I’m so tired of the lunatics. Okay, you knew that an unhealthy percentage of Republicans and Republican lawmakers think it’s a good idea to fuck around with our nation’s credit rating by threatening to default on our debts every time we need to raise the debt ceiling. Remember the Trillion Dollar Coin idea? Remember how it eventually made enough sense that the president had to comment on it and the administration began hinting that it might be an option? The Treasury Department put the kibosh on it, but still, it was embarrassing and not a little scary. And it got our credit rating downgraded.
The idea, back then at least, was that that they could use the threat of a default, which would undoubtedly cause a global recession, to force the president to accede to their every loony demand. John Boehner quite rightly thought they were nuts but he evidently had misplaced his own nuts so the plan went ahead until it caused billions in damage and cost a lot of people their jobs. These are facts, as even eleven Republican members of Congress acknowledged in a recent petition they circulated against shutting down the government over Planned Parenthood funding.
“The 16-day government shutdown in 2013 cost our economy an estimated $24 billion and stalled the creation of over 100,000 private sector jobs,” [Rep. Martha McSally] and the other 10 lawmakers wrote in a letter to their colleagues.
But, wait, it gets worse, because now the Republicans are using the credit default anvil on each other as they compete for the Speaker’s gavel and other leadership positions.
Take the certifiable maniac Jason Chaffetz who currently heads up the House Committee on Oversight. He’s the loser who just presided over a hearing this weak in which he and his male Republican show-trialists had to learn the hard way that a mammogram is a radiological procedure carried out not by Planned Parenthood but by actual radiologists. Somehow, they thought this was both a surprise and some kind of gotcha admission on Planned Parenthood’s part.
Well, Chaffetz is going to run for the Speaker’s gavel for the reason I explained at soon as Boehner announced his resignation: replacing Boehner with McCarthy makes absolutely no sense.
The problem is, that McCarthy has a lot of support, mainly because he was in charge of recruiting the batshit crazy Class of ’10 that started all this nonsense in earnest. But Chaffetz has a plan:
“You don’t just give an automatic promotion to the existing leadership team,” [Chaffetz] said. “That doesn’t signal change. I think [House Republicans] want a fresh face and fresh new person who is actually there at the leadership table in the speaker’s role.”
…No Democrats are expected to back McCarthy or any other Republican, so the nominee cannot afford to lose the support of more than 28 GOP members.
Chaffetz suggested that McCarthy does not have that level of support: “There are nearly 50 people and a growing number that will not and cannot vote for Kevin McCarthy as the speaker on the floor. He’s going to fall short of the 218 votes on the floor of House.”
…The stakes of the speaker’s race were heightened in recent days after the Treasury Department announced that Congress must act to raise the federal debt ceiling on or about Nov. 5 — less than a week after Boehner leaves office.
An effort by Boehner to pass a debt-limit increase in his final days with mainly Democratic votes — as happened last week on a 10-week government funding extension — could further weaken McCarthy, who as majority leader is considered to be in control of the floor agenda.
Chaffetz said Sunday that “we’re just not going to unilaterally raise the debt limit” and suggested that he would take cues from members who overwhelmingly support using the deadline as leverage in spending negotiations with Obama.
“As the speaker, you’ve got to take the will of our body, appreciate and respect the process, and then go fight for that,” he said.
So, there it is.
Now it’s McCarthy’s ascension to the Speakership that will be held hostage.
Either he agrees to default on our debts, cause another credit downgrade, light another $24 billion on fire, and cost another 100,000 people their jobs, or he doesn’t get to be in charge.
Do you see why I take the tone I take with these assholes?
Hey, BooMan, don’t go hurting the feelings of your readers now.
You may have seen a commenter here earlier today saying that Obama’s willingness to negotiate on the budget proved that he was a establishment Democrat who believes all that deficit reduction crap, claiming that if he and the Dems were worth a damn they would have just pulled the plug on negotiating by minting the magical coin and telling the Republicans to screw off.
How that precedent-setting action would have affected subsequent negotiations, we are not told. Maybe this commenter believes Obama should just keep on ringing up the special Treasury coins. Then we’ll never have to negotiate again ever?
It’s a good way to turn the US dollar from the most reliable currency to the least, I’ll say that.
Well, perhaps, but at least arguably not the best way. That would be (again, conceding ‘arguably’) continuing the current (and potentially worse future) Reality-Denying, extremist-wingnut-driven dysfunctional insanity. Which is why very economically knowledgeable folks such as atrios, Krugman, etc. have taken the $1T-coin idea at least semi-seriously, not dismissing it out of hand. Because, really, how much worse could the consequences be than the status quo insanity as long as the wingnuts stay hell-bent on Reality-Denying-dogma-driven damage and destruction . . . or gain even greater influence hence doing even more and worse damage?
