Official 2013 Budget/Debt Limit/Obamacare Crisis Thread

Nothing says leadership like taking your ball and going home. Well done Boehner.

 

on Obama -- I'm struggling to think of anything. Plenty that I disagree with, however. Reagan? it's been a while but overall he was great

 

li'l t is nervous alright. He's starting to realize that a global financial meltdown is a real possibility and there's no safe harbor. And even worse, it's his party's fault and the public is fully aware of this. If I wasn't poised to lose a **** ton of money and the prospect of widespread misery wasn't so imminent, watching li'l t squirm would be highly entertaining.

 

No it won't. Everything these ridiculous tardheads say is just posturing developed by their Frank Luntz school of soundbites. Maybe Colbert will have him on and expose him as a fool again.

What would be interesting is if Mr. Obama decides to just ignore the debt limit and then they try to reverse their position and impeach him for not letting the nation default.

But they wouldn't hesitate to flipflop; just like the soundbite from the weekend when they said they all wanted nothing to do with Mr. Obama's shutdown.

 

Ted Cruz Could Force a Debt Default All by Himself

Here’s a cheerful thought as Congress remains deadlocked over the debt ceiling and the hours tick away toward default: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who basically forced the shutdown and whose own private polls have convinced him that it has been a glorious success, at this point could probably force a default and global economic calamity on his own—if he were so inclined. The Treasury Department says U.S. borrowing authority will expire on Thursday.

How could this happen? Because the Senate can move quickly when necessary, but only by unanimous consent. Let’s say Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) strike a deal today (that’s looking unlikely). Cruz surely won’t like it and has said repeatedly, “I will do everything necessary and anything possible to defund Obamacare.” If he’s true to his word, he could drag out the proceedings past Thursday and possibly well beyond. “If a determined band of nut jobs wants to take down the global economy, they could do it,” says Jim Manley, a former top staffer for Reid. “Under Senate rules, we are past the point of no return—there’s not anything Reid or McConnell could do about it.”

If Cruz is truly determined to block or delay any deal that does not touch Obamacare, here’s how he’d do it: The hypothetical Reid/McConnell bill would probably be introduced as an amendment to the “clean” debt-ceiling raise that Democrats introduced—and Republicans defeated—last week. Reid voted against cloture on the motion to proceed to that bill, a procedural tactic that allows him to reconsider the bill later on. Let’s say he does so by 5 p.m. Monday. There would need to be a cloture vote on the motion to proceed. Cruz would dissent, but he wouldn’t be able to round up 41 votes for a filibuster.
VIDEO: The Five Scenarios of a Debt Ceiling Breach

That wouldn’t be his only weapon, however. The real killer is that Senate rules stipulate there must be 30 hours of post-cloture debate, unless senators agree unanimously to waive it. Reid and McConnell would want unanimous consent to move quickly, but Cruz could refuse, thereby forcing 30 hours of debate. This would drag things out until Tuesday at 11:30 p.m. Then there would be a vote on the motion to proceed (requiring a simple majority), followed by an intervening day, assuming Cruz withheld his consent to vote earlier. So now we’re looking at a Thursday cloture vote on the bill itself, followed by another 30 hours of post-cloture debate that would blow right past the Treasury deadline. Finally, sometime on Friday, there would be a vote on the bill and on the amendment to swap in Reid/McConnell.

Only then could the bill proceed to the House—which hardly owns a sterling track record of speeding through controversial bills as the global economy teeters on the precipice. One bright spot is that the House can move much faster than the Senate, in spite of its caucus of debt-ceiling deniers. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) could waive all points of order and take the bill straight to the floor within hours, as he has done often on shutdown-related bills.

But by this time, it might be too late. “Bottom line,” says Manley, “the Senate runs by consent.” And if Cruz decides to withhold that consent, then all bets are off.


http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-14/ted-cruz-could-force-a-debt-default-all-by-himself


This is madness. What is Ted Cruz trying to do? Single handily crash the markets?

 

This is just stunning.

Christ. These morons shouldn't be able to play with crayons by themselves, much less sit in Congress.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>BREAKING: Fitch puts United States `AAA' credit rating under review for a downgrade.</p>&mdash; The Associated Press (@AP) <a href="https://twitter.com/AP/statuses/390218395402379264">October 15, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

LOL, I can't think of anything more irrelevant than the weakest link of the sad sack ratings industry chiming on this at this point at this time.

 

To be fair, it actually does matter. US Treasuries are still rated AAA as long as 2 of the 3 agencies have them there. So S&P's downgrade was essentially irrelevant in terms of the official rating. However, a second one would change the official rating of treasury securities. Now, we can argue that the rating itself doesn't matter, and that might we true. But my understanding is that a change to the official rating would affect how various funds (pension, etc) classify them and how many they can carry.

 

Brought to you by the party of personal responsibility.

 

We tend to agree ideologically, from what I can tell, Sam. I posted it more to illustrate how stupid it is that we're here in the first place.

 

House plan would force legislators and White House onto Obamacare without subsidies:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...bt-ceiling-government-funding-in-response-to/

Honestly, if that's the lynchpin that let the House save face, Senate should do it. I think it's a really stupid amendment that amounts to a paycut for all the employees of the Congress and the White House, but that's a small price to pay. Maybe some will quit to go work for a rational organization. Maybe they'll just start offering higher salaries in the future to offset the difference. It's their own employees after all, their own staffers they have to tell 'yeah, we cut your benefits because we were trying to make Obama look bad and they called our bluff.'

The big problem I see is that both the Senate and House proposals only buy a couple of months before we're right back in it. It's not like it's going to go better next time.

Commenter on NPR this morning was saying Democrats can't give up anything, even a token thing, because it'll set a precedent of holding the government hostage that future Congresses will employ. I don't believe that. The precedent is already set. Even if Republicans get nothing this time, next time some minority party is going to say the 2013 Republicans merely didn't hold out long enough, and they'll try again. So long as the debt ceiling exists at all, it will be a threat to our country.

Half of me wants Congress to do nothing, Obama to ignore the debt ceiling and spend anyway, and then lets have a fight as to who has the power to do what. Whatever happens to Obama in the aftermath, I can't imagine the debt ceiling emerges on the other side. I don't see any other way to be rid of it, short of Democrats retaking the House.

 

That isn't the crux of it. The crux of it is a provision that limits the ability of the treasury to use measures to increase the amount of time it has before hitting the debt limit. That to me is just stupid. Why they're including that in the bill is beyond me.

 

Obama needs to exert leadership here. And that will require swallowing his pride on Obamacare.

 

**** that.....Hold firm. Let the Republicans slit their own throat.

 

As the leader of a country, it's your job to lead. Not to play games of us vs. them and cling to what you consider your only accomplishment (Obamacare).

Need to let the pride go and employ some common sense here...

 

House vote may not be happening tonight after all. Per Jake Sherman Twitter, the House Rules Committee hearing has been postponed (https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/390231170409312257); per Robert Costa Twitter House member e-mails indicate no vote likely as a result (https://twitter.com/robertcostaNRO).

They don't have the votes for their own plan so are likely to kill it.

 

the problem is this wouldn’t be the end of this game... we will be back at it again in a few months... if lang is added to guarantee that default can never be leveraged again to make policy changes then fine... if not, then perhaps the nation should suffer a default to end this game

 

Yep, it's just a set up to come right back and allow Republicans to do this again. You can't let someone hold you hostage every 3 months to cause a world economic implosion just to get their way on something they don't have the votes to get done on their own.