Associated Press
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle today, explaining why he believes it's responsible to hold the debt ceiling hostage until President Obama "puts forward a plan" that makes Republicans happy. The piece is filled with errors of fact and judgment, but there was one truly bizarre claim that stood out for me.
"The coming deadlines will be the next flashpoints in our ongoing fight to bring fiscal sanity to Washington," the Texas Republican wrote. "It may be necessary to partially shut down the government in order to secure the long-term fiscal well being of our country."
Just at a surface level, this is ridiculous -- to prevent possible trouble in the future, Cornyn intends to cause deliberate trouble now? But even putting that aside, I'm not sure if the senator understands the nature of the controversy. Failing to raise the debt limit -- that is, choosing not to pay the bills for money that's already been spent -- doesn't just "partially shut down the government," it pushes the nation into default and trashes the full faith and credit of the United States.
Does Cornyn, a member of the Finance and Budget committees, not understand this? Just as importantly, is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) equally confused?
"By demanding the power to raise the debt limit whenever he wants by as much as he wants, [President Obama] showed what he's really after is assuming unprecedented power to spend taxpayer dollars without any limit," McConnell argued on the Senate floor.
At the risk of being impolite, McConnell's comments are plainly dumb. As a policy matter, it's just gibberish, and the fact that the Senate Minority Leader doesn't seem to know what the debt ceiling even is, after already having threatened default in 2011 and planning an identical scheme in 2013, raises serious questions about how policymakers can expect to resolve a problem they don't seem to understand at a basic level.
For the record, Congress, by constitutional mandate, has the power of the purse. Unless you're Ronald Reagan illegally selling weapons to Iran to finance a secret and illegal war in Nicaragua, the executive branch can't spend money that hasn't already been authorized by the legislative branch.
If the president had the authority to raise the debt ceiling on his or her own, it would not give the White House the authority to "spend taxpayer dollars without any limit," since any administration would still be dependent on Congress for expenditures. The debt limit has nothing to do with this -- spending authority would be unchanged no matter which branch had the power over raising the limit, and whether the ceiling existed or not.
It's really not that complicated. Congress approves federal spending, the executive branch follows through accordingly. When the legislative branch spends more than it takes in, the executive branch has to borrow the difference.
In the 1930s, Congress came up with the debt ceiling, mandating the White House to get permission to borrow the money that Congress has already spent. If McConnell, Cornyn, and their hostage-taking friends refuse to raise the ceiling, the administration can't pay the nation's bills. It's that simple.
Either GOP lawmakers like McConnell and Cornyn haven't yet grasped these basic details, or they're cynically hoping the public is easily misled by bogus rhetoric. Either way, there's little hope of a sensible public debate if Senate Republican leaders repeat nonsense about a looming national crisis.
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Win or lose, maybe it's how you play the game. President Barack Obama is getting some criticism for not allowing the country to go over the fiscal cliff. Having agreed to a tax increase that is smaller than he was proposing and much smaller than it would have been if he had let the Bush tax cuts simply expire, it is feared he has lost his leverage to the Republicans who will now insist on negotiating what many Democrats will consider dangerous cuts to entitlements by using the debt ceiling as a club to get their way. This presupposes that the Republicans will get their act together within the next few months and mount a credible campaigno to reinforce their position. And there's the rub. Credibility. When your opposition cannot agree among themselves what is reasonable, then it pays to be absolutely certain that you are being reasonable yourself. It was not easy but it was reasonable to make a deal at this time, regardless of its imperfections. If the Democrats continue to be reasonable they will gain more and more support from the electorate for their reasonableness and future deals will be both more productive and easier to come by. Most people want a government that is reasonable.
Obama say--That's a nice thought. As a reasonable man I would like to believe that being reasonable pays off--even if it takes a little while. (obamasay.com)
The guy that wrote this article is an idiot, Steve Benen.
At what point do we stop spending more that we bring in? At what point do we pay off the debt?
this kind of thinking is twisted. This is why we have a system set up they way it is. SO, one person can push the button taking us all down with the ship.
Congratulations! You are EXACTLY as ignorant as McConnell and Cornyn are hoping! The money, genius, is ALREADY SPENT, as much of it for Republican wars and pet projects as anything else. This is simply a vote on whether or not to pay the bills we owe.
Apparently that poster still takes the simplistic view that running the budget of a national government is exactly like running your own individual budget. If that were the case, no nation would ever go to war, as they inevitably cost huge sums of money that cannot be paid for by simply raising taxes. The cost of WWII, for example, was absolutely massive, and there is no way we could have fought the war and had a balanced budget at the same time. If an individual has more expenses than income, one solution is to get a second job,or quit and get a better-paying job. How do you translate that to a nation? An individual can also cut expenses. So can a nation, but only so far, as a lot of expenses, such as interest payments, pensions, etc. are mandatory costs. We can no more refuse to pay them than an individual can decide not to pay their mortgage. I challenge ANYONE on the right to show me how to balance the budget with spending cuts alone. It is mathematically impossible, even if you eliminate all social spending. It always astounds me to see the stupidity of people who claim they can fix things just with a little slash and burn on the budget. History shows that moves like that actually drive nations into depressions, and all the precious businessmen that will supposedly create a massive amount of jobs by balancing the budget will be destroyed by such a tactic.
We need to show our support for President Obama on this one. Our Democrats need to insure the Republicans that they will not be bullied into a fiscal policy that further disadvantages the disadvantaged. Check out "Modern Marvels: The Manhattan Project", on Netflix Streaming, to see the awesome power and capability of our country. Only with cooperation through a strong government can we achieve such things. I hate bombs. If we could do that imagine what else we can do. And Americans can do.
Whatever.. Sorry, not a personal attack but I've done nothing but support Cavey Spelunker McCaverson III. I would like to get some ROIC for a change..
