Without muss or fuss, Congress just voted overwhelmingly to keep the federal spigot open for six more months. There were no shouting matches, no threats of a government shutdown, no hostage-takings. Even some tea party lawmakers approved the $1.047 trillion measure.
Contrast the smooth legislative action with the lunacy of last year’s debt-ceiling debate, when the United States came within days of defaulting on its IOUs. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the government’s credit rating. The recovery went into reverse as consumers delayed purchases and businesses hunkered down.
Much as we dislike recalling that madness, it’s worth looking back if only because it now seems so manufactured - or worse, economically reckless. If last summer’s fight was necessary to save the country from fiscal wrack and ruin, why is this fall’s continuing resolution, as the measure is called, not a threat to Western civilization? It even adds another $8 billion to the deficit and exceeds the House Republicans’ budget blueprint by $19 billion.
We understand that many lawmakers, in trouble back home and anxious to return to their campaigns, are concerned that a government shutdown would invite an anti-incumbency rout. We also accept that Republicans may be timing their next fiscal showdown for after the election, in case voters turn out President Barack Obama and turn over Senate control to their party. But those are political, not economic, calculations.
A year ago, Republicans cast the debt-ceiling fight as a principled economic response to unsustainable borrowing and the only way to avoid a Greek-like comeuppance at the hands of the bond market. In offering his budget in March, Rep. Paul Ryan, now the party’s vice-presidential nominee, said government debt “continues to rise at a frightening pace, raising fears that a similar crisis may happen here.”
So can we assume that Republicans have now fixed the country’s debt problem? Not at all. In many ways, they did the opposite.
The debt-ceiling drama barely moved the long-term debt trajectory. Instead, it left the country standing at the edge of a fiscal cliff, at the bottom of which lies another recession. It also raised doubts about whether Congress and the White House can govern, and led the rest of the world to question the sanity of the U.S.
As Bloomberg View columnists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers wrote in May, all the economic data “tell us that a debt-ceiling standoff is an act of economic sabotage.” In July, the Government Accountability Office even concluded that last year’s delays in raising the ceiling increased Treasury’s borrowing costs by $1.3 billion.
The debt-limit fight may also prove to be a Republican own-goal. The outcome of last summer’s debate was an agreement to make deep cuts in defense spending as of January. And with the Bush tax cuts expiring at the same time, the combination is powerful leverage in the Democrats’ favor, leaving Republicans in a shaky negotiating stance.
When a trillion-dollar spending bill flies through Congress, it raises a simple question: Why now and not then? It’s a question voters would do well to ask in the months ahead.
Bloomberg News
Comments (28)
Add commentI am sure scary you would prefer the OWS crowd. A lot of
noise, and no substance, unless you include the millions in damage, theft, rape, flag burning. Come to think of it, the president supported the OWS and they seem to be just like the Muslims overseas.
Right on pd.
We shouldn't have to worry about a budget because all the millionaire democrats are going to give the government ALL of their money and join the 99% ers....... right?
Tea Party Learning Curve ......Part I
No more stalling this time ,since they already wrecked the countries credit rating - YAH !
No more armed rallys complete with swell signs , highlighted by spitting on the Cong. Black Caucus- Thanks Dick Armey !
The shattered" illegitimate" GOP Party image which required a complete makeover for obvious reasons ,need to tone down a tad and try to come up with something actually factual and functional . - Thanks Amy Koch & Michael Brodkorb for allowing us to keep the faith about the rebranding effort...
Hard to believe anyone would take these Tea Party Clowns as legitimate group vs a cult.
Hmmm...two rating downgrades and they BOTH happened during...
...Obama's administration, and yet Captron and Scary still can't bring themselves to conclude that perhaps, just perhaps, Obama is part of the problem. Unbelievable.
HaHa Scary
Jan Moran and Dr. Moran are two of the smartest people in Brainerd, this mulletthead must not know them
He spelled it in a way
he was sure scary and the rest of you libs would understand.
He got his point accross well, I guess.
