I’m comforted to know that Nancy Pelosi has insisted on having a seat at the table during that the budget talks and that she has no intention of getting rolled. She’s probably right that the Republicans can’t pass anything without her help. My only real question is whether the Republican leadership cares. It’s obvious that Eric Cantor and Jon Kyl don’t care. And it doesn’t seem like Mitch McConnell or John Boehner care either.
But, it’s still kind of hard to believe that they’d blow up the economy. Just remember, no one ever went broke overestimating how irresponsible the Republicans are likely to behave.
Boo:
And what would happen if the GOP let default happen? Would the President still treat them as respectful adversaries? Would he finally realize that he can’t be ambivalent about Congress and maybe ditch his post-partisan thing?
The “post-partisan thing” isn’t about trying to win over the Republicans. It’s about going through the motions so that conservadems and one or two fringe Republicans have enough “bipartisan” cover that they can vote with him.
It’s been 2-1/2 years. I can’t believe people haven’t figured this out yet.
The “post-partisan thing” isn’t about trying to win over the Republicans. It’s about going through the motions so that conservadems and one or two fringe Republicans have enough “bipartisan” cover that they can vote with him.
That’s crap and you know it. Do you mean the fringe like Specter and Snowe? How did that work out? They don’t need cover because they are corporate flunkies.
They voted for the ARRA. And have broken on other issues. Just not the ones that the GOP leadership wanted use as a hostage–unemployment compensation extension, for example, and the ACA. When the ARRA passed, the GOP thought it was weak and couldn’t hold hostages. Then they saw the Democrats were seriously divided.
The fact is that imaginally America has to get over the idea that there are red states and blue states. There aren’t. Every state in the union is some shade of purple. Which means under certain conditions every state in the union has the possibility of voting differently. Even Mississippi, even Utah, even Oklahoma, and especially Texas, even California, even New York, even Wisconsin (oops, we saw that).
Corporate flunkies need enough cover to keep from being booted out of office, like Specter did and Snowe might unless she moves into Tea Party land (ooh, what’s that Mad Hat she’s wearing these days.)
What progressives have not yet grasped is that it is the minor players that make a difference in the game, not the big star players. Backbencher votes count just as much as the votes of the media whores. State legislatures affect national politics more than progressive show awareness of.
Focus only on Obama and you lose.
BTW, it’s the local and state offices where progressives have the best chance of moving the country. Wisconsin progressives now realize that even a lowly state Supreme Court justice position is important to national issues. The state legislature of New York just delivered a national victory to progressives that could force Obama to move leftward to the new center on that issue.
Kindly stop telling me what know, mmm-kay?
How did that work out? Well, ACA passed. DADT repeal passed. Dodd-Frank passed.
As a matter of fact, the first two years of this presidency saw the passage of the most substantial legislative agenda of any two-year period since LBJ, if not since FDR, so I’d say it worked pretty damn well.
BTW, if you don’t think the ladies from Maine or Scott Brown are looking to burnish their bipartisan credentials, then you really, really need to stop holding forth on the workings of Congress.
Go Nancy!
Nancy Pelosi makes Eric Cantor wet himself.
Maybe she can drive him over the edge, just as those judges in WI evidently are driving Prosser over the edge.
I think the real question is, are they smart or sane enough to even believe that they’d be blowing up the economy? Everybody counts on the plutocracy waking them up, but there are plenty of overlords who know how to profit as much from a broken market as a healthy one. Unless the money behind the GOP sees raising the limit as its best move, there’s nothing to keep the pols on a sane track.
Folks are beginning to question the fact that failure to raise the debt ceiling automatically spooked the markets about default. These are not normal times. Some votes in Greece gave the market jitters, but they assumed that cool heads would prevail. Also, it looks like China is doing something with its cash surplus in Hungary, UK, and Germany where there are Chinese-owned corporations. So China is not likely to get spooked by our nutcases.
So if the market doesn’t get spooked, that means that the interest rates on the national debt don’t get raised dramatically. So it’s up to Timothy Geithner to figure out how to juggle the payment schedule so that most creditors are happy. Given the fact that there is about $2 trillion (or more) of that $14 trillion that is owed to Social Security, under the circumstances Social Security recipients can be patient about repayment as long as benefits remain the same. There probably are other creditors in similar situations. Which recipients of US foreign aid are also sovereign holders of US debt.
This sort of triage is nothing different from what a large number of American families are having to do right now with their credit cards.
Interesting times.
I haven’t seen ANYTHING like this from buisness people.
The USA defaulting is a big fucking deal.
Hell, Merkel asked the banks to take a haircut and restructure Greece’s debt and that made the financial community shit itself. Greece defaulting is a huge thing and the goal is to push the can down the road so that the default becomes an Argentina like event; not a Lehman’s. I don’t see how that is possible; but then I’m not an economist or financial person.
If this debt limit vote doesn’t go through then the USA is no longer a safe haven and the world is fucked up and needs to figure out what the hell it means when there isn’t a safe deposit box like the USA to park the hot money as the world goes to hell.
ITA, through. These are interesting times.
This thinking is not coming from business people. Not all holders of debt are private corporations. And the idea is how to not default but to make that threat real enough that the multinational corporations lean on their Repubican minions. And it depends on short term steps that keep the debt from increasing (after all there are revenues continuing to come in) by deferring some types of spending. And the argument goes that if you are deferring some types of spending, go for those that directly affect Republican funders.
The new safe deposit box is China, for now. But with careful steps, the US can restore its position. It still is the largest economy.
Market manipulation? Short treasurys then engineer this impass? Then cover the shorts, go long, and have your flunkies in the House make a “breakthrough compromise”.
Win on both sides. I smell Goldman Sachs.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“It’s obvious that Eric Cantor and Jon Kyl don’t care.”
I’m not so sure. The problem is they have every incentive to make us believe they don’t care. I don’t expect to know one way or the other for sure until August.
Also, may I just say how topsy turvy things have become when it’s considered a significant concession that house Democrats are allowed a seat in negotiations between Republicans and the President on a house bill. This isn’t what I expected to happen. I thought the Republicans would pass a horrible bill and tell the senate and the President, sign it, you’re not getting anything better. Instead, they’ve drawn Obama into negotiations in a way I think diminishes the Presidency. I suppose they want him to take owner-ship of the resulting mess, and put his own prestige on the line supporting it, pressuring Democrats to pass it.
I’m going crazy reading an old quote that says that Reid engineered this all on purpose. He wanted the next congress to take responsibility for raising the debt. He thought being in the position we are today, where Republicans had a majority in the house and could threaten economic Armageddon if they didn’t get their way was a good idea. I’m not generally one to blast Reid, I think he has a tough job in the Senate given the arcane rules, and I think he gets some unfair criticism. But I cannot fathom this.
they are traitors to this country, the lot of them
I have this sick feeling that Nancy will join the anti-Social Security crowd that Durbin has joined.