The brilliantly stupid new plan to raise the debt ceiling without raising it
How pathetic are House Republicans? Paul Ryan has to sell them on a plan to avert default with tricky language
BY ALEX PAREENE
The big debt ceiling question over the last year has been whether the Republican Party’s grown-ups, who understand that “not raising the debt ceiling” is a horrible idea, would be able to convince the nuts, who believe — and they believe this because the “grown-ups” spent the last year recklessly dissembling on the function and purpose of the debt ceiling in order to score political points against Barack Obama — that not raising the debt ceiling would be no big deal and possibly even beneficial to the American economy, because it would force us to take “tough medicine.” It looked for all the world like the elite were losing the argument. The disorganized and hilarious coup against John Boehner was proof that a significant chunk of the House majority wasn’t going to listen to reason. Boehner’s subsequent passage of legislation with a minority of Republican votes — a violation of “The Hastert Rule” — seemed to indicate that the only way forward was bypassing the nuts entirely.
Thankfully for the nation and for Republican unity, a compromise has been reached. The new plan is to raise the debt ceiling while pretending that we’re not raising the debt ceiling. And it might pass, thanks to conservatives convincing themselves that it won’t really count as raising the debt ceiling.
The plan was apparently concocted and sold at the recent GOP retreat and the Tuesday luncheon of the Republican Study Committee, the ultra-conservative House policy caucus. Here’s how it works:
The way the bill is written, Republicans won’t technically be voting to raise the borrowing limit by a set amount, as Congress typically has done. Rather, “the bill would suspend the section of the law that mandates a limit on government borrowing” before May 19, explains George Washington University professor Sarah Binder, a congressional procedure expert. Then, on May 19, “the debt limit would automatically be increased to account for the borrowing that occurred during that period.”
You got that? Instead of simply raising the debt ceiling, which would look real bad, it is being “suspended,” which is in effect the exact same thing. Only the Club for Growth won’t threaten to primary members who vote for this particular bizarre jury-rigged solution to an entirely invented crisis. Plus, in three months we get to have this exact same showdown, again.
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http://www.salon.com/2013/01/22/the_brilliantly_stupid_new_plan_to_raise_the_debt_ceiling_without_raising_it/
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It got raised almost completely without objection time after time again in the past and didn't start becoming an issue until 2011 when Republicans started experimenting with the idea of not raising it and now that President Obama has been re-elected they're (surprise) making it an issue again and they appear to be planning to keep trying to use it as leverage to force through things that would never pass on their own merits. The time to talk about spending begins in Congress when dealing with appropriation bills and ends in the WH where President Obama has to decide whether or not to approve it but once it's approved we need to pay what we owe. Period.
I can't believe we're going through all of this........
at the door and get it back when you resign, retire, or lose re-election.