The Plan as I Understand It

Posted on by

Harry Reid plans to put a long-term debt increase with no strings attached up for a vote in the Senate this week. He needs just six Republicans to join the Dems for a two-thirds vote, and Reid seems to think he can get that. If not, he will challenge Senate Republicans to kill it with a filibuster, making them own the default. If the bill does pass, it will pressure the House, somehow. Although I’m not sure how. The House appears to be too oblivious to be pressured.

Brian Beutler adds another twist:

Reid will likely use a mechanism to allow the president to increase the debt limit on his own, subject to a veto-able resolution of disapproval by the Congress. In other words, the only way the debt limit won’t increase is if two-thirds of both the House and Senate feel it must be pulled back into the realm of legislative horsetrading — something that will never happen absent bipartisan agreement.

I’ve been bouncing around checking out several news stories about this, and most are hazy on details. I’m not sure if the people writing the news stories quite understand what’s going on, either.

A mess o’ Republicans and their supporters have persuaded themselves that the dire predictions of disaster if the debt ceiling isn’t raised are just scare stories coming from the White House. Power Tool John Hinderaker explains that the United States cannot default on debt, because the 14th Amendment says it can’t, therefore God will send us the magic beans we need to find all kinds of surplus money sluicing around Washington.

All we have to do is prioritize, see. Just cut other stuff, like Medicare and the Marines, and we’ll be fine. Just don’t close war memorials.

In short, House Republicans will not see sense, and most Senate Republicans won’t, either, although maybe enough will to get a two-thirds vote.

25 thoughts on “The Plan as I Understand It”

  1. And I’ve been reading up on this too, today, and I can’t really make heads or tails of it either.

    But there’s still that “Trillion Dollar Coin” idea.

    But Reagan’s addled, and W’s smirky’, visages on the heads, and an elephant pooping on Boehner’s head on the tail, and hand it over to the Treasury.

  3. I think Reid may be helping to build up a legal justification for Obama to ignore the debt ceiling when the time comes. Even if it’s just an idea that he’s floating, it puts it out there as something that’s in the realm of possibility. Basically the Senate majority leader is saying that he has no problem with the president continuing to pay the nation’s debts if the Republicans don’t raise the debt limit.

    So let’s say they don’t, and Obama defies them and keeps making payments. So then you get this big noise and a constitutional crisis that one way or another would lead to either impeachment hearings or a Supreme Court case. And maybe Reid is trying to preemptively shove a monkey wrench in the works by first of all making it clear that impeachment will go nowhere, and second providing some kind of basis for a legal defense.

    Well, adding to the legal basis, actually. It’s funny that Hinderaker (who is an attorney, by the way) cites the 14th Amendment, because that does provide a pretty strong basis in itself. And then there’s the constitutional requirement that the president take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and also the argument that the powers granted to Congress are also their responsibilities, and one of those is to pay the nation’s debts. And now Harry Reid is on board.

  4. Hinderaker’s understanding of the constitution leaves a lot of room for interpretation. it’s not the debt obligation that’s being questioned, it’s the time period in with it’s being paid. Every month for the past 14 years I have been in “techincal’ default save a 15 day grace period. I’m not sure if the government does grace periods.
    I understand that Obama does have latitude in delaying payments in an effort to prioritize but doesn’t mean that he not honoring the debt as required by law, it only means we are in a technical default.
    It’s one thing to know that your money is coming, but it’s another to know its coming when it’s supposed to come. My experience is to avoid financial dealings with people or businesses where I have to beg for my money. The point being is that repugs shouldn’t be tinkering with the possibility of increasing risk and the certainty of increasing stress.

  5. I read over the weekend that Reid’s cohorts in the House will be filing some sort of petition to release a clean CR to be voted on in the House. This move requires some number of days, plus a certain number of signatures. It’s a way to bypass Boehner’s resistance to bringing it up for a vote. The bill would surface a few days before the debt limit hits. And so this move, if it’s true, coupled with the one you reported on in the Senate is a multi-pronged approached.

    A mess o’ Republicans and their supporters have persuaded themselves that the dire predictions of disaster if the debt ceiling isn’t raised are just scare stories coming from the White House.

    That will end once the markets start to shake. Of course, once it does, they’ll blame Barry for it. I read yesterday (sorry no link) that rich backers of the GOP are starting to get vocal.

    So how do we take our money out of retirement funds before the jackoffs in DC wreck the market, again?

    Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. Even before October the stock market was showing signs of weakness. IMO we’re due for a correction.

  6. Maybe I’m just an Obamabot.. But I believe his heart and mind are in the right place..And I stand on the scripture that says.. No weapon formed against me shall prosper.

    Fuck them repugs.. I hope their scheme blows up in their face.

  7. RomneyCare’s been operational for 7 years in Massachusetts. Great article by Gov Deval Patrick, Health Care Reform Works in Massachusetts and It Will Work in America.

    ..Tea Party Republicans don’t want the Affordable Care Act. Do they really mean they don’t want these kinds of improvements in the lives of millions of Americans? I don’t think so. Would they rather we address these issues with a government program instead of through the market-based, individual choices that are the framework of the ACA? I don’t think that’s true either. Have they proposed an alternative way to accomplish these goals? Nope. Despite a presidential election, a decision by the United States Supreme Court, and over 40 failed repeal attempts, it’s clear that what Tea Party Republicans don’t like about Obamacare is the “Obama” part of it.

  8. Hey, I got a good idea. Why don’t we raise revenue by increasing taxes. I wouldn’t object to that.. If I could afford to spend $800.00 on a bottle of wine than certainly a couple extra bucks spent on taxes wouldn’t crimp my lifestyle.

  9. If the geniuses at Powerline and elsewhere hurtle their party towards a default by claiming we can pay bondholders interest but we’ll just have to cut payments (massively) elsewhere, would they then promise to shut up about the wonderfulness of austerity when it causes the economy to crash? Although it would cause a world of real life hurt to millions of people, it might almost be worth it if it finally drove an indisputable stick thru the heart of austerity. But then again, these people would find a reason to say it wasn’t real austerity.

  11. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has an interesting and depressing post about why the 14th Amendment solution won’t really work:

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-there-s-no-escape-hatch

    Basically, any bonds issued after we hit the debt ceiling would be of questionable validity, even if people bought them we’d have to pay vastly higher interest on them so it would not really help and still would not resolve the issue of GOP terrorism anyway.

  12. The House Nutjob Caucus may be impervious to pressure, but the Senate passing such a bill gives the Democrats high ground in the media wars. They’ll be able to say “The half of Congress controlled by Democrats has already voted to reopen the government and avoid destroying the credit rating of the United States. The one controlled by the Republicans won’t even vote on the idea. What’s wrong with them?”

    There is an opportunity here for the Democrats to shake the fundamental media bias toward the Republicans as the ones who have their act together. If we’re lucky, they might even be able to really crack the GOP obstructionism.

    Sadly, I fear, just as a parent has to let the screaming two-year-old just scream and scream without giving in, we may have to let them drive us into default before they get the message that their tantrum tactics don’t work anymore. I think Obama agrees, which is why he isn’t working on the platinum coin design.

  13. Tea Party Republicans Blame Obama for the Shutdown They Planned:

    The government shutdown has revealed the impressive skill of tea party Republicans to say untrue things with sincerity so convincing that they almost sound as if they believe what they are saying. Michele Bachmann, with her toothy grin and startling wide-eyed stare, is especially adept at this.

    The other day, the queen of the House tea party was standing before the TV cameras at the World War II Memorial with her arm around a frail-looking veteran of that war…..Bachmann fawned over the elderly man while telling reporters how utterly shameful it was for President Obama to lock out these venerable old soldiers. The shutdown was the president’s fault, she said; he was to blame for inflicting so much unnecessary inconvenience and pain.

    This is the same woman who has been absolutely giddy in other interviews talking about how “very excited” she and her colleagues are, as if the shutdown is the best thing since Jesus turned water into wine. “It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it,” Bachmann said to the Washington Post….

    …As detailed in a Sunday New York Times story, a well-financed cohort of conservative activists have been planning for months to use a government shutdown as a cudgel to cripple the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Among those behind the effort are, predictably, the Koch brothers, the right-wing billionaire industrialists who, the newspaper reports, gave out $200 million last year to anti-Obamacare groups. Another key leader is a figure from the dark past, Richard Nixon’s former attorney general, Edwin Meese III.

    Also pushing the Obamacare battle is Michael A. Needham, who runs the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation. Unlike Bachmann and her buddies, Needham did not play coy when asked about what is going on, telling the New York Times, “We felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”

    And it’s the fight they got. Republicans should stop feigning innocence and be brave enough to own it.

