Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent a letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Monday, warning that debt ceiling armageddon may be only a month away.
The Freedom Caucus “thinks” that running out money is a feature.
The Freedom Caucus is going to get their asses handed to them.
Yes. The only remaining question is will they crash the economy in the process?
Republicans are going to go for default…and then Joe whips out Section 4 of the 14th Amendment and tells them to fuck off…
I sure hope you’re right about the last part. If he does, who would have standing to sue? After all, no one would be injured by such an action, and the world economy would be saved.
I still suspect this is a wall streeter play to short t-bills*. Given qevin’s precarious hold on the speakership (elected with a margin of half a vote), you could buy 20 House freedom crazies for about $100k apiece and tell them to be true to their principles (sic). Short $20 billion of t-bills, wait for the default and clean up. Over a 1000-1 return if it works.
*I’m using t-bill as shorthand for all three types of US debt notes.
Performative bullshit works if you go all out. Empty Greene’s Q1 2023 FEC filing reported $600k in receipts, only $11.3k from her own district.
How would that work, exactly? You can’t say “defaulting on the debt is unconstitutional therefore you are ordered to pass legislation”.
So fucking tired of stupid. Yet, stupid keeps winning somehow. (I know how. Rhetorical flabbergast)
Holders of existing US debt, maybe? The US acting like a “print more dough” banana republic dilutes the value of their debt. But I’d like to see a description of what putting into action enforcement of Amendment 14 Section 4 would look like, because that would inform the question of who has standing.
I don’t think Quevin has any power over this.
He can’t make Gaetz et al do what he wants.
They’ll have added incentive just to spite him. That’s what gives them wood.
It’s about a few hold-outs getting paranoid that they can’t go too far - after they get their last-minute corporate checks/perks all packed away.
President Biden needs to blow up this nonsense once and for all. Congress has the power of the purse and sets the budget, including taking on debt. The treasury has the responsibility to handle those appropriations. In other words, paying the debts the Congress previously approved. The idea that the executive branch doesn’t have the authority to pay the debts congress imposed on it seems to be a pretty clear violation of the separation of powers: Congress already gets a say by passing a budget in the first place.
If he can find five amenable GOP reps (likely from districts Biden won), he can do a deal with the democrats for a clean debt limit raise, suspension, or repeal. He doesn’t want to do that, but he can. Those same 217 reps might even choose to save his speakership job for him after the inevitable motion to vacate.
Dear Qevin and nutty cohorts. The credit card bill is due and you must pay your bill on time.
Decades of savvy in politics for Ol’ Joe. Joe can’t lose (several versions of the word can’t)
This article offers a proper frame for this issue: McCarthy is refusing to let the Treasury pay the USA’s outstanding debts. The basic frame of our national media is that he is insisting negotiations over the debt limit, despite the fact that all the reporters and editors and opinion pundits who use this frame know, in some sense, that it’s wrong. It implies that the matter being negotiated is how much debt we should take on, when in fact, the matter is whether we should pay debts we’ve already incurred. Obviously, the answer is yes. It’s neither negotiable or debatable. The GOP’s position–that it would be better to default catastrophically on the national debt immediately, rather than risk the relatively slight chance that we might default at some theoretical future date–is patently self-contradictory and self-refuting. It’s not complicated. But the media pretends that it can’t follow simple logic.
The deep, deep muscle memory of our national media, which moves them regardless context or particulars or logic into a supposedly “neutral” or non-political position in between Ds and Rs, has deteriorated into a suicidal reflex.
They still believe they can get the Democrats to capitulate because they did in 2011, and even if they don’t, they believe they can get the country to blame the Democrats because Fox will absolutely do that 24 hours a day.
But the Fascist Caucus knows that their low-intelligence, racist, mouth-breathing voters don’t know that. The knuckle-draggers think Gaetz and the other assclowns are saving precious dollars that would otherwise be sent to Ukraine or pissed away on trans parades and indoctrinating their kids to be gay.
It’s not that they are ordered to lift the debt ceiling, it is a challenge to the constitutionality of a statutory debt ceiling that prevents the president from executing his constitutional responsibility to spend as appropriated and to protect the credit of the US.
This is the right answer, most smart people know it’s the right answer, but it’s scary because we have a corrupt court that think’s it’s role is dismantling the modern republic rather than fairly interpreting the constitution.