Could someone do me a favour and recap the personalities involved? Reid is? O’Connel is? Googling probably won’t get me there without first names… Ta.
Harry Reid is the senate majority leader. Mitch McConnell is the senate minority leader. John Boehner is the speaker of the house. Eric Cantor is the house majority leader. Nancy Pelosi is the house minority leader.
Senator Harry Reid is the Democratic Senate Majority Leader while Senator Mitch McConnell is the Republican Senate Minority Leader.
It’s not all the GOP’s fault. Jonathan Chait notices the Very Serious People establishment (Concord coalition, Washington Post editorial page) made the brilliant decision that encouraging the GOP to use the debt hike to force cuts would be a great idea.
The Concord Coalition chimed in:
[T]he need to raise the debt limit does provide an opportunity to assess past fiscal decisions and, if necessary, make corrections. In the past, major increases in the debt limit have often been accompanied by the enactment of deficit reduction plans such as the November 1990 increase of $915 billion, the August 1993 increase of $530 billion, and the August 1997 increase of $450 billion. In the absence of such linkage, Congress has been reluctant to raise the debt limit by more than is necessary to get through a short period of time. Thus, while the debt limit is not, by itself, a fiscal firewall, in the absence of other more effective mechanisms, it is one of the few budgetary speed bumps left to provide a sense of fiscal discipline.
So it’s not just the far right.
Buh? I actually like O’Neil from what I know, he was charming and fairly effective at pushing for good things. I don’t really give much of a shit that he was “friends” with Reagan. As jeff says, what exasperates me is the “lessons” the DC establishment has drawn from his tenure and how they use that as a justification for why everyone should just shut up and agree to do really unpopular things they approve of. They could make deals because they presided over different political coalitions than today with much lower partisan parties, not because they were aww-shucks backslapper friends.
From what I’m hearing/reading, in the 14th Amendment scenario, yes, the House could impeach, but no one would have standing to sue in the courts. And if the House impeaches, good luck getting the Senate to convict. Won’t happen. Obama will win in a landslide due to the public’s annoyance with the Republicans’ useless gesture. Yeah, it’ll be a PITA for the country to have to put up with Congress taking up its time with that shit, but oh well.
Edit to add that I think it would have absolutely zero effect on US Treasury bond auctions. In fact the bond market would breathe a huge sigh of relief, because the President would “get away with it.” I only put it in quotes because all he’d be doing is implementing the will of Congress as expressed in their votes to spend money thus and so.
Yup, it’s the Center-Right too, yay! When MoveOn and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities think it’s a good idea, let me know.
jeffd
1708
TPM is apparently hearing rumblings of the President invoking the fourteenth if a deal isn’t done this weekend.
Joe_M
1709
Finally, something sensible from the White House. You can’t negotiate with people who are either irrational or entirely disingenuous. If the GOP thinks they can spin an impeachment in their favor when he spared us economic collapse, well, good luck with that. I’m sure the talking points from Fox will be the height of comedy.
I’ll cheer the hell out of it if he does it, but how do you think most Americans would see it? I mean they bought into the Tea Party bullshit enough to cause this mess in the first place. The only thing that allows me to sleep at night is a post Jason once made showing the demographic shift in the last election. That’s about the only hope I have left, is the belief that the election was an odd reactionary statement coupled with general laxity on the part of other voters (who didn’t vote, I mean).
JeffL
1711
Jason, I was pulling jeffd’s chain with that comment. Again, we are violently agreeing: I was longing for the days when leaders of each party, as diametrically opposed as they were to each other (and again, you really should read that biography ( http://www.amazon.com/ONeill-Democratic-Century-John-Farrell/dp/B000FVHJ4Y/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312075628&sr=1-2 ) you would really enjoy it) and they were, in some ways, as far apart in philosophy as the parties are today, could sit down on “must do” issues and work things out. Not because they were drinking buddies, but the fact they could BE drinking buddies was one aspect of their ability to have an effective working relationship. O’Neil once said that, even though he thought Reagan was completely wrongheaded and ignorant on political matters, he was convinced Reagan loved his country and wanted what was best for it (again, even though he was convinced Reagan was absolutely wrong on what was best.)
The political environment today is so different, that for the first time in my life, in spite of my always being cynical of Washington and the career politicians, I am seriously worried about irreparable harm. You can argue about Bush (and even some of Obama’s actions wrt civil rights) but the system was set up to balance that, such as the Democrats’ wins after Bush. Normally that would allow for corrections.
But now - a small minority has actually taken us to the brink of the previously unimaginable, the U.S. defaulting. What else will they do?
Depends on how it’s spun, I guess, and what the narrative is from each side. Obviously it fits, very, very well into the narrative that the Republicans have been spinning: that Obama has been spending outside of the country’s means, etc. with some “Obama broke the law and flaunted the constitution” thrown in. I’m not sure if the Democrat narrative is as strong or believable.
Honestly, I’d be really impressed to see Obama take this sort of hit if he needs to. A balanced budget constitutional amendment could be just as damaging to the US in the long run as defaulting. It would go a long way towards “starving the beast”. Plus, invoking the 14th amendment could also cause a constitutional crisis that gets the debt ceiling removed forever.
ShivaX
1713
And they are all completely worthless.
So minting will cause immediate inflation (gasoline, gold but going the 14th will evoke a constitutional crises for the rest of Obama’s term. Which is worse?
ShivaX
1715
Neither are ideal, but the upside of the 14th Amendment is that it might kill this stupid idea of a debt ceiling and keep us from repeating this every 6 months to a year when one side decides they want to hold the world hostage.
14th amendment is worse - it could lead to impeachment and more govt gridlock.
There was no observable inflation from QE2. Minting a Trillion dollars would just be QE3 - its very possible that nothing would happen, after all inflating the money supply another 10% won’t kill us (though it isn’t sustainable on an annual basis).
Seriously. We’ve done that dance before, and Clinton would have been re-elected in a landslide. Impeachment is a toothless threat.
You dont think the 14th amendment option being tied up in court, where the president could be ruled against, would cause the same collapse we are trying to avoid? I know I wouldnt want to be buying US debt when the very validity of that debt is in question.
