House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) sees the debt ceiling as an "action-forcing event" where he will insist on cuts greater than the increase, setting up a legislative fight similar to the one that paralyzed Congress last summer.
Boehner calls the statutory debt limit as the "only avenue" to solve "our structural fiscal imbalance," according to prepared remarks to be delivered at the Peter G. Peterson Fiscal Summit and released to the Washington Post. A Boehner aide told the Post that tax increases are still off the table.Read it at The Huffington Post
John Boehner: Raising Debt Limit Is An 'Action-Forcing Event'
by Luke Johnson
Mr. President, where's the platinum coin?
A variety of spending cuts and tax increases take effect shortly after the debt ceiling is expected to be reached, potentially setting up a battle worse than last summer. Geithner said in February said that he expects that the debt ceiling will be hit sometime between Sept. 30, 2012 and the end of the year. The Bush-era tax cuts also expire at the end of 2012, and $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts to defense spending and Medicare as part of the debt ceiling deal take effect in 2013.Do the numbers. Adds up to depression.
8 comments:
Yglesias is on them about this too.
I don't see Obama minting the coin. He would rather use the crisis to cut more of the safety net. You know, we need to balance the budget, so some austerity is needed. Nice cover, the republicans made me do it. Besides he hasn't got the stones to do anything else. If he did he could do it today and take the crisis off the table.
Obama is going to try to turn it, I would imagine, into a battle over tax increases on the rich - i.e. over two different philosophies of budget balancing. That will probably play well in a campaign against inconsiderate uber rich guy and vulture-capitalist Romney
Dan, somehow I doubt that. He has not shown any great desire to tax rich people. He is center right himself. He may throw something up there but it won't stick. Same thing with the coin. Why not do it now? Maybe bc he has no real intention to do it. He knows his rich supporters will not tolerate that. Be happy to be wrong about this. Maybe I could even vote for him then. As it is there is no real choice.
They all probably went long the TBTs again....
The GOP had pressidents like Abe Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt.
What a disgrace of a party it has become, if that people could come back from death they would return to their grave in pain.
Fucking shame of congress. Banana republic level. The level of corruption of the system is so deep it's beyond redemption.
I always shudder when I see 'Here we go again' posts. This time is no exception. Income inequality wasn't being talked about nearly as much last summer, so I wonder how effective the "tax increases still off the table" strategy is going to be.
Anon, that's because the GOP and Dems essentially switched places after the Civil Rights/Voting Acts of the 60s and the implementation of Nixon's 'Southern Strategy'. Always found this article telling (original NYT article written in 1970):
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/phillips-southern.pdf
"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."
Trixie -- When Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act he said that it was the end of Democratic Party dominance in the South. He knew it might take a long time, but the Demos were going to be out eventually. In the 2010 election the Republicans gained control of the legislatures in South Carolina and Alabama for the first time since the 1870's.
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