Tick, tick. August 2nd is the Debt Limit Armageddon. Or Not.

It is pretty obvious our president doesn't look forward to having this discussion again just months before he hopes to be re-elected. Also pretty obvious that the Republicans would be delighted to have exactly the opposite situation.

Oh, this is interesting...

Apparently the House Rules Committee adopted a rules change last night that allows the House to take up the Reid bill, perhaps even before voting on the Boehner bill. Some think this is an attempt to vote down the Reid bill to demonstrate that it won't pass the House which would put pressure on the Senate to accept the BBA portion of the new Boehner bill.

JPB wrote:

No kidding.

One of the sticking points, apparently, was that the Pell grants were too generous. Another was the lack of a BBA.

It's amazing to see that, seeing as a BBA to begin with will never pass the Senate (as McCain pointed out yesterday), and more specifically, THEIR version of the BBA will never pass, as it contains a 2/3rds requirement to raise taxes from then on.

Cycloptichorn

Republicans’ Debt Ceiling Charade Is Downright Dangerous
By Joe Klein Thursday, July 28, 2011 | 1072 Comments


Let us not put too fine a point on it: Thursday’s House vote on Speaker John Boehner’s debt ceiling proposal is a joke. If it passes the House, Harry Reid has said it is dead on arrival in the Senate. If it somehow passes the Senate, which it won’t, President Obama will veto it. It is, therefore, a symbolic act that is wasting precious time. It follows last week’s Republican theatrics, the passage of the Cut and Demolish Act (or whatever they called it), which also was a waste of time. These are the actions of a party that has completely lost track of reality–and of a leader, John Boehner, who has lost the support of his party.

And so I have a proposal: the Cut the Crap Act. It will have to be passed by Monday, to avoid default. And it will require an act of statesmanship from Boehner: he will have to modify his proposal and cut loose the Tea Party robots who are opposed to a deal of any kind. He will have to find common cause with Harry Reid and, yes, Nancy Pelosi, who are now willing to propose bills that should make any Teasie happy–bills without “revenue increases,” bills with a trillion dollars in budget cuts, more or less. He will have to find 160 sane members of his caucus and Pelosi will have to find 60 extremely tolerant members of hers to get us past this ridiculous moment.

The Cut the Crap Act isn’t actually my invention. It is the White House’s best case scenario for the next five days. This has been an exhausting process–one that might have resulted in an exhilarating triumph, if the Republican party were not led by nihilists like Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist. But one senses that the President is feeling the exhaustion and frustration. He is preparing himself for the worst of all possible scenarios: the uncertainty caused by the Republican anarchy has already damaged the economy, businesses are waiting to see what the interest rates will be and therefore delaying plans to expand. That uncertainty, added to the higher oil prices caused by Arab Spring, the European Debt crisis and the Japanese earthquake could well bring us a double-dip recession.

But the President also seems absolutely intent on forcing this issue because the Republicans have used the debt ceiling weapon to upend the traditional balance of power in Washington. It is the ultimate nuclear option, creating a bigger bang than abuse of the filibuster in the Senate. If this Republican ploy succeeds, this nuclear option can be deployed again on other issues–surgical nuclear strikes directed at the funding of individual government programs and agencies. (Indeed, if she were less scrupulous, Pelosi could have used a debt ceiling vote to force President Bush to defund the war in Iraq.)

And so, here we are. Our nation’s economy and international reputation as the world’s presiding grownup has already been badly damaged. It is a self-inflicted wound of monumental stupidity. I am usually willing to acknowledge that Democrats can be as silly, and hidebound, as Republicans–but not this time. There is zero equivalence here. The vast majority of Democrats have been more than reasonable, more than willing to accept cuts in some of their most valued programs. Given the chance, there was the likelihood that they would have surrendered their most powerful weapon in next year’s election–a Mediscare campaign–by agreeing to some necessary long-term reforms in that program. The President, remarkably, proposed raising the age of eligibility for Medicare to 67.

The Republicans have been willing to concede nothing. Their stand means higher interest rates, fewer jobs created and more destroyed, a general weakening of this country’s standing in the world. Osama bin Laden, if he were still alive, could not have come up with a more clever strategy for strangling our nation.

Updated, 2:07 p.m.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/07/28/republicans-dangerous-debt-ceiling-charade/#ixzz1TVgpKAv3

I'm not so sure that the ideologues who were part of the freshman class are at all concerned about being reelected. Many of them have never held public office before and I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that many of them are convinced with the fervor of an evangelical that they are "RIGHT" in holding out and that they were elected to do precisely what they are doing.

The only public opinion that matters in regards to these particular members is the opinion of those who voted for them.

I wonder how these TP ideologues are doing in the polls among their own constituency?

Tea Party leaders announced Thursday that they will mount primary challenges against four freshmen Republicans who have declared their support for John Boehner's debt ceiling plan.

According to The Hill, the Tea Party groups are calling the four congressmen -- Allen West (Fla.), James Lankford (Okla.), Mike Kelly (Pa.), and Bill Flores (Texas) -- “Tea Party defectors.”

West addressed the accusations on Laura Ingraham's radio show, saying he would continue to support Boehner's plan.

"I think what we have to ask ourselves is, If you're telling me that I need to vote no against the Boehner plan, then what am I voting for?" West said.

"I'm going to stand with this Boehner plan and, once again, if the folks who one minute they're saying that I'm their 'Tea Party hero' and what, three or four days later 'I'm a Tea Party defector' -- that kind of schizophrenia I'm not going to get involved in." Source

I've always maintained that social security and Medicare had to be on the table;

Doesn't matter, b/c it's still dead on arrival.

What a farce this whole thing is...

Cycloptichorn

Because the American people have spoken; they want cuts in spending AND some increase in taxes.

This is about compromise and negotiation; not blackmail. If we don't like what our representatives are doing, replace them. As voters, we have that responsibility.