I'm not pretending to be obtuse here, but what's up with this headline in the Washington Post?
I know it's traditional to assume that the president is the one "responsible" for the debt ceiling, but why? It's a problem for the country, not the presidency. The leaders of Congress are running out of time at least as much as Biden is.
More, in fact, since Congress is the body actually charged with setting the debt ceiling. If it doesn't get raised, it's on them as much or more than it's on the president.
And because this should be said every time the debt ceiling is mentioned, we really need to get rid of it. The time to argue about spending is when you buy stuff, not when the bills come due. Unless you're a deadbeat, you pay up if you've promised to, and you don't make your payment subject to random, changing demands. You said you'd pay. You pay.
Just ignore the damn debt ceiling and pay the bills. Tell anyone who objects to pound sand.
Setting precedent for lawlessness is unwise. The sword cuts both ways. Just because this serves you now does not mean that opening that door serves you in the future.
It is far wiser to find a path that is not lawless.
Thanks for your concern trolling, as if this will be the first time precedent is set for lawlessness. SCOTUS approving bounty hunter schemes to get rid of constitutional rights, conservative judges finding litigants have standing when they faced no injuries, Republican senators opposing everything and holding judgeships empty for years, state legislators stripping incoming governors of powers while gerrymandering themselves into forever rule, governors waging war against their state's biggest employers and minority groups, January 6th "tourists" smearing poo all over government buildings while blocking the peaceful transfer of power and police shooting unarmed people all applaud you for your massive chutzpah.
Amen. Moreover there is an argument that the modern debt ceiling, which was created during WWI, is unconstitutional because it conflicts with the Fourteenth Amendment, which states: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." This might be the best of several options for Biden to use in the likely event that the GQP allows default. While I am not the best judge of the ultimate strength of this argument (I'm a retired lawyer but have not dealt with constitutional law since I took the course nearly 50 years ago), it is not frivolous. Though I have little doubt how the corrupt and partisan SCOTUS majority would rule.
Your argument is obviously frivolous.
The Treasury can pay debt while cutting all other spending as necessary to keep the government cash flow neutral.
The Treasury can pay debt while cutting all other spending as necessary to keep the government cash flow neutral
This is far from clear. I learned a whole lot about this topic on Yglesias's Substack the other day. Here's an excerpt from one of the comments:
"...the timing of the obligations (e.g., receipt of invoices) in addition to the dependencies people place on expenditures makes it very difficult to separate out "debts" from "future obligations" because the latter are constantly turning into the former due to the nature of program administration, so it's hard to "reserve" tax dollars for debt payments in way that doesn't in practice create different classes of "debt"(i.e. privileging bonds over invoices) in a way that seems constitutionally suspect."
There's lots more where that came from. In short, prioritizing debt service payments appears to be legally dubious, if it's even technically feasible. It's very far indeed from a slam dunk.
1. Doesn't seem to be anything in Matt's Substack. https://www.slowboring.com/archive
2. The obvious spending you cut is entitlements. Those are not debt and do not become debt.
"The obvious spending you cut is entitlements. Those are not debt and do not become debt."
Why is that obvious? For example, it's the law that the government pay social security recipients what they are due. The moment that doesn't happen, 56 million of your fellow Americans have a bulletproof case against the government, and judges start issuing injunctions against Uncle Sam preventing stoppage of payment.
Actually, no. It is not the law that the government pay SS recipients "what they are due".
https://www.cnbc.com/select/will-social-security-run-out-heres-what-you-need-to-know
When the trust fund runs out retirees get a pro-rata haircut.
Entitlements are not legal obligations of the government - recipients have no contractual right to them because there is no contract and no consideration. Government has made a promise to pay them, but it is not enforceable and it is not a debt. It is at most a moral obligation.
That is not true of OASDI (Social Security, Disability Insurance). Current FICA revenues and trust fund holdings cannot be spent for any other purpose, by law. So they cannot make up for a shortfall in general revenues. As Medicare is partly funded from general revenues, I guess it could possibly be cut. Except that there aren’t enough idiots in Congress to allow that to happen; most of them realize that we oldies vote. Not to mention the disruption to the medical care sector, which does some powerful lobbying.
Here's the full comment link. I didn't bother posting it because I thought a subscription is necessary. But maybe not. FWIW I'm absolutely not saying I happen to know that privileging debt service is impossible. I don't think anybody really knows what will happen. But it definitely doesn't appear to be a sure thing for both technical and legal reasons:
https://www.slowboring.com/p/medicaid-work-requirements-are-cruel/comment/14989010
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>>If it doesn't get raised, it's on them as much or more than it's on the president.<<
it’s on Congress entirely, not as much or more.
