"Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) bemoaned Thursday that Democrats didn’t just raise the debt ceiling themselves before Republicans got their grubby mitts on it. "
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I can no longer assume that Mitt knows how the fucking system works…
Romney Laments That Democrats Didn’t Raise The Debt Ceiling Themselves Before His Party Got Involved
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Romney is a typical GOP coward, trying to blame Dems for GOP misdeeds
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Poor Mittens, did someone wake him from his nap?
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If it was passed via Reconciliation (which is how the Dems were trying to do it in the Lame Duck), there is no cloture vote. It can pass with a bare majority, which Romney was fully capable of helping across the finish line, if he is soooo concerned about it now.
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Republicans like Romney are being deliberately stupid. And deliberate stupidity, as my grad students will attest is something that sets me to a full on rant.
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Biden would have been in Roosevelt Territory as a legislatively productive President without those two…and don’t forget that the J6 Insurrection rained on the Parade of a magnificent effort in getting Warnock and Ossoff to the Senate…which would have enabled us to go to work immediately, making us with the functioning voting majority and Schumer as Majority Leader
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The problem with that is by common sense reasoning, they are still debt and should count against the debt limit, perhaps in whatever amount they are worth on the market at the time they are first purchased. Someone will sue to test that. Meanwhile, consumers of treasuries who buy them because they cannot take on much risk, would be taking the risk that by the whim of 5 clowns in black the bonds get invalidated overnight. No deal.
But there’s another, simpler approach to raising funds that I think works: buybacks of underwater treasury notes. By underwater, I mean notes that carry interest rates well under current market. For instance, a 10 year t-note at 2% might be worth only 66 cents on the dollar right now. So you buy an existing $1000 face value note for $660, then issue a new note at current rates (about 6%), and you’re $340 ahead. Repeat at will with the 100s of billions of dollars of available underwater notes, and tell Qevin to pound sand.
I like that Biden isn’t going into the meeting with the gruesome foursome holding no cards but an unsuited 2-7.
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Can’t Mittney have Bain Capital volunteer to service the national debt until a deal is reached? It would be an honorable act of community service. This is fully within Mittney current sphere of influence.
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Little off subject but the GOP really knows how to pick them.
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Yes.
The low interest of such loans and bonds and notes is toxic for any bank that is holding them.
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I posted on this puke up thread. I will refrain from saying more on his “character” as it would likely get me in trouble.
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Okay but why didn’t they though? It’s budgetary so only needs 50 votes in the Senate? Was someone other than Manchin and Sinema opposed to raising the debt ceiling for four years or abolishing it altogether?
That would seem to be a two-fer, then. Thwarting the terrorists and stabilizing the banking system
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Well, what would be even more toxic would be selling them at market value, because then the fiction that lets the bank carry them at book value instead of marking them to market, goes poof. Regardless, after the SVB bank run & liquidation, the treasury set up a banks-only window where banks can sell back their US treasuries at face value, not market value. Total subsidy to banks who fucked up their interest rate risk management, but necessary at this time. So unless there’s some negative consequences (maybe get bank regulators crawling up your ass), banks with underwater treasuries would use the banks-only window instead of selling them back at market value.
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And that’s on one of his good days.
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I remember reading at the time, that there were several Dems in the Senate who would have wanted to negotiate the addition of their pet projects as part of a debt limit raise in the lame duck session. Implying more than just Manchin and Sinema. Apparently a heavy enough lift that it killed the idea.
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Weird and stupid, Thanks for the context.
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Of course not he is a severe conservative.
Ronna Romney McDaniel: “Democrats must make a good faith effort to protect us from ourselves.”
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Excellent article, Kate!
After all, this is the same dynamic that underlies so much of the bad coverage of this issue.
Media bias in plain sight.
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