There doesn't seem to be any
There doesn't seem to be any pain that the republicans won't inflict on this country or working class Americans to make Obama a "one term president".
And you tired out liberals
spoof stuff that's two years old. More incompetance on your part. Whata bunch of losers. Head downtown and have a few more.
Scary Im Afraid Your Very Informative Graphs & Charts
Have gotten those folks who cant do the/any math even more frustrated than when they started out.
Everyone knows what happened when the debt ceiling needed to be raised again prior to this week.
Most people understand how the debt was created.
Some people try to understand a realistic approach to paying it off.
But why do some continue to pretend the SKY IS FALLING, while actually thinking more TAX CUTs could possibly be a solution ,since they seem to be soooo busy pointing fingers.
Thank Goodness for Economists , just amazing how many we have...... Hail Trickle Down Economics Forever !!!
Wait until you hear Mittsters prepared statements on monetary & fiscal policy , during the debate , from a vulture capialists point of view , instead of an actual leaders.
Obviously some of you
like that kind of stuff, scary. Don't blame the rest of us for your kinks.
Including him!
Good catch, scary.
Wow that sure
was fast!
Hi Scary...We're in the world together...
I may disagree with Fair, PD, etc...
What I do like, is their honesty and their postings...
A community of dialogue...
Sir Fair calls me Scribbles, and I really like that...
I get to scribble here, and share...
Trip relayed annoyance by the 3 dots I always do after each thought or phrase...
It's my style, and I do more often than not, find a image to include that often takes more than a browser scroll to find the next post...
Why? A picture is worth a thousand words...
I hand code HTML (HyperText Markup Language, or as I have joked to many folks, High Time Mike Left) and know the ins and outs of a img tag or paragraph or heading tag. I've done this since 1993 with NCSA Mosaic 2.0.
I do not regularly use an IDE (integrated development environment tool) for my postings. Reason? I can be on any computer anywhere and often create internetl/world wide web documents for distribution.
Keep on posting Scary and Sharing...
The 'NET is great...
- Dutch...
I'm certain Santorum meant the "smart" people...
...not "smart people". Intellectuals are people who don't need to have any experience in making things work. In fact, the more abstract, the better as far as they're concerned. Intellectuals need big government to fund their activities because no one in the real world would give them "a penny for their thoughts".
And let me make this clear, because I anticipate that Scary won't understand what I'm saying--the tendency of "intellectuals" to gravitate toward things that have no value in the marketplace does not make them smart, it makes them useless--especially when we are facing the greatest fiscal crisis in the history of our country.
You know while we all banter back and forth, there are
forces we may have not seen that may tip the balance to either party. Reading the news this morn, I read this headline: "Black pastors group launches anti-Obama campaign around gay marriage" The Rev. Williams Owens, who is president and founder of the Coalition of African-Americans Pastors, has highlighted opposition to same-sex marriage among African-Americans.
Then there was this other headline: 'African-American Christians waver over vote' Some black clergy see no good presidential choice between a Mormon candidate and one who supports gay marriage, so they are telling their flocks to stay home on Election Day.
It may not come down to who said or did what, but just to the number of voters. It would be nice to see a major turnout of voters the election, instead of people who complain and (deleted word) afterwards, only to find they never voted at all!
Dutch, Dutch, Dutch...
I wasn't annoyed. I just have a hard time following your line of thinking. Same way with the pics. I try to connect the dots (no pun intended) but, well, it ain't easy.
My style is to use sarcasm. I mean no one any harm but it is so fun to tweak scary, snowda and southie. It does get boring quickly though because it is so easy.
And we aren't very gullible, trip.
Just like Santorum said,
"We will never have the smart people on our side. "
And we see that every day, what with Liz Cheney and her father trying to rewrite history.
And with Ryan and Romney trying to keep their platforms straight and consistent with each other.
Let me see if I have this straight.
Scaryphony accuses the Tea Party of being all noise and no substance....while referring to them as [filtered phrase].
Ba, ha,ha,ha,ha,ha. You can't make this stuff up.