Now this may sound like divisional ideology but hear me out before you go all Lebowsky: Isn't it time to say @!$%# off to the Republicans? At what point exactly does a Grand Swindle actually get called a "Grand Swindle" or a terrorist get called a "terrorist"? We don't have that much time to make a difference and these people are wasting more time than I care to spend.
Man what congress ought to do is authorize hundreds of trillions of spending on random projects. Then use the Debt Ceiling that hits roughly every month to extract spending cuts from social welfare programs, it'd be genius. Given their apparent respect for the intelligence of American citizens i'm shocked they haven't thought of this.
New rules for Congress critters:
Mandatory IQ testing and Economics 404
2 ideas to eliminate from the English language:
1. Gerrymandering 2. PAC's
After all the fiscal cliff non sense, I'm burned out on this government. After reading Barack Obama's book " The Audacity of Hope", our President is a genius and he knows how to make government work. I'm convinced these idiots in Congress have read it and are never going to let Obama do a thing without all out war.McConnell is a joke from the South. He gave in because of friendship. He's still an ass. Now what are we supposed to do listen to the debt ceiling non sense until we're blind. At least Rachel picks other topics and her passion for our people in uniform is always worth listening to. These soldier's are so ripped off by our government.It is a travesty and you go girl!
Why would we expect that Republican leaders would actually understand the issues they're discussing?
check out the comments of the other senator from texas in today's wapo. cruz makes cronyn seem absolutely brilliant and honest. is there something in the water in texas?
I don't know about McConnell, but I know John Cornyn and he's definitely not that ignorant. He just knows his base, and thinks he knows the average voter, and assumes he can make up any wild lie he wants to and most of them will never know the difference, which is sad but mostly true.
...sensible [or nonsensical] public debate... is neither necessary nor relevant.
If congress can't raise the debt ceiling, the executive branch has one simple, clear option: don't pay congress's already authorized expenditures.
Okay, the full faith and credit of the United States would be trashed. So be it. How else will these cynical dimwits learn the basics?
One catastrophic lesson now for a longer-term benefit in the future. Perhaps.
We'll then know how far we can trust Mr Obama's voiced commitment to not play that game again.
Equally befuddling is that those who complain about President Obama's "out of control spending" are the same folks slamming the President for not having "passed" a budget. How does all that "out of control spending" get done, I wonder?
Apparently President Obama has the government checkbook and he is just writing checks willy-nilly.
People say Fox News viewers are not as well informed as the totally uninformed. Well, most of us learned how the government is designed to function in high school civics class. In order to be as confused as some of the people I have read on this thread or some of the Republicans Cornyn and McConnell are addressing Fox News has worked hard to erase what the confused people learned in high school. That explains why the totally uninformed know more about current events than Fox News voters.
It's getting as ugly here as it's been on DKos since the fiscal "deal": it's either Obama sux or Obama rox. Or whom do you trust least. Or who caved and how badly.
When two of our most frequent and well-reasoned commenters get wrapped up in the minutiae of others' arguments, maybe it's time we all pause for a deep breath. The rest of us find flames hard to read through.
Do you expect anything different, other than asanine and insane, from Texas Republicans? Except for the Democrats there, might have been better if they were allowed to secede and we could erect a fence at the other states' boarders abutting them.
It seems they won't stop at anything to get rid of all entitlement programs. But, what's even more distrubing is that the voters in these Red states never seem to understnad that they're voting against their own best economic interest. I wonder how many of them or members of their familiies receive entitlements that are needed. And I'm sure they're all not earning over $400K annually, either.
It seems to me there are several things to consider.
First, the "Hastert Rule" has been broken, hopefully irremedially. If that rule didn't apply in order to prevent us from going over the "fiscal cliff", how can Boehner bring it back to ensure the Republicans can crash the economy?
Second, there are 80-odd Republicans, including the Speaker, who have shown they are not "insane". Nor are they all susceptible to being primaried from the right.
Thirdly, much of President Obama's "negotiating" has been, in my opinion, for public consumption. We all know the MSM isn't going to give up on "he said/he replied" and "both sides do it" reporting. Therefore the President has to be the one who shows himself willing to compromise, even when neither he nor we can be certain that the citizens of this country will see that he has compromised.
Believe it not, that perception of being willing to compromise may be the only weapon that the President has to gain the necessary support of our fellow citizens in overcoming the radical ideologues now controlling the Republican Party. He certainly is limited in his power over the Republican members of the House and Senate.
I will admit that some of President Obama's actions in his dealings with the Tbaggering House have made nervous but, so far, he's done much better than I or just about anyone else expected or thought possible. Which is why I'm not as worried about this "crisis" as I was about the one in 2011.
I'll also admit that I'd really, really, really like to see him smack those b*st*rds upside their trogdolyte heads. Which is why I'm starting campaigning for Democrats in 2014 now - so he'll have two years to do just that!
Obama and Congress just pushed millions of Americans below the poverty line:
http://bit.ly/UqaCsg
They might as well stop paying the debt. It looks like the one thing everyone in DC can agree on is that blowing up the economy and @!$%#ting on the poor is fun, fun, fun!
If you want to hear a RATIONAL discussion of the fiscal-cliff bill, catch Chris Hayes show this morning - that should shut up the "chearleaders"!!
OAR -- As ever, on any subject, Chris' show is enlightening. Am re-listening as I write.
Would also recommend Matt Taibbi's most recent column for Rolling Stone, on-line now (hardcopy in 15Jan2013 issue).
Does anyone else get the impression that the republicans don't like paying the bills for the things they buy? Why else would they refuse to allocate the money that they've already promised? These people talk a good game about responsibility, but by their actions, it appears that they don't understand the term.