  14. I watched the President’s live press conference. He has such a reassuring manner about him it’s almost hypnotic. I got several good laughs listening to him. He mentioned rolling out “the coin’ as the type of solutions people come up with to try to overcome what should be seen as a basic responsibility to pay the nations bills.
    He had a line directed at the newbie teabaggers.. Comparing the idea of creating a default to an automobile, he said, “Let’s take her out and she how she rides”

  16. AMENDMENT XIV

    Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

    Section 4.
    The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

    The President does not have a choice: the Congress has no Constitutional authority to abrogate the government’s duty to pay its debts – the debt ceiling is unConstitutional!

  17. The problem with any of the ‘solutions’ to the default problem was identified pretty well by Obama during his speech today.

    As soon as we get into a situation where there is the possibility of a legal challenge to the authority of the Treasury to issue bonds, stuff essentially goes to hell, because anyone buying those bonds will demand deep discounts to offset the added risk that, at some point in the future, a legal challenge and/or the Roberts/Scalia Court will declare them void.

    That applies if Obama claims 14th Amendment authority, a platinum coin, or really anything other than Congress passing a debt limit increase, plain as vanilla.

    We are so screwed.

  18. biggerbox… I’m not sure with what you mean by we are so screwed. I came away from watching his speech with a sense of confidence, in him as a leader, and in the way he intends to deal with the hostages takers. He spelled out what the costs to the American people will be if the extreme element of the Repuglican’t party comes to prevail in the current shakedown of our democracy.
    It seemed to me that he isn’t going to engage in a political battle that’s not his to fight. He just wants everybody in Congress to put their name to whatever decision they make and let the American public decide come election time if they agree with their representatives decision.. The repugs are all clinging together for unified strength right now thinking that they can scapegoat Obama for their actions but once their votes are cast and recorded they’ll be standing alone by owning individual responsibility for their actions..
    I think Obama has a wining strategy ..Victory through surrender. Do what you’re going to do but be prepared to accept the consequences and responsibility of your actions. That should separate the sheep from the goats because even with their gerrymandered little strongholds they don’t have the security of not facing repercussions. The costs of their strategy is too wide spread and diverse for them to be confident with it.

    And Boehner is out there crying.. “He wants total surrender” That sounds to me like a plea of desperation. Or a cry to Obama to throw him a life line.

  19. “right now thinking that they can scapegoat Obama for their actions but once their votes are cast and recorded they’ll be standing alone by owning individual responsibility for their actions”

    Standing alone, a republican’t, responsibility a teabagger? They will lose but they do not absorb facts. So right is wrong, up is down, hey it’s only the individual mandate, why not get rid of it?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTU4UVfDzo

  23. Gad, I can see why people call that guy “hindrocket” – it’s not just a pun on his name.

    First, Obama is legally obligated to spend as Congress instructs him (so much for the fragrant bullshit that they’re giving the executive an “open checkbook”!); were he not to pay the bills as legally obligated, he would be derelict in his duties. It doesn’t matter *how* he chooses to instruct payments be made; he’s in violation of his duties regardless.

    Second, the AP department of the feds simply is not set up for prioritizing payments. There’s no button to push that says “send out only certain checks”. And that’s good, because if there were, it would have been programmed in with a clear dereliction of duty in mind.

    Third, we wouldn’t balance the budget if we suddenly stopped paying a huge number of our bills, no matter whether we serviced our bond debt or not. People would jack up the cost of credit to the US, demanding higher payments to offset the cost of not getting paid in a timely fashion. Not getting paid on the agreed-upon date for your goods or services is just as much a default as not getting your interest in a timely manner, or not being able to redeem your bonds. Plus, the drop in spending would cause a recession, which would increase the deficit. If austerity measures improved the economy, Europe would be booming, but, oops, austerity only works when the economy is *already* booming (or at least running on all cylinders).

    There *are* people who think that Obama can order the Treasury Department to issue new bonds, saying that the 14th Amendment permits him to continue to pay the legal debts that Congress has run up. Obama has said he will not do that, and I think it’s quite reasonable. It would be a Constitutional crisis, and it’s long past time someone stopped this pissing contest before the urine displaces the hot air that holds up the Capitol dome, causing it to collapse and drench the entire Congress in aged urine.

    Um. And possibly splash upon innocent bystanders, too… not just Congress critters.

  25. moonbat,
    Not only do I echo her sentiments, but I’d work like a dog for her, if the FSM allows, she decides to run for POTUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comments are closed.