Oct 7, 2013

What The Debt Ceiling Showdown Is About

     From Jonathan Chait writing for New York Magazine:
[The Obama Administration sees] the debt-ceiling fight as being mainly about the long-term question of whether Congress will cement into place the practice of using the debt ceiling to extort concessions from the president. The price of buying off a debt-ceiling hike would surely be less than the risk of a default. But doing so would enshrine debt-ceiling extortion as a normal congressional practice. This both skews the Constitutional relationship between branches — allowing an unscrupulous Congress to demand unilateral concessions at gunpoint rather than having to compromise — and creates endless brinksmanship that would eventually lead to a default.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's called checks and balances. It was designed that way to begin with. This President doesn't have a clue..

Anonymous said...

Guess What????

The White House has just said that they would be open to a short-term debt limit bill.

I think that's negotiating over the debt limit, isn't it??

The mother of all "caves" ??

Sperling says the WH would not consider delaying or defunding Obamacare as part of a bill.

Guess what that leaves-- you guessed it- Social Security and Medicare.

Just unbelievable.