GOP caving on debt limit hostage demands — before they’ve even officially made them

Bloomberg News: House Republican leaders are giving up efforts to couple a U.S. debt-limit increase with provisions backing the Keystone XL pipeline or repealing an insurance-risk provision in Obamacare, two party leadership aides said.

House leaders lack enough Republican support for either option, and they are looking at other possible conditions to attach to an increase in the debt limit, said the aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.

One option being discussed by some Republicans is raising the debt ceiling without conditions, relying mostly on Democratic votes.

That sound you hear is thousands of wingnuts and ‘baggers shouting, “RiNO!” in unison. It’s an election year and Republicans have a choice: they can appeal to the average voter who doesn’t like continual hostage-taking and forced crises or they can pander to the always-angry base and bring government to a grinding halt — again — to pick a fight they can’t possibly hope to win.

And so House GOP throws the ‘baggers under the bus.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

No, Obama isn’t ‘caving’ on the debt limit

Politico is reporting “cracks” opening in the White House position on the debt limit, but this is more a case of Politico being a sensationalist rag that “drives the conversation" in Washington than anything. Politico is OK for facts, but it’s fishwrap when it comes to insight. When it comes to political analysis, Politico’s main goal is to get people talking about Politico — this sort of self-serving crap journalism is how they brag themselves up to advertisers. They don’t even try to hide it. Don’t fall for it.

What the White House is saying they’re open to is a short term increase in the debt limit — with no strings attached. Obama and Democrats would give up nothing in exchange for allowing Republicans a bit more time to step back from the ledge. It’s not a cave, it’s a carrot and a stick. If there’s one thing Boehner prays for before he goes to bed every nght, it’s some way out. If he needs more time to find it and it’s no skin off the President’s nose, then why not give it to him?

The worst that could happen here is that Republicans come out of this period as determined as ever to take the nation’s economic well-being hostage and we’re right back where we were. No gain, no loss. But this period would also be a period of time where polling data had a chance to really sink in and for the GOP to see beyond their own districts. To stare into the abyss of their own electoral demise as a party and face the very real possibility of one party rule for at least the next four years. If dems win the House this time around, they’ll hold it easily if a Democrat wins the White House — and a Democrat is going to win the White House.

It’s not a “give them enough rope” strategy, because there isn’t enough slack to hand them more rope. This is an issue of grave importance without a lot of wiggle room. It’s more like tying a noose around their necks and making them live with it for a while. Maybe if they see that noose every time they look in the mirror, they’ll finally realize that they aren’t as immune to consequence as they might like to think.

This move is designed to shake Republican resolve. Don’t let Politico’s shit reporting shake yours.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

Poll: GOP approvals in a nosedive

Greg Sargent: A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that disapproval of the GOP’s handling of the budget has jumped to 70 percent. Meanwhile, approval of Obama’s handling of it has ticked modestly upwards.

Only 24 percent of Americans approve of the GOP’s handling of the budget, after a week of battling over the shutdown. Only 23 percent of independents approve, versus 73 percent who disapprove. Among moderates, those numbers are 22-73. That’s nearly three fourths of independents and moderates disapproving. (While independents disapprove of Obama’s handling of it, the numbers are far less lopsided; moderates overall approve of his handling.)

But what’s even more striking is the degree to which even Republicans are divided over the GOP’s handling of all of this, with approval being largely concentrated among conservative Republicans.

Meanwhile, wingnut pundit Erick Erickson, who resides in a private island somewhere far off the shores of reality, tells the faithful at RedState.com, “Republicans are winning the shutdown fight, and Democrats know it.”

Yeah, if they were winning by any more it might actually kill them.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

The GOP’s slow-motion debt limit cave-in

Greg Sargent:

The news of the morning is that House Republicans, at their retreat, are seriously weighing whether to agree to a short term debt limit increase. The idea appears to be that this would defer default and let Republicans stage another battle to get the spending cuts they want in a couple of months, when the deadline for the sequester looms.

At that point, the threat of default would again loom and again enter into the discussions somehow. But make no mistake: this is a major cave. It is further indication that the GOP simply isn’t willing to allow default. It reveals yet again that this whole debt ceiling hostage taking strategy is proving a major failure: After all, if you’re not willing to default, then you’re admitting the debt ceiling doesn’t give you any leverage. So why threaten to use it to get what you want in a couple of months? How will things be any different then?

As Jonathan Chait puts it: “You have to ask yourself what the point is. If Republicans can’t threaten to shoot the hostage, what do they gain by holding new debt ceiling votes every few months? It’s either leverage or it isn’t.” The willingness to adopt a short term increase confirms that it isn’t.

Sen. John Cornyn also could not resist tipping his hand, saying, “We will raise the debt ceiling. We’re not going to default on our debt… I will tell you unequivocally, we’re not going to default.”

The reason for the kick-the-can-down-the-road three month extension is that Republicans can’t think of anything else to do. At the moment, their approvals are tanking. Among dems and indies, they’re pretty much bottomed out. But they’re crashing among Republican voters, which is what’s bringing them down further. GOPers aren’t happy that the party caved on the fiscal cliff — meaning they won’t be too happy about caving on the debt limit either. The GOP is in one of those “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” situations — there literally is no option available to them that won’t drag down their approvals.

