A Democrat is president, which means it's time for Republicans to once again refuse to raise the debt ceiling. But there's no need to worry just yet.
Technically, we'll breach the debt ceiling sometime this month. But as you may recall from previous Republican versions of this game, this just means the Treasury Secretary has to start swapping around payments to make sure we don't go over the ceiling. That usually buys us two or three months, so the real deadline for raising the debt ceiling is probably around October or so.
Until then, feel free to ignore the whole thing. It's just the children throwing a temper tantrum because no one is paying attention to them.
Stupidest argument ever.
When the deadline does come, I wonder if it will be the straw that breaks the filibuster. If Republicans really dig in, and Biden refuses to blink, Joe Manchin will have to choose between the legislative filibuster and the global economy. I don't think even Manchin could sustain his support of the filibuster in that scenario.
(Obviously the Senate wouldn't just blow it up completely, they would do some sort of carve-out for the debt ceiling. But once that bridge is crossed, it gets a lot easier to cross it again.)
I don't think even Manchin could sustain his support of the filibuster in that scenario.
Sinema says "hold my beer" as she warms up her calves, right arm and thumb in preparation for another one of her Alicia Silverstone Clueless Curtsies on the Senate floor.
Naturally, Alicia does it better though...
Alicia - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmPO_nzJ18k
Sinema - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNo_U7PTGzk
I've said it over and over the debt ceiling is a mirage. By passing bills Congress implicitly authorizes the money it costs to implement the bills.
I quite agree - I'm a certified professional in government financial management, there's nothing in current laws that hint at the need for permission to pay the bills for goods and services we have already received!
There's nothing in the Constitution that requires a filibuster to exist either, or blue slips for judges, or immunity for presidents in criminal defenses, or in general any number of procedural roadblocks to good governance... yet here we are, with only one party respecting them when it's in power.
I strongly suspect that if push came to shove, and the debt ceiling were breached, Biden would order Treasury to keep issuing T-bills and SCOTUS would uphold his right (indeed, his constitutional obligation under the 14th Amendment) to do so.
But that isn't the problem. The problem is what happens in between breaching the debt ceiling and SCOTUS issuing its ruling. During that period, with the validity of Treasury securities in doubt, the global economy would be plunged into chaos. It would be another 2008-style credit crunch.
...Maybe. Or maybe markets would shrug, assume it would work itself out, and it would all be a big nothingburger. But nobody knows, and very few people want to find out the hard way.
The GOP really needs to be eradicated. By any means necessary.
Seems the GOP is doing a pretty good job all by itself.
It would be fun to see them actually refuse for real this time. Republicans are the enemy. They ought to fight it out. Shut down the government. Blow up the financial system. Better than storming the Capitol. Bring it on.
Everything's fun until the economy is in collapse. Ask Venezuela - they've been enjoying a nonstop fiesta since 2013.
That’s how you take over a country. Republicans will crash the economy to overthrow the current regime. Good luck.
Obama voted against the raising the debt ceiling when he was in the Senate, and he's the Greatest American Leader Ever, so I have a hard time considering that behavior as un-American. Biden also voted against raising the debt ceiling when he was in the Senate, but fortunately no one has ever suggested that he is much of a role model for anything.
Political conservatism and social conservatism cross the line into a pre-revolutionary state when inequality and perceived increases in crime, real or not real, decrease social trust, and low-social trust voters are more likely to vote for conservatives as a way of expressing their violent acting out, because conservatives are certain to cause harm generally, so electing conservatives who will then promote exactly the policies that decrease social trust even further,
https://www.rawstory.com/republicans-have-unleashed-a-new-crime-wave-on-america/
Which is why the Republican party is inherently a criminal organization.
Wealth distribution,
https://i.redd.it/aevfcqdiokc71.jpg
From your link to raw story…
“If we want to get crime under control and restore social cohesion to our society, we must also tackle inequality.”
I suppose it might help some but I don’t really think there is this link between crime, social cohesion, and “inequality”. I’m an upper middle class professional but I work at a manufacturing plant where people make truly middle class wages. These people are not criminals and they won’t be made more socially responsible by eliminating inequality… however some want to define that. Perhaps I and my coworkers are among those from whom you wish to extract concessions.
The problems of poverty, personal dysfunction, and crime are difficult to solve. It’s not really about money. Excusing criminal behavior is not going to get us anywhere. No one has any patience for that.
"Excusing criminal behavior is not going to get us anywhere. No one has any patience for that."
