It looks like Speaker Boehner doesn’t plan on actually letting the country default on its debts. Yet, he doesn’t plan on extending the debt ceiling, either. At least, he doesn’t plan on extending it for more than a month or two at a time.
I ask Mr. Boehner if he will take the debt-ceiling talks to the brink—risking a government shutdown and debt downgrade from the credit agencies—given that it didn’t work in 2011 and President Obama has said he won’t bargain on the matter.
The debt bill is “one point of leverage,” Mr. Boehner says, but he also hedges, noting that it is “not the ultimate leverage.” He says that Republicans won’t back down from the so-called Boehner rule: that every dollar of raising the debt ceiling will require one dollar of spending cuts over the next 10 years. Rather than forcing a deal, the insistence may result in a series of monthly debt-ceiling increases.
Creating an atmosphere of monthly crisis and permanent uncertainty over whether or not we will honor our debts is not going to protect our nation’s credit rating. Boehner’s current plan will probably result in a downgrade of our credit rating.
