Furious Democrats seethe daily about Republican hostage-taking on the debt limit.
They’re still insisting that the ceiling be suspended through regular order, and that Republicans help them do it.
Biden needs to mint a quadrillion dollar Obama coin and let the GOP sue. After they have a collective diaper filling tantrum. Trump proved the President can do anything he wants. So do it.
They could either act on Sen. Brian Schatz’s (D-HI) bill to repeal it (which would require reforming the filibuster), or just hike the debt limit up so sky-high in reconciliation that they don’t have to worry about closing in on the ceiling any time soon. (That’s what Denmark, one of the only other countries in the world with a debt ceiling, has done.) Democrats of all stripes, moderate and progressive, are receptive to the idea.
To be fair, Danes are willing to pay higher taxes and have a government debt-to-GDP ratio of around 40% or a third of the US (120%).
The best reason to put the debt ceiling increase into the reconciliation bill is that it then becomes a must pass bill. If Sinema and Manchin refuse to vote for it, no matter what else is in the bill, they will be solely responsible for the destruction of the international economic system. That should concentrate their minds.
Hope fades…
I don’t need to pay attention to any of this, and I’m not.
I just hope others out there are.
Jesus, these fucking guys (GOP scumbags).
In actual news of import, not insider trivia of things about whether the world’s greatest economy will kill itself in a couple of weeks or why a couple of senators are rat-trash pieces of shit…
Wouldn’t work. Congress has become largely a playground for millionaires who don’t depend on their relatively meager salary to pay the bills.
Need to find other ways to crimp their lifestyle.
I woulda thought $174,000 per annum as a base to start with as not bad pay for a part time job. Part time ya say? Yeah, it is. They have near 3 months of “vacation” per year to hob nob with the donors class. Largest time off is the last week of July thru the first week of September. Who else with a job paying $174,000 rates a 6 week stretch away from their desk? Then other weeks here and there. In general the average time actually voting on legislation is 3 days a week. Aside form all their time off. The blue days in the pdf are the days they vote… go to the annual calendar to see the days
“ Never take a hostage you are not willing to shoot .”
But the parliamentarian…
OT:
No civil lawsuit. The SOB most likely has his car insurance company picking up the cost of the settlement:
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — The widow of a man who died last year after being struck by a car driven by South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg has reached an out-of-court settlement after threatening a lawsuit, the two sides confirmed Wednesday.
https://www.startribune.com/south-dakota-attorney-general-widow-ink-deal-in-fatal-crash/600102030/
To force Congress to act, if they haven’t enacted a budget (and approved any needed increase in the debt ceiling by June 1, they are required to remain in session every day, and each evening they get free room and board in the DC jail.
I like the idea of putting into the reconcilition bill either an outright abolition of the debt ceiling or a ski-high raise the damned thing–and daring Manchin and Sinema to vote it down or allow it to be filibustered.
And if–when–that fails, Biden needs to go national television and declare that the 1917 law mandating a cap on payment of the national debt is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment (“The validity of the public debt of the United States…shall not be questioned”). Accordingly, to avert the national and global calamity of an American default on its debts he is ordering the Treasury to continue fulfilling its obligations.
Let the Republicans sue and try to impeach him. And let John Roberts and his black-robed metaphysicians bear the onus of declaring that the United States can default.
That’s what strong presidents like Jackson, Lincoln, TR, FDR, and Eisenhower would do in this situation.
To hell with the parliamentarian. Fire her.
The problem in this case is that the markets are fickle, the ratings agencies would downgrade our debt to junk status, interest rates which are linked to those would skyrocket, the stock market would make 1929 look like an average day, etc.
No amount of “strength” from the President is going to alleviate the markets, who would (correctly) immediately presume that his declaration would be challenged in court and there’s no guarantee that the fab six wouldn’t find against him just because he’s a Democrat.
I am not so sure that Sinema and Manchin would vote for a Reconciliation Bill that would suspend the debt ceiling if it included climate change provisions that threaten Manchin’s energy company friends, or Sinema’s pharma friends. We are truly with Alice in Wonderland at this point.
If I were Biden, I’d mint a $10T coin and use the proceeds to fund the Build Better Act provisions and just proceed with his agenda. The Congress won’t stop him and nobody else has any standing to challenge him. Even if a state or other entity could sue, the Judiciary is so slow and spineless that they wouldn’t or couldn’t stop him before 2024, at which point the economic benefits to the electorate would guarantee his re-election.