Unless the "criminal" has lots of money. Then "we" come up with all sorts of reasons to not prosecute. Start with 45 and I might change my opinion.
I recommend the death penalty for him.
Unless you and your coworkers are among those spending billions of dollars to float for ~5 minutes in near outer space, I think there are other people in America we can "extract concessions" from to help address inequality.
Mint the Coin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mint a coin and place its value at 10 googol dollars.
End the insanity of the debt limit.
But isn't the only real solution to repeal the law requiring a debt ceiling?
And isn't the infrastructure reconciliation bill the only vehicle in sight for doing that that the GOP can't take hostages over?
And doesn't that mean NOW is the time to act?
If we wait until the deadline the GOP will take hostages and we'll have no ways around that other than to pay ransom.
What am I missing?
Another solution would be to just raise the debt ceiling to some fantastically high number. Say $1 quadrillion. There's no reason why Democrats need to settle for a "realistic" debt ceiling that eventually we will bump into again soon.
What do I keep saying about strength moves vs moves of desperation? This latest oh-so-witty little sally is most definitely not the former. Yes, nothing all that much is changing for the average citizen except for the fact that one group is losing some of their perks (the nastier ones at that), but they're not losing their jobs or homes after all, merely a little relative standing.
But the people are not the party and the party -- the Republican party that is -- rightfully sees this as an existential crisis. It's dying folks, and knows it's dying and on that account is deadly, deadly dangerous. Especially given that it could just as easily and more accurately be called the Psychopath party. A lot of movers and shakers in that apparatus, or at least the ones who benefit off of it, tend to believe that when they die the world ends.
"A Democrat is president, which means it's time for Republicans to once again refuse to raise the debt ceiling. .."
Can't the Democrats raise the debt ceiling with no Republican votes? How is this on the Republicans?
The Senate and its filibuster.
Really, the Senate itself is radically undemocratic in its allocation of representation. The filibuster puts this on steroids, where only 40 members can block what 60 of them want. Enough has been said about this, so I won't bore y'all repeating it.
My pie in the sky, unicorn-rainbow solution would take major Constitutional changes (and thus, years to implement, if ever). Consider the state of New Mexico, 47th in the Union. When it wrote its constitution back around 1912, it set up a legislature modeled on the US Constitution: bicameral legislature, with the House having equal representation and the Senate giving a rep for each county. The counties corresponded to the states of the US.
Do you redraw county lines every 10 years?? Clearly not, at least not in the long run. So NM Senate representation became increasingly unequal, until around the early 1960s when the Supreme Court of the United States stepped in and required actually drawing NM Senate districts to have equal population, county lines be da***ed.
So, if the United States still wants to have a Senate (it does have lots of special powers that the US House doesn't get, and the six year term provides political inertia), then draw state-independent Senate lines every 10 years.
To reduce gerrymandering, have an independent body (NOT the Congress) do this, with no Congressional or Presidential veto. Maybe cut out the Supreme Court, too.
This has been a brief incursion into The Twilight Zone. Hope it wasn't too scary.
I think that bicameral legislatures are already bad. The bicameral but just obscures stuff for the voters and creates another smokey back room of reconciliation for lobbyists to buy votes.
Thus the best solution is to simply eliminate the Senate.
Given that anything that weakens the power of senators is revealed as good.
So normally bad reforms, like term limits, are good for the Senate.
Makes it pretty easy to up for down thumb ideas.
Better Senate districts will reduce the power of the low population faction of the Senate, and make the Senate more like the house, which will make it matter less often, so this idea does qualify.
Problem is our dumb constitution is in a death spiral of small state rule, including it's amendment process. Hard to see how we pull out of that without serious drama.
I can imagine plenty of Senate reforms that wouldn't trip on the 'equal vote in the Senate and no amending this' but of the constitution, but they are all still in the small state rule death spiral.
You're right (in my opinion.) I agree that the Senate ought to go. Even James Madison, who is sometimes blamed for thinking of it, didn't like the concept of equal representation for states of any size. But, like the 3/5 Compromise and the 2nd amendment, the slave states insisted upon it as a condition of joining the new United States.
Then, as now, we couldn't live without the south ... and we can barely live with it,
The South is _exactly_ like Cousin Lymon. Kudos to Carson McCullers for so accurately dissecting this pathology.
On a side note, I highly recommend Suzanne Vega's take:
https://www.amazon.com/Lover-Beloved-Evening-Carson-Mccullers/dp/B01IR8O7IW