Discussion: Trump Reportedly Backed Schumer's Pitch To Eliminate Debt Ceiling

Even a blind pig will find the occasional acorn.

In this case it’s a blind pig whose leash Chuck Schumer somehow got his hands on. A blind pig who takes direction from whoever has hold of his leash at the moment is going to find acorns exactly to the extent that he is guided to them by a competent handler. Here’s hoping Schumer can keep his hand on the leash, and to the exclusion of all the idiots who want to lead the blind pig in all the wrong directions. But hope is not a plan, and resting the hopes of a great nation on the permanence of some sort of Brooklyn boys’ bond between Trump and Schumer is really dicey.

That said, I am heartened by the fact that Schumer actually came out for ending the debt ceiling. That’s a no-brainer, as the ceiling is a vestigial remnant of an earlier era’s process for controlling govt spending. It has been replaced in that function by the annual budget reconciliation/consolidated spending bills. The ceiling survives as nothing more than yet another veto point for hostage taking and legislative chicken, without any useful purpose that might justify the risk to the system it introduces by giving us yet another veto point to something that has to happen or the US foes into default. To be sure, the spending process we have now has its own problems and its own unnecessary veto points, but those problems are worsened, not ameliorated, by the ceiling. The ceiling should be ended, not mended.

But as strong and obvious as the arguments for ending the debt ceiling are, it is surprising that a leader of even the party of (relative) sense and reason is willing to espouse that view. The ceiling can be made to appear, to people not paying close attention to the process, as if it is a needed bulwark of fiscal prudence that only reckless tax and spenders would want to get rid of it. I’m not aware that any prominent D has ever before come out openly for sense and reason on the subject of the ceiling.

You really have to reach to find cause for hope in the daily spectacle of ruin provided by the Trump administration. And, no, this episode of Trump, at least today, coming out for ending the debt ceiling does not in the least raise my hopes that he really has all along been some sort of Huey Long, and that from now on, he’s going to be a populist champion of good govt. He’s got dementia with behavioral disturbance. He’s given too much evidence of that to allow any hope that this one good thing he’s come out for means that he has any idea what he’s doing. But that Schumer, who has his faults but doesn’t seem to be at all demented, has come out for ending the debt ceiling, that is indeed a hopeful sign.

Maybe that’s what the Ds have needed the past 40 years, a complete R disaster of a trifecta lineup, to get us to finally come out for doing the right thing. Here’s hoping that Trump continues to have that effect on people in the system who are not completely blind pigs, that it gets them doing the right thing. That’s our way, we exhaust every possible stupid and cowardly approach until reality finally forces us to do the right thing.

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““There’s a legitimate rule for the power of the purse in Article 1 powers, and that’s something we defend here in Congress.”
That’s because republucans love using it to further their agenda. they can care less about the “dept ceiling.”
Americas dept is only important to them when a democrat president is in office.

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The longer this romance between trump and common sense continues, the better!

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Ryan and the republican hostage takers aren’t about to take the guns from their own hands. The debt ceiling is an idiotic and suicidial tool to use for political blackmail, and is constitutionally unnecessary (despite Ryan’s B.S.handwringing), but republicans won’t give it up.

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I think that the law is unconstitutional, but that’s just me.

The GOP are suddenly realizing they’re having to deal with far smarter people in Schumer and Pelosi

Trump and Schumer are both from New York City. No doubt they feel a bond.

In any event Schumer is right, we really do need to get rid of the debt ceiling. Trump is perceptive to see that. What he doesn’t understand is the Freedumb Caucus loves to use the debt ceiling as an extortion tool. Republicans will never vote to get rid of it.

If gas prices get too far above current levels, expect another recession.

Is he, though?

Sure, he likes to brag about it when it’s up. When it goes down, [crickets]. I mean, he’d brag about wages going up if they were, but they’re not, so [crickets]. It’s just a thing to tweet about, but it’s not really important to him.

His personal wealth isn’t going to be tied very closely to the performance of the market in general. Once you get into the ninth or tenth figure in your net worth, you’re hedged so many ways it could completely crash and you’d barely notice.

He likes this plan because (a) his best friend of the moment, Sen. Not-McConnell, pitched it; (b) it can be summarized in six words or less, and (c) Trump hates the minutiae of his job so much that permanently abolishing ANYTHING sounds like a good idea. Ask him tomorrow and he’ll have exactly the opposite answer for you.

Oh no, Putie broke up with Donnie in a news conference earlier this week. trump is free to flirt with others now.

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I agree if we can make stupid do the right thing it works for me. It took democrats to to get the donald to make the right decision.

Yea Americans are now amuned to dopey donald’s antics he has already done much wore the pissing on women.