Not at all. Didn't you learn elementary civics? Legislation is drafed by the Speaker and the President and passed by the House. The world's greatest deliberative body has the right of veto.
We can assume you forget the /s tag.
The world’s greatest deliberative body passed the spending bills that caused the debt that now needs to be paid.
+10
Remember, we live very close to a post truth world and closer to a narrative of the victors.
The whole Republican strategy for many cycles now has been to make life as miserable as possible, the greatest bad for the greatest number, whenever a Democratic president is in office. Headlines like this are right in line with that framing.
Conservatives aren't responsible for anything, that's why they think only other people should pay for things.
Not when you have imbeciles like Amy Klobuchar parroting Kevin McCarthy.
+1
Damn. She's awful. And to think I half fancied her as a fairly solid presidential nominee.
Why do you care what a senator says? They're barely more useful than a drunk in a bar and sometimes less informed.
Why do you care what a senator says?
Major Democratic leaders should not be weakening their party's negotiating leverage. Political communication 101.
That's why she's doing it. Henry Clay has been dead for a while, and The Great Compromiser slot is open for occupancy.
Remember this is the party that gave billionaires tax cuts and are now whining about the budget. They can go to hell.
Exactly! Give away money to those who don't need it while letting your poor starve. and this, in a "christian" nation. Hitler would be proud.
Hard to believe, in all of this time that has passed, those who are elected to make decisions, not the President mind you, but the "ruling party" still hasn't figured out how to do math or make any decision for tat matter. What a basket of airheads.
As Josh Marshall tweeted, this headline is a prime example of how our mainstream media unthinkingly parrots whatever line the republicans are peddling at any given moment. Major media will default to gop framing even if they're aware they should try not to, but of course most aren't trying at all.
If you ask me, the act of approving spending implicitly authorizes whatever borrowing might be required to cover the bill, and anything else is just the purest unadulterated horse hockey, unworthy of the "party of fiscal probity" not to mention unworthy of the wealthiest nation in the history of the known universe.
I would include a simple sentence with that proviso in every spending bill, if it was up to me. Or pass a simple blanket resolution to that effect, and be done with this relic of a bygone era.
It's not actually "approving spending" that's the real problem. It's that nobody -- not even the Democrats though they're lying somewhat less -- is willing to tell people that the Federal Government needs about 2% more of the GDP to meet all of its commitments. Most of those commitments are good programs that are wildly popular with the people who benefit from them.
There are a few idiocies, but most have been weeded out long before now.
It's not actually "approving spending" that's the real problem. It's that nobody -- not even the Democrats though they're lying somewhat less -- is willing to tell people that the Federal Government needs about 2% more of the GDP to meet all of its commitments.
Bullshit. The real problem is the US has a treasonous political party that is willing to commit an act of economic terrorism against the American people. Period.
It is rather that journalists are lazy (like other human beings of course) and that few have a real understanding of the underlying subject matter - and fall lazily into an easy Presidency centric narrative.
In addition it seems from reading both Right and Left that Americans broadly have mentally fallen into a Presidency centric understanding of their own system as well as an oddly centralised understanding both far out of step from where their real system stands in actual law.
Understanding the mental channels is more likely to give you ways to address than maundering on about excessive Republican influence and "main stream media"
In addition to the expectation that the President is responsible for fixing everything, most of the media has bought into the REpublicans’ dishonest, hypocritical claimed about debt.
this headline is a prime example of how our mainstream media unthinkingly parrots whatever line the republicans are peddling</i<
Your evidence for the use of "unthinking" is what, exactly?
Indeed, those "mainstream media" types know what they are doing. You may be eliminating any accountability for such actions, something "they" are supposedly paid for.
Agreed, and I also noticed the ridiculous headline.
The stupidest part of the article was that it acknowledge right off the bat that Biden's strategy was to go right down to the wire, when the R's will panic once the market starts dropping. And then it adds something stupid like "But 6 weeks out, it looks like this strategy is failing."
Well, yes, the strategy right now is to just ensure that R's get stuck owning whatever happens, which Biden is doing. The R's won't negotiate until they have to. Your own article says that the R's aren't going to move until they see signs of panic.
The sickening part of it is that it worked perfectly from a news=commodity standpoint. Republicans read and repeat it because it helps their narrative. Liberals read it and talk about it because it irritates us. Kaching!
I used to think reporters were stupid (they are not), but they and their editors are salespeople trying to sell a product to the widest audience. Fox News is the leaking pustule of a disease that runs through all news media.
"deadbeat" or a republican.
