I’m not sure if this is reality-based, but I like it.
Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, pressed the president for his strategy in the face of signals by Republicans that they would demand serious concessions before they voted to raise the government’s statutory borrowing limit.
“It’s a simple strategy, Peter. We’re not negotiating,” the president responded, according to Mr. Welch. “I’ve got nothing in my pocket. The cupboard is bare.”
Will he really be willing to watch our credit rating be destroyed and the global economy collapse?
Well, now he’s got this in his pocket. They can’t even act on their own budget.
More popcorn please…
Will he really be willing to watch our credit rating be destroyed and the global economy collapse?
He knows it will never come to that. The Republicans will crack.
I hope so. I know the Senate will. I am not confident in Boehner’s ability to locate his spine.
I mean “crack” as in “fracture.”
It will only take a few of them, and they will only need the slightest face-saving gesture.
How’s that work in practice? Boehner will have to go hat in hand to Pelosi.
A discharge petition, for a bill that all the Democrats and a few Republicans support, while Boehner rails against it and votes no.
Or some other legislative mechanism. The point is, I don’t think it will be Boehner’s bill, but one he opposes, that raises the debt ceiling.
That’s crazy.
But these are crazy times.
Correction: these are crazy, CRAZY times. The Republicans simply do not have a budget strategy that their caucus appears capable of executing. Normally this would be good news, and I hope optimistic predictions of the outcome are right, but there are so many nihilists in the Tea Party caucus and so many unusual, crosscutting pressures on the full GOP caucus (such as McConnell’s apparent decision to fiercely protect his right flank) that I am becoming worried.
He’s done it a number of times before. There will be tremendous pressure on him to do it, and not from the Democratic Party but from international finance.
Yeah, he might not get re-elected in 2016.
Conversely, a govt shutdown/financapocalypse could splinter the GOP in ways that are permanent. I doubt it flips the House in 2014, but it might preserve the Senate majority.
People instinctively know which party likes to shut down the government and which doesn’t.
“People instinctively know which party likes to shut down the government and which doesn’t.”
I think this is a baseline narrative now that is gaining wider awareness. In my estimation even the low-information folks that have little time for political news between Prez election years are starting to get this.
I think he’s serious and that he’s been setting up what is needed to repeal the sequester. The economy is getting better, there is more revenue,consumers are more hopeful. He’s on the road giving people the message that he’s not running for office, he just wants to help the middle class. He’s giving details about how that can happen and that the GOP is stopping it. The GOP in the Senate is starting to splinter and he has senators that are working with him now. He’s held out his hand and offered to work with him all along and they know it. He’s taken the action that he could to get his measures through with all their obstruction.
The timing of his August speeches and OFA action is impeccable. The GOP will come back and no matter how much they stir up their base the rest of the country is taking notice. In the GOP splinter they are already talking about a shut down being stupid, let alone after a month of the President’s speeches and the awareness from action. And they will be facing 2014 elections rushing at them. Big money and business will pressure the GOP to act responsibly. And the House anyway has drawn such a stupid, intractable line in the sand that there is no way that could happen. Something’s gotta give and the President saying it won’t be him just puts more pressure. Again the great timing, before GOP goes home to hear from constituents which they don’t like. There’s been a lot of problems during their town halls before. Now there will be more attention on them than ever.
I watched the President’s Chattanooga speech and the interviews afterward. GOP politicians were their usual stupid selves, but most of the interviewees I saw had stars in their eyes about jobs. he makes sense when he talks.
The time is right.
It’s not just the sequester. The GOP has failed to pass a farm bill, a transportation bill, and a housing bill. The GOP cannot agree how much to cut or how much to spend on anything. The only legislation they can pass is repeal Obamacare….and they just keep on collecting taxes…..
Also the transportation bill is called THUD
McConnell’s had his chance at concessions and now that he’s under polling his opponent, he’s got nothing but memories to leverage with. Boehner’s already said he won’t talk one on one with Obama. And then there’s McCain…
Suzanne seems to have laid out the WH strategy and their hopes for rationality from our insane and braindead GOoPers. I personally wouldn’t bet $1 on their seeing reality, political or (certainly not) economic. They are as nauseating a collection of poison-brained ignoramuses as one could imagine, beyond the wildest fiction.
As a political matter, the only way to dislodge the illegitimate grip on power of Boner’s Boneheads is to let them “govern” as they see fit. Their lunacy ensures it will be catastrophic, perhaps for the entire world, but they are the putative “majority” supposedly “elected” by the people. Disaster is the only way forward now, sad to say. Keep the cupboards bare, Mr Prez. Give them absolutely nothing.
The focus of BooMan’s post was whether the President was serious and I was laying out my perspectives from his words and actions.
Unlike the Senate, the House is ruled by people from specific districts. They are also elected every two years and always have their eye focused on the next election. I’m from a very red district in IN, hear the way people think here and the results of their GOP politics so I do understand why they were elected. I also think it can and will change. It looks like sooner rather than later, too.
