Can I raise a practical question at this point?
So a week from Friday is the deadline for a CR for the current shutdown crisis, and then we have another pending shutdown in March due to the debt ceiling is that right?
I don’t think defaulting on the debt triggers a shutdown. It just triggers a lot of other terrible things.
:D
“Nobody knows ‘oo they were, or…what they were doin’…”
Not raising the debt ceiling, I think, invokes the same processes under the Anti-Deficiency Act as a shutdown due to lack of appropriations. There wouldn’t be a default in March; the Treasury can service the existing debt from tax receipts without issuing more debt.
That was my understanding of it the last time the debt ceiling situation came up.
There’s another layer to a debt ceiling crisis, which is that when the ongoing tax receipts can no longer cover expenses, an actual default occurs and then the government cannot pay all of the things it needs to, which goes way beyond the type of partial shutdown we just experienced. A full default could in theory cause the US to stop paying interest on Treasury notes (which would have a massive impact on the global economy), it could cause the US to stop paying Social Security or Medicare or Veterans Benefits, etc. etc., which would each be individually catastrophic, etc… In combo, a full on default would crater the US and likely the global economy. That’s why, although we’ve had multiple partial shutdowns, we’ve never had a true full blown default where the government literally doesn’t have enough money to pay the bills. But if we don’t raise the debt ceiling in March, sometimes after that (weeks or months, not sure exactly) we would face terrible consequences, far worse than the recent shutdown.
Shutdowns are a particularly stupid form of political theater. A true default would be political and economic suicide. If Trump tries to tie his F’ing wall to the debt ceiling, that’s playing Russian Roulette on a global scale.
Well he did always say he’d just negotiate with creditors to get a better deal from them :P
A sovereign default is even a 1% chance? Global economic armageddon beckons if the US defaults. It can’t and won’t happen. Surely?
With Trump, nobody knows anything except he doesn’t give a shit about global economic armageddon if it doesn’t impact him personally.
I guess the rest of the world would firewall you off and somehow shore up the collapse of all bond markets and the global trading curency etc and then the US will kill itself fighting for food and resources and fracture into city states, safe zones and mad max bits in between or just nuke us all. Probably that last one actually.
The US has plenty of resources, food, oil, and nukes. We will be ok.
Plus 30 years worth of Simpsons episodes to keep the masses quiet.
Do you want Hunger Games? Because that’s how you get Hunger Games.
And oh, how they danced, the Guatemalans at the border.
Well if the nation is bankrupt you don’t have to worry about those hordes of job-stealing immigrants looking for free money.
Parts of the US has plenty of resources, food, oil and nukes. The other parts have lots of guns.
My state has resources, food, oil, nukes, and guns! The next civil war is ours for the taking!
Sure, but it’s important to remember it’s not up to Trump. It’s up to Congress. The Democrats only need 22 Republican votes in the Senate to pass a veto-proof debt ceiling increase. I doubt there are ~32 Republicans in the Senate willing to trigger a default.