"The March to Anarchy" by THE EDITORIAL BOARD at the NY Times

[applegrove]

The March to Anarchy

by THE EDITORIAL BOARD at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/opinion/the-march-to-anarchy.html?src=mv&_r=0

"SNIP................................


Mr. Obama has said that he will not negotiate on raising the debt ceiling. “What I will not do is to create a habit, a pattern, whereby the full faith and credit of the United States ends up being a bargaining chip to set policy,” he said on Wednesday morning. If Republicans don’t back down, the double blow of a government shutdown, followed by a default, would be ruinous to the economy.

As a strategy, the House plan makes little sense. After the House takes its vote this week to approve a temporary resolution that pays for the government to keep running through mid-December — but defunds the health law — the measure will go to the Senate. Assuming 60 votes can be found to beat back the inevitable filibuster from Republicans like Mike Lee or Ted Cruz, the Senate will almost certainly approve the resolution minus the defunding language, sending the bill right back to the House. Nothing will have changed, except that there will be only a day or two left before the government’s financing runs out.

As a political statement, this plan illuminates the chaotic state of the Republican Party. Speaker John Boehner, who preferred to have symbolic rather than real votes against the health law, lost control of his chamber to hard-liners obsessed with repealing it. Many on the right, who came to Washington with the radical agenda of ending as many government programs as they could, practically welcome the prospect of a shutdown or even a default. (Their tactics will never turn back health reform, but fighting that battle means Democrats are unlikely to stop the destructive sequester cuts for another year.)

Mr. Boehner is playing the dangerous game of trying to placate the extremists for a few days. But, in the end, the burden will be squarely on his shoulders. If he allows the entire House, including Democrats, to vote on straightforward measures to pay for the government and raise the debt limit, the double crisis will instantly end. If he does not, he will give free rein to his party’s worst impulses.




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[applegrove]

1. So it is totally up to Boehner.....