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thomasc commented on the blog post Disaster Legislating; A Dangerous New Process
If the country goes into default, the Republicans will get the blame. We may head into a depression, but you won’t see a Republican majority or President for a generation.
I agree that Obama should demand a clean bill, let the default occur, and let the republicans take the blame. We don’t have to go into a depression, however. Obama can unilaterally increase the debt ceiling by invoking the 14th amendment. That would be a political home-run for Obama, projecting strength and decisiveness. Anyone who fears a political backlash or a court repudiation of this executive power hasn’t been paying attention for the last attention. And even if the Supreme Court were to rule against Obama, the trillion dollars would have already been raised and the polital benefits to Obama would have already accrued. And Boehner and McConnell, backed by their paymasters on Wall St., will finally have the strength to tell their Teabagging faction to go to hell, which will trigger a civil war in the republican party.
I just don’t see how this default scenario can go wrong.
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thomasc commented on the blog post Disaster Legislating; A Dangerous New Process
By the end of this week Obama should declare congressional efforts to produce an agreement a failure and therefore demand a clean bill that increases the debt ceiling. The republicans will of course refuse and default will occur. The resulting turmoil in domestic and international markets (massive Dow drop, precipitous increase in interest rates) will reveal as ridiculous the republican claims that default would be no big deal. By August 8th or 9th (at the latest) Obama can step in, invoke the 14th amendment and direct the Treasury to schedule T-note auctions that effectively increase debt by a trillion dollars. Obama will be the hero, strong and resolute in the face of the crisis that republicans assured us would not occur.
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thomasc commented on the blog post The Spending Cap and the Timing: All That’s Left to Fight Over
Thanks, Dave, for providing more insight and incisive analysis on this budget issue than any mainstream media source.
But I’m a little confused by your apparent belief that there’s little for the republicans to argue about in Reid’s plan. If I understand correctly, Reid’s plan fully incorporates the projected savings from a theoretical wind-down of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while Boehner’s plan does not. It also seems pretty clear that Boehner’s conception of a “Catfood Commission” is unlikely to rely on reduced war costs in achieving its cost-cutting target. Furthermore, although Ryan’s plan incorporated projected savings from winding down the wars, it always appeared pretty clear to me that (i) the Republicans don’t really want to reduce war spending (fond as they are of our endless commitment of troops to these conflicts) and (ii) Ryan’s inclusion of these savings was merely an accounting gimmick that helped justify the massive tax cuts in the Ryan plan.
Why wouldn’t Boehner come out and simply reject Reid’s plan as relying too much on projected war savings? As you (and others) have pointed out, the republicans’ true targets in these budget negotations are discretionary, non-defense spending and entitlements. Not exactly a yawning gap? It looks from here like a trillion dollar gap that republicans virtually have to seize on as a basis for rejecting Reid’s plan.