Isn’t Jason Chaffetz the wacko who said he was going to carry a concealed weapon after the Aurora mass murders? Did he feel left out of the fun? I hope he chokes on his own bile.
I don’t understand why you think they’re lunatics.
“The 16-day government shutdown in 2013 cost our economy an estimated $24 billion and stalled the creation of over 100,000 private sector jobs.”
During a Democratic administration. There’s a difference between lunacy and evil.
Quite so. A bad economy in 2016 will mean a much better chance of a Republican president in 2017. The voters won’t put the blame where it belongs, and they know that.
was and is ‘a feature, not a bug’ to these loons.
“Either he agrees to default on our debts, cause another credit downgrade, light another $24 billion on fire, and cost another 100,000 people their jobs, or he doesn’t get to be in charge.”
You’re mixing up the government shutdown and defaulting on our debt.
The cost of a default will not the same as it was with the shutdown. Based on what I’ve read, it will be much, much, much, much worse.
I’m only mixing them up in the same sense that the rating agencies considered them a package when they downgraded us.
What would happen if Democrats agreed to support a candidate for Speaker who agreed to extend the debt ceiling and `fund the administration for the remainder of this administration – not just a 10 week extension? Could any such candidate get the 28 Republican votes they would need to win? Could they survive with the vast bulk of the Republican Caucus against them?
Assuming they were nearing the end of their political aspirations anyway – or positioning themselves as a Bi-partisan/Independent Presidential candidate, would it matter if they were hated by the Republican base?
What effect would it have on:
i) The Republican party cohesion and brand
ii) The dynamics of the Presidential contest
iii) On the real world? (This is an afterthought, as it doesn’t appear to rank as a material consideration in the game being played out).
The problem is that for such a person to be elected, they’d need the support of at least 29 other Republican Congressmen. Such a vote would be a political death sentence for all of them, and you’re not going to find over 10% of the Republican caucus willing to fall on their swords like that.
It might be possible for a Republican who was just short of a majority to squeeze through with a couple of Democratic votes. There’s a handful of Democrats who’d be politically able to publicly defy the Democratic leadership. Quite possibly they wouldn’t actually be defying the Democratic leadership and Pelosi would secretly be supporting it for some consideration or another, but the politics on the Republican side would require that the new Speaker not be appearing to cooperate with Pelosi in any way.
I agree it’s unlikely – other than as a Pelosi mind game – but with the business lobby wanting a functioning Government it is possible that at least a few Republicans would vote for a Republican candidate with Chamber of Commerce support
Not now, but soon if they continues like this. Like, before a first Clinton term is completed.
The Trillion Dollar Coin isn’t crazy at all. It boils down to the Treasury issuing electronic money, which it should be doing since most money now is electronic and perhaps soon all of it will be. The TDC itself is odd, but that’s because it’s a legal fiction to allow the Treasury to do what it should already be able to do.
The problem is that the laws are obsolete. The law as it stands is for a world with gold-backed paper money. We currently live in a world basically of fiat electronic money. The laws are doubly obsolete, and so for the Treasury to function properly it has to do somewhat odd-looking things.
No, it boils down to the fiction that is required to make people treat US currency as if it were a normal currency, which is the fiction that it can’t be made out of thin air without causing an equal contraction in the value of the preexisting money. If you mint a trillion dollars it is supposed to diminish the value of the money everyone has in their bank and stocks and goods and homes.
And if it’s not true, then why the fuck do we pay taxes when the government can spare us the hassle and just print whatever they need?
It’s a very useful and kind of critical fiction.
Don’t dis it.
well there are some theories going around explaining why taxes are a waste of time at least at the federal level
Yeah, and most of them (note that I didn’t say all) are coming from the lunatics supporting or serving the OTHER crazies in the House.
that wasn’t even what I was referring to, see my response to shan below
Taxes at the federal level have become a waste of time. The right has taken away the ear mark. Congress no longer sends tax dollars to their constituents. The teabaggers get to go home and tell their constituents the government is broke and taxes are too high.
that’s not what they mean, they are referring to the fact that the federal government doesn’t really need to tax at all they can print the money they need for operation of the government and control inflation through interest rates
The short answer is that the government, as the only source of money, is responsible for printing the right amount of money. Too little and you get unemployment (our current situation). Too much and you get inflation. The government can’t print anything without problems but it can and should print more than it is.
We have a large economy and a trillion is not too much. The Federal Reserve electronically printed over 3 trillion as part of QE and it had basically no effect. The amount of money that will actually go into the economy is the amount to cover the ongoing budget, which is absolutely not enough to cause trouble – far less than what the Fed printed for QE.
Curious, the reason the QE printing was useless to Main Street economy is that it was mostly saved or spent on rentier assets, no?
Pretty much. Who gets the money is at least as important as how much there is. QE basically sent it straight to the rich, who currently want to save, so nothing happens. Monetizing the deficit would result in one or two rounds through ordinary people before it ends up in the hands of the rich, and so it would have more of an effect.