Matty Yglesias had an interesting idea
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/07/31/collapse_of_the_house_republican_majority.html
“It’s in the conjunction of these two failures that you see a mortal threat to the practical existence of the Republican governing majority in the House. That’s because if you can’t find 218 Republicans out of 234 to vote for a bill, the other option is to start with 201 Democrats and try to add two dozen Republicans. And in many ways, that kind of coalition makes more sense given that to become law a bill also needs to pass a majority-Democratic Senate and be signed into law by a Democratic president. A “Pelosi Plus” House bill, in other words, can actually become law whereas a Boehner Majority House bill is at best a bargaining ploy. Now normally that kind of legislation simply can’t move in the House. The party that holds the majority forms a cartel and blocks bills from coming to the floor that don’t have support in the majority caucus. Boehner has allowed select violations of this so-called Hastert Rule (though in practice the rule predates Hastert) but there’s at least a chance that he’ll be forced to suspend it wholesale throughout the appropriations process.”
So the Senate is cracking first, but I think the House will too and it will be spectacular. Big business is not going to allow those yahoos to mess with their income. They’ve pressured them before and will now.
Please proceed, GOP.
It seems to me that in a framework like this we might see a lot of the sequester go away too.
Would be kind of cool to see Pelosi return to power without actually returning to power.
I’m watching the debt ceiling fiasco, part 2, and looking forward to how positive news about ACA rolling out exchanges on Oct 1 might give the Prez some more clout. The vote really needs to have occurred before now, but the GOP will wait until the last possible moment. And thanks to improve tax revenues and even the sequester, that last possible moment could even come in October or November.
I don’t expect the ACA rollout to be completely smooth and of course the GOP will try to exaggerate the importance of every miniscule glitch. But people will see lower prices for health insurance. Healthcare insurance companies will be working overtime to inform prospective new customers how wonderful their new products are. Health providers will also go into promotion mode as they explain to new patients how they can use Obamacare to access their services and products.
I think this puts a ton of good will into Obama’s hands and the Repubs don’t have a chance. This is all on top of the background narrative. People are growing ever more aware of who is sabotaging government services they depend upon.
I just wonder how long small business owners will continue voting overwhelmingly GOP (at least in polls I’ve seen over the years) when this bill basically hands them a lifeline. Small business owners suffer enormously under the current system.
He just set expectations for the global markets. Wonder how long it takes the word to get back to the Republican leadership on this.
If the ratings agencies downgrade US credit over Republican shenanigans again, it’s the ratings agencies that will collapse. The political game of rating agencies was exposed in 2011. Since then, the pay-for-play practice of rating agencies in the financial meltdown has been exposed.
The global economy is not going to collapse from a fall in the value of financial assets again. It is going to collapse from the prevalence of austerity policies.
The President can ignore the debt limit with the argument that Congress set the size of revenues and the requirements for spending and that he will try to get the most for the taxpayers’ dollar within those limits. There’s not going to be much impeachment traction if he does that. The House who cried “Wolf” has a huge credibility problem.
The real fight is over the continuing resolution and what exactly is in it. Or if the House Republicans are stupid enough to shut the government down.
It’s true. The Republicans don’t even take themselves seriously anymore, so why should anyone else? Worst case is that Obama continues to pay the nation’s debts without congressional authorization, and then gets impeached for the high crime of doing his job.
Yes!
Maybe they could put Ted Cruz’s face on that trillion-dollar coin.
Even if he did have something, it would serve zero purpose to acknowledge that until the very end of the game.
I hope he’s telling the truth. These guys are delirious. Don’t bargain with crazy terrorists looking to hurt people.
Booman’s question was would the President risk our credit standing in the world by going to or over the brink?
My answer: He will hold firm. As we cross over the brink, he will order his Treasury Secretary to keep paying the bills, citing the 14th Amendment. There is a much smaller possibility that he will have Treasure mint a Trillion Dollar Coin and deposit it in Treasury’s General Account at the Fed. The Fed is obligated to fund such deposits at the value claimed by the Secretary. Tricky, but possible. For Obama, who doesn’t like tricks, unlikely.
Will the GOP go to the brink? That’s the real question. GOP thought leaders are utterly convinced Obama will fold, and when he doesn’t, they will offer a clean bill, since there won’t be time to negotiate. They (the GOP) will not take us over the edge, unless they miscalculate.
Another reason the brink may not be hit is that the September 30 deadline likely will come before the debt ceiling drop dead date. If the GOP shuts down the Government and gets humiliated in the aftermath, they will be ion no mood for another fight.
The battle will be in September over the CR. To increase the pressure, Obama and Lew may work to have the debt limit reached at about the same time. If this happens, I predict we will see a cave on the debt ceiling (clean bill) and a temporary CR, which will just move the budget talks closer to the 2014 elections and well into Obamacare’s successful roll out.
In this case, there will, I predict, be a shutdown, and the GOP will lose the House in 2014.
Just to remind everyone that this is not a new position on the president’s part. He’s been saying it repeatedly since at least December of last year.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec12/economy_12-05.html
Obama’s biggest mistake was following that line of reasoning in 2011.
By agreeing to negotiate with Republicans over such a mundane task as raising the debt limit, he signaled that their best strategy against him was hostage taking and they’ve followed it ever since.
All the evidence suggests that they are never going to shoot that hostage, but frankly, better to learn that they are completely crazy than to suffer death by a thousand cuts.
And frankly, I don’t give a damn about “our credit rating”. Based on what happened the last time it was lowered, neither does the international community.