even more awful proposals out there (like minting trillion-dollar platinum coins). Using the 14th to short-circuit the whole process would not only be bad in this area, but would potentially interfere with other precedents about Congressional Power of Enforcement.
OP: “a constitutional amendment confirming that the individual mandate is permissible…President Romney”
Yeah, we all know how much Mitt Romney hates individual mandates for health insurance.
#6 — piff
#7 — False. REPUBLICANS did not support the clean debt ceiling raise. Democrats supported it, albeit in a divided vote. Of course, the Democratic votes were also meaningless, as the bill could never have passed without Republican support.
#8 — Some missed connections here. I spoke of Obama vetoing the “Boehner plan”, not a compromise bill. Different animals. And Obama’s veto policy through this crisis has been the opposite of what I was pushing for: a single, constant, clearly delineated stance against anything but a clean bill. Obama has yet to forcefully articulate a veto plan, or stick to a plan of any kind. Had he done so, I think he could have nipped the whole debt ceiling crisis in the bud. And we’d all be better off. Democrats would get a political win. And Republicans could still have their budget tiff during discussions of the next budget, and even shut down government if they wanted. That would at least reduce the dimensions of the crisis (no funding issue concurrent with shutdown).
Or House Republicans could just stop jeopardizing the nation’s welfare for no essential reason. That would be nice as well.
Or House Republicans could just stop jeopardizing the nation’s welfare for no essential reason.
Unless of course, you count following through on your campaign promises to be an essential reason…..
Joe Mama #11 – in both colloquial and classical davidkian, neither of the english language terms “mature” and “responsible” can be expressed using native davidkian words or phrases; they have no literal, no conceptual, nor idiomatic equivalent …
(grin)
Some missed connections here. I spoke of Obama vetoing the “Boehner plan”, not a compromise bill. Different animals.
That’s a red herring, Casey. There’s no chance the Boehner plan would have made it past the Senate — either yesterday’s version or today’s version — so you’re making a meaningless point. In any case, if by some chance the Boehner bill is what is sent to the president, I stand by my argument: the president would be a fool to veto it — he would end up the bad guy once the cuts start coming. The political dynamic is such that, should a bill pass Congress and make it to the White House, Obama would have no choice now but to accept it. You’re living in a dream world if you think the president wouldn’t get pilloried for vetoing whatever bill ends up on his desk and causing a potential default as a result.
And Obama’s veto policy through this crisis has been the opposite of what I was pushing for: a single, constant, clearly delineated stance against anything but a clean bill.
That was his original stance, and it was untenable. Holding firm to a politically untenable stance does not suddenly make that stance tenable.
Obama has yet to forcefully articulate a veto plan, or stick to a plan of any kind. Had he done so, I think he could have nipped the whole debt ceiling crisis in the bud.
Obama had one option to come out of this mess looking like the hero, and that was to be out in front pushing a detailed compromise sans any tax increases. But you’re talking about Mr. “Lead from Behind” here. Really, this was just piss-poor gamesmanship on Obama’s part, probably driven by his inflated sense of his own intellectual superiority. What made Clinton brilliant was his ability to get the GOP all riled up over a particular legislative priority, force some tweaks around the edges to make it more palatable, then jump out in front of the parade and claim victory for the reform. Obama has displayed zero ability to co-opt his opponents’ agenda — all he can do is grandstand, oppose, denounce, and demagogue — and he is already paying quite dearly for it.
Obama had one option to come out of this mess looking like the hero, and that was to be out in front pushing a detailed compromise sans any tax increases.
He’s not trying to look like your personal hero, AML. The guy is a Democratic President, and his base would hate the stance you suggest. And he’s not going to make any inroads among Republicans.
His original stance — vetoing any effort to link budget to debt ceiling — was entirely tenable. I grant you, the polls say it was unpopular at the time. But in the event of default, he could have said, “This is entirely on Republicans. They can raise the debt ceiling anytime they want. I’m waiting.” Events would have validated his position. He caved on that position like he caves on every damn thing.
Casey, it ain’t about my standard of hero-ship. I specifically cited Clinton for a reason. I am plenty able to separate smart politics from my personal political preferences. Wish you could do the same.
I have to say, up until the past few weeks, I still thought Obama was going to be a formidable candidate come November 2012 and figured odds were better than 50/50 he’d pull off a squeaker and win a second term. Now, no matter who the GOP candidate is, I really view it as ours to lose. When it comes to smart politics, this president is a dumbass, pure and simple.
AML #20 – isn’t he just proving more and more that he is a reprise of Jimmuh Carter ?
(Although I don’t think that Jimmuh had quite as much of a tin ear as our current First Occupant keeps showing …