I forgot an important point. The US’ credit rating was NOT downgraded because of the trillion dollar coin, but because of uncertainty about whether political insanity would result in a default. Consistently, first-world governments with fewer restrictions on printing money have much better credit than those with restriction. The best example is Great Britain, which actually has a worse debt and deficit situation than Spain – but a better credit rating and lower interest rates. Another example is Japan, which has a huge government debt – yet has to pay virtually nothing to borrow.
Yeah, I was wondering what would happen to the dollar if the Republicans hit the trifecta again. Might not justify a rate hike, but I suspect there would be questions of economic stability, no? I remember a couple cash handouts from Bush to keep Main Street limping along.
If the Republicans get the trifecta they won’t be threatening default, they’ll be pursing Greek-style budgeting with endless austerity like in Kansas. It will probably push up the value of the dollar, assuming they don’t got far enough to collapse the economy, which they might.
The sooner we can whig these fuckers and lance the boil, the better off this country and the planet will be. I know that these assholes won’t go quietly into the night, but 2016 really should be the high water mark – or peak wingnut – if anyone’s paying attention. Critically, it’s an all or nothing election this time and if they win god help us all. Key is that it can’t be close enough to steal, and that means we need at least a 4% margin. That’s what makes me worried.
“John Boehner quite rightly thought they were nuts but he evidently had misplaced his own nuts…”
Well, that is the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
My own Well of Outrage has been dipped into so often that it’s just about dry. I don’t know how guys like Chaffetz have the brains to dress and feed themselves, much less govern. These idiots barge into a dysfunctional Republican party and proceed to run amok, demanding investigations in which they have no facts, only bizarre rantings and fabricated charts. They look like morons.
I’m exhausted.
“Do you see why…..?” Yes I do; as I say to my wife from time to time as we read about to latest absurdity that comes to light…….
You just can’t fix stupid.
“As the speaker, you’ve got to take the will of our body, appreciate and respect the process, and then go fight for that,” he said.
What is the will of the body these days? Seems like there are multiple competing ones.
define ‘our body’! Seems very clear from the context that loon Chaffetz is thinking of only the House GOP caucus when he uses that phrase, not the actual ‘body’, i.e., the full House of which he seeks to be Speaker (that office being elected by a simple majority of the entire membership, not just of the GOP caucus*).
That ‘slip’ being a very telling ‘tell’ if you ask me, right in line with the old saw defining ‘gaffe’ as a politician accidentally telling the truth, i.e., what s/he actually believes, forgetting to self-censor. (Much like McCarthy’s recent ‘gaffe’ revealing the long-obvious-to-sentients real point of the Benghazi! hearings: drive down Hillary’s poll numbers.)
Along with across-the-board Reality-Denial, that GOP ‘majority of the majority’, anti-[small ‘d’]democratic perversion (going back at least to ‘the Hastert Rule’) is a (the?) major source of the dysfunction that has rendered this nation essentially ungovernable across large swaths of public policy.
*I even heard/read somewhere recently that the Speaker does not even have to be a member of the House. The majority of the House could elect anyone Speaker . . . you! . . . me!!! . . . though I’m pretty sure that’s never happened.
“Do you see why I take the tone I take with these assholes?”
Frankly, I think you are far too nice to them…
Heh remember when it was claimed the fever had broken?
Anyhow a substantial portion of economists and even some of the rating agencies believe that the existence of a debt ceiling primarily causes uncertainty. That is, just suspend it for good and do debt based on what the market will bear. Most developed democracies don’t even have a debt limit. It’s an anachronism.
It’s like the filibuster. Has a useful purpose, but it’s only used by one party to do harm. The other guys, when they have the power, keep their powder dry and go along with a GOP POTUS when they should be raising a stink. For example when GWB’s $20 billion war in Iraq exceeded that figure (within a few months iirc), they should have demanded an explanation and a budget for the estimated actual costs, and every time GWB exceeded the budget number, a new round of explanations and demands would be required. At least then the public would have been aware of how much this disaster cost.
Um, yeah? Duh.
“The will of the body…” says Chaffetz. What he is referring to is the suicidal faction of the crazy faction of the GOP of the House. We are about to see how large that faction is. We already know that it is at least 1.
That “no new taxes” pledge in 1988. Those tax cuts in 2001. The failure to raise taxes to pay for war. Pushing an austerity budget in a time of recession. Threatening default over spending. Now threatening default over a single budget item. And continuing to spend ever larger amounts on the military. The GOP will not deal with the debt honestly ever.
In this power play there are essentially three options for the President besides capitulation on whatever the GOP wants.
All of these might draw an attempt at impeachment from the crazies in the House. Thirteen months is kind of a short time period to accomplish that without House GOP caucus cohesion.
The other possibility of for the markets to completely blow off the possibility of a US default as a result of this maneuvering.