I wish that Biden would just use a 1 term presidency to clean everything up, walk away unpopular, but end up lauded by history. Leaving Afghanistan gave me hope, but the best thing he could do is say the 14th Amendment means the debt limit is a fiction that can be ignored. It is worth the short recession to ditch the debt limit (SCOTUS would side with him), because the debt limit just allows Republicans to spread unpopular economic pain on Americans every few years anyway.
Afghanistan, ending the debt limit, fixing the public service loan forgiveness program/income based loan repayments. Those 3 things would make a spectacular presidential legacy.
Who exactly is waiting in the wings to run as the Democratic candidate if Biden doesn't run? Who among those allegedly waiting in the wings can beat Trump, who is looking like the Republican nominee? (Dems have been terrible at planning for succession for decades now, as fossils hold onto positions of power and don't let any Gen Xers or Millennials into them where they might start building their own followings that could lead to the White House.)
Until those questions are answered satisfactorily for a majority of Dem voters, we kind of need Biden to run again.
"We kind of need Biden to run again." Hardly a ringing endorsement.
If (when) he runs against Trump, I figure it is roughly a 50 - 50 race, which is what current polls are showing. Sure, Biden would win a plurality of the popular vote, but the Electoral College is on Trump's side.
I like Joe. I'd have no problem voting for him. But my gut tells me that the general public thinks it is time for a younger candidate. Besides, if an 80 year old person is the only Democrat who could win, that's not good.
Let them duke it out. Someone will emerge.
Not going to lie: one part of me strongly wants no deal to get done, and this idiotic procedural requirement done away with once and for all. In every other high income democracy, the government's ability to conduct bond operations is a plain vanilla matter for sober people in dark suits. In our country it's become a political football for inbred lunatics who think Jesus belonged to the NRA.
Don't negotiate with terrorists, Joe. If they send you a clean debt increase, fine, but otherwise instruct the Treasury to utilize the available workarounds. Given the plain language of the Constitution, there's no way there are five votes to blow up the financial system. Let's get this over with once and for all.
Honestly Jasper, there shouldn't be any other part of you. Don't negotiate with terrorist - also more importantly there's no constitutional basis for this bogus requirement of raising the debt ceiling - we got along fine in the US not doing this until it began in the 1970s.
Honestly Jasper, there shouldn't be any other part of you.
There is, of course, that deep reptilian part of my brain that fears a principled stand might end in disaster. Hence the weasel words. But yes, your point is taken.
Worst. Headline. Ever. I’m not on Twitter anymore but WaPo is getting epically ratioed in the comments.
The only thing I would negotiate on is getting rid of the debt ceiling. For raising it you should get nothing and there should not even be a conversation. Biden's people should just endlessly repeat the phrase "The United States should pay its bills." and leave it at that.
Some part of hell has frozen over,
Fox dumps Tucker Carlsen,
https://www.rawstory.com/tucker-carlson-fox-news-2659901669/
And now they've fired Don Lemon from CNN.
So the media can remain fair and balanced.
“Unless you’re a dead beat . . .”
Pretty irrelevant qualifier, given TFG is the titular leader of the Republican Party and a GOAT deadbeat.
It's another example of a deep sickness in our mainstream media that bugs the hell out of me: the conventional view that the POTUS is responsible for everything. When a new president is inaugurated, the press can hardly wait before they start declaring that the president "owns" the economy, and can no longer play the "blame game." Then it gets re-upped whenever they report on polling about the president's "handling of the economy."
The latter is mind-numbingly stupid because policy, for good or ill, takes years to filter through the system and affect the economy. So the state of the economy under a new administration really reflects policies put in place 2 or 3 years earlier, if at all. And the former is stupid because the economy is influenced mainly by decisions of the private sector, the Fed, Congress, global politics, and even natural disasters. It's also influenced, ironically, by whatever shiny object the media is chasing at any given time. Remember "jobs, jobs, jobs"? The baseline for Most Important Thing in conventional politics? But under Biden, all the press talk was about inflation: reporters standing in front of gas stations waiting for someone driving an F-150 to interview. The unemployment rate, for some reason, no long mattered.
+1
The kids.
What's going on, in answer to the question, is "Murc's Law in action," that is, the principle that in situations like this, "Only Democrats Have Agency."
Republicans engage in vicious hostage-taking not though any kind of choice: it is simply the manifestation of their nature. Only Democrats are capable of action that is coherently motivated and planned.
It is a trope of the legacy media, one of the ways they avoid noticing that the Republican Party is basically like a gang of pirates and not a legitimate participant the the governance of a Republic.