House Republicans are seriously entertaining dramatic steps, including default or shutting down the government, to force President Barack Obama to finally cut spending by the end of March.
The idea of allowing the country to default by refusing to increase the debt limit is getting more widespread and serious traction among House Republicans than people realize, though GOP leaders think shutting down the government is the much more likely outcome of the spending fights this winter.“I think it is possible that we would shut down the government to make sure President Obama understands that we’re serious,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state told us. “We always talk about whether or not we’re going to kick the can down the road. I think the mood is that we’ve come to the end of the road.”
What’s the holdup here? If Politico is to be believed, Republican stupidity and ignorance (emphasis mine):
Republican leadership officials, in a series of private meetings and conversations this past week, warned that the White House, much less the broader public, doesn’t understand how hard it will be to talk restive conservatives off the fiscal ledge. To the vast majority of House Republicans, it is far riskier long term to pile up new debt than it is to test the market and economic reaction of default or closing down the government.
Here’s the thing though, the debt limit doesn’t create new debt. That debt has already been created by congress. What raising the debt ceiling does is allow the nation to borrow the money necessary to make payments on that debt. Unless Congress is prepared to pay off the national debt in one big lump somehow — something absolutely no one is talking about doing — then failing to raise the debt ceiling means default. Not a shutdown. A default — a fiscal and economic crisis on a global scale.
And is the debt Obama’s fault? Not really. It’s been piling up since the last time we had a surplus — i.e., under Clinton. Seems to me there was another guy in between the two who threw money around like it was going out of style — and there where a bunch of congressional Republicans joining in on the fun.
Of course, Politico might just be looking at bluster and bravado and reporting it as if it were serious. They tend to do things like that. But if this is even close to accurate, there are a lot of amazingly ignorant GOPers in DC — which is a distressingly believable state of affairs.