So they want to delay the game and hope something happens that will haul them out of this hole. In short, the GOP strategy here is to cross their fingers and hope for the best. There really is nothing else they can do.

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Poll: as far as voters are concerned, the President’s already won the debt limit fight

National Memo:

According to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, President Barack Obama’s approval rating is near an all-time high, and the public is on his side in the upcoming debt ceiling debate.

The poll finds Obama’s approval rating at 55 percent, his highest level since November, 2009 (excluding a brief bump up to 56 percent after the president ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011)… 61 percent view Obama as a strong leader — his highest level in three years — and 53 percent say they’re optimistic about the policies he’ll pursue in his second term.

By contrast, voters intensely dislike Obama’s opponents in the House of Representatives. Congress has just a 19 percent approval rating; 37 percent approve of House Democrats, and 24 percent approve of House Republicans. Additionally, 67 percent believe that Republican leadership is doing too little to give ground in negotiations, compared to 48 percent who say that is true of the president.

That gap is reflected in voters’ opinions on the debt ceiling debate. Obama leads the GOP leadership in trust to handle the debt ceiling by 14 percent. Furthermore, 58 percent of Americans say the debt ceiling should be handled separately from the debate on spending cuts, compared to 36 percent who favor linking the issues. Just 22 percent favor shutting down the government or allowing the country to default on its debt if the White House and Congress can’t agree on budget cuts.

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DC Republicans clearly don’t understand the debt limit at all

Politico:

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.

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Is the White House blowing the debt limit fight?

Political Wire:

Paul Krugman gets a call from the White House after they rejected the trillion dollar coin idea to stave off default on the nation’s bonds:

“The White House insists that it is absolutely, positively not going to cave or indeed even negotiate over the debt ceiling — that it rejected the coin option as a gesture of strength, as a way to put the onus for avoiding default entirely on the GOP.”

Wall Street Journal: “The White House also has rejected another escape clause: invoking the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and borrowing more even if Congress hasn’t acted.

An unnamed Democratic Senate aide told Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal, “It’s certainly a strange negotiating strategy to go out of your way to decrease your leverage by taking options off the table.”

I’m taking “strange” to mean “bad,” because it sure looks stupid. The White House has released a statement that partly explains their reasoning:

“There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or they can fail to act and put the nation into default,” said Press Secretary Jay Carney. “When Congressional Republicans played politics with this issue last time putting us at the edge of default, it was a blow to our economic recovery, causing our nation to be downgraded. The President and the American people won’t tolerate Congressional Republicans holding the American economy hostage again simply so they can force disastrous cuts to Medicare and other programs the middle class depend on while protecting the wealthy. Congress needs to do its job.”

Yes, the last time Republicans held the debt limit hostage it blew up in their face. Maybe they’re spooked by that — but maybe they’re not. It’s pointless to gamble when you’ve got a sure thing. I have no idea why they’re throwing every bargaining chip they have away and depending on the Republicans to behave rationally.

It makes no damned sense at all.

Karl Rove tips Republicans’ debt ceiling hand

Greg Sargent:

I know you’re tired of hearing that the Republicans’ position on the debt ceiling is incoherent and that their claims of leverage are greatly exaggerated. But now we have none other than Karl Rove confirming all of this for us.

Rove’s latest column rips into Obama for supposedly mischaracterizing the GOP position on the debt limit. He quotes Obama saying: “We can’t not pay bills that we’ve already incurred.” And here’s how Rove responds to Obama:

The experience didn’t leave Mr. Obama with greater humility. Instead, this New Year’s Day he tartly said, “We can’t not pay bills that we’ve already incurred.” Who is suggesting we don’t? Not House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, or any other Republican leader. Quite the opposite. They want to cover the cost of the existing debt while cutting spending to prevent a fiscal catastrophe.

Mr. Obama’s use of straw-man arguments to misrepresent the GOP’s position became tiresome long ago. He does this in part because he can get away with it, thanks to a compliant press corps. His reliance on the tactic may also spring from his recognition that he has a weak case and cannot win the argument otherwise.

Who is suggesting we don’t pay our debts? Not Boehner, McConnell, or any other GOP leaders.

There you have it. Rove acknowledges flat out that Boehner, McConnell, and other Republican leaders do recognize that they will have to raise the debt ceiling. They just, you know, want to raise it while reaching a broader deal to cut spending. The game here is absurdly transparent: You mustn’t claim Republicans are crazy enough to destroy the economy to get their way, because they don’t want to do that at all — but you still must play along with the idea that the need to raise the debt ceiling (which they acknowledge must happen) still somehow gives them leverage to get the cuts they want.

So Republicans would never let America default, while at the same time they argue that the president better go along with their demands or they’ll shoot the hostage and let America default.

While it seems absurdly incoherent — mostly because it is — it also shows that Republicans know who’ll take the blame if the debt ceiling isn’t raised and the economy collapses. They won’t shoot the hostage, because they’re afraid of the consequences. Republicans have no leverage at all.

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