calbear93 said:
Unit2Sucks said:
dajo9 said:
Unit2Sucks said:
calbear93 said:
Unit2Sucks said:
calbear93 said:
dajo9 said:
Biden has already lost. By engaging in negotiations and showing a willingness to be blackmailed by Republicans, his endeavor here is already a failure - just like Obama before him. Biden should have used the trillion dollar coin to end this situation months ago and made it a non-issue. Now that he has put Republicans in control, it's just a matter of how far Biden retreats to the detriment of the economy.
Using a trillion dollar coin would have been held up in court for so long that it would not have mattered. It would be a question of who has the legal authority to tax and spend, and the Supreme Court would not have resolved this in time.
And Biden not engaging would have been derelict in duty. That would be no better than play chicken with the livelihood of all Americans like the Freedom Caucus is doing. He might as well resign if that would have been his position as the top leader in America. No, he needs to engage and try to deliver for America in the face of economic terrorist in the Republican party and compromise so that enough sane folks in Congress can get to yes.
I agree that Biden has lost the messaging war. He's letting McCarthy beat the drum for his counter-factual narrative. Trump increased spending every year in office (much of it related to the pandemic, but he spent more every year even excluding COVID) and the GOP passed a 2017 tax cut which is adding trillions to the debt.
As we roll out of the pandemic, we've seen government spending reduce each year but the additional debt from the 2017 tax cuts still have an impact.
Biden never should have allowed this to develop. I believe that the democratic leadership thought that this would be a winning issue for the democrats but they screwed it up and it's just bad for everyone. Biden should step up now, announce that the US won't default and take McCarthy's power away. This negotiation is a sham - if the GOP wants to change the laws, they should go through the normal process, they shouldn't hold us all hostage so that they can get a pointless win.
At the end of the day, I think McCarthy knows the country cannot default. But without asking for help from the Democrats, they cannot get there, and he cannot stay in power if he asks for help.
This isn't some secret. Biden needed to show some diplomacy that was his strength in the senate and as VP, but his game theory on how this will play out was just horrible, and we are days away from a catastrophic event. The morons who think defaulting will not be an issue will realize what idiots they are, Trump will claim that Biden does not know how to lead, idiots will compare the economy during Biden and during Trump and not attribute this to the terrorist act of the Freedom Caucus but instead Trump will win again, and the rest of the country will have to pay an outrageous tuition to educate the MAGA idiots.
Where was that game theory?
Can't disagree. To me the only offramp that will work is to just ignore the debt ceiling. Everything else is worse for America both short and long-term. We should never have another debt ceiling crisis and rather than convince the GOP to stop, this will only embolden them to lean more heavily into this as terrorists are wont to do.
This proposal to ignore the debt ceiling is far more radical than my answer to follow the law and mint a coin. But it is a better solution than the current path.
My thought is that Biden tells McCarthy there won't be a negotiation and that the plan is to just blow up the debt ceiling entirely be ignoring it. When McCarthy criticizes the move (which he will), Biden can let McCarthy know that he has the power to pass a clean debt ceiling increase, like has happened dozens of times under GOP presidents. Does anyone think that if Biden ignores the debt limit that McCarthy is going to demand we default on our debt?
Biden needs to flip this around rather than allowing the GOP to continue operating as terrorists.
I just don't see relying on the 14th amendment as a viable path. The Republicans are not going to not litigate, and I suspect an injunction would be granted since not preventing it would make the issue moot and damage to Congress permanent. It is the credibility and the credit-worthiness that would be devastating to our country while this is being litigated.
The terrorists can talk about needing to rein in expenses, but what would be our debt costs when we need to roll over our debt and people ask for more interest to compensate for the risk? How much bigger deficit would that bring about?
Deadbeats.
Paying our debts is the only viable path. Anything else is less good. Unless Biden takes credible steps in that direction, we are screwed.
Congress passes spending laws and the executive must execute those laws faithfully. The idea that some law in 1917 overrides subsequent spending laws doesn't make a ton of sense to me. The idea that congress passes spending laws in 2019 that can only be faithfully executed if a different congress passes a different law in 2023 doesn't make a ton of sense to me.
This should have been dealt with a long time ago, but as I have repeatedly stated, both sides played politics because they thought this was a good issue for them. While I do blame the GOP 100% for creating this problem, I blame Biden for waiting far too long to blow the whole thing up. He should have announced in December (or whenever McCarthy made his first terrorist demand) that we would no longer be pretending that the debt ceiling is binding and that his job as the executive is to faithfully execute the laws as congress has passed them which means he would continue to spend the appropriations required and that, per the US constitution, we would always pay our bills. That would have given us plenty of time to settle the markets and would have put pressure on the terrorists to pass a clean debt ceiling increase if they wanted to pretend to preserve this for a future terrorist action with another administration.
But instead, here we are. Negotiating with terrorists to the detriment of our country now and in the future.
