You know, it’s a thing that seems to be unique to American politics. Almost every democracy on the planet worth the name runs on deficit spending. And that’s for the simple reason that no government can provide the kind of services it promises to without tax rates that are prohibitive.
But only in the United States do we have a situation in which the legislature doesn’t automatically rubberstamp an increase to the debt ceiling to keep the government chugging along. And it’s only one of the two American parties that keeps having temper tantrums. Every time there’s a Republican in the White House, The Democrats universally stand up to extend the debt limit, because it’s a constitutional requirement that we do so.
But starting with Obama, every time there has been a Democrat in the White House, the Republican party has made all kinds of moo-moo noises that they will tank the global economy if the Democrats don’t give them their entire Christmas wish list in return. And they’re blunt about it. They openly call it Taking the debt ceiling hostage.
The stupid sh*ts. It’s a long established historical tradition that hostage taking never works out well for the hostage takers. Nobody likes a bully, nor do they have any desire to cave in to one. Forget the debt ceiling for a minute. How many times have the GOP held the US government budget hostage for concessions? And every single time they shut the government down, they paid the sole political price for it in the polls.
Bur here’s the simple, down and dirty reason that Squeaker Cavein McCarthy can’t win his debt ceiling pissing contest with Joe Biden. Because like every other terrorist hostage taker, McCarthy is dealing from a position of weakness. And not just because the natural inclination is to never give in to terrorists with hostages, but also because McCarthy can never get the vote he needs, no matter what deal he cuts.
Plain and simple. McCarthy can’t summon up 218 votes to pass a debt ceiling increase because he only has four votes to spare, and in order to become Speaker, he sold his soul to three contentious cliques in the GOP who will never agree on anything. McCarthy is going to have to depend on Democratic votes in order to get any agreement through the House. Which means two things. One, it means that Biden has the leverage, not McCarthy. And two, whatever he does, it’s going to piss the GOP caucus off.
Because McCarthy already knows what every hostage taking terrorist has already knows. You. Can’t. shoot the. Hostage. Because if you do, your leverage is gone! If McCarthy hangs a tough, mega social net cuts in order to keep the Freedom caucus in line, he loses the 25 moderate GOP caucus members, and no Democrats will vote to bail him out. If McCarthy lowers his demands, and comes up with a package that will keep the moderates in liner, and attract enough Democratic votes to pass, then he enrages the bomb throwers in the Freedom caucus.
Kevin McCarthy is in so far over his head at this point that he can’t even see the surface of the pond anymore. A man of room temperature IQ, he rode into congress in the Tea Party rebellion of 2010. But as a soulless, craven opportunist, he quickly realized that the Tea Party would never be a major power player, and aligned himself with House Speaker John Boehner and the moderates instead. But McCarthy has no management or leadership skills, and worse yet, he has no personal or political charisma that would allow him to rise to the moment. He’s a weak, empty vessel.
If I’m Kevin McCarthy right now, every time I walk through to portal door and into the well of the House, I hear a jail cell door clanging shut behind me, and hear guards yelling Dead man walking! Because Kevin McCarthy plain, pure, and simple doesn’t have the balls to drive the global economy over the cliff for purely ideological reasons. Unlike Ron DeSantis. McCarthy will cut a modest deal, McConnell will sign off on it and let him twist in the wind, and when it’s all over, McCarthy will have written the epitaph on his political career. This is what happens when a $500 video poker winner sits down at the table at The World Series Of Poker. He goes home on a Greyhound bus.
hmm. wish I shared your optimism murph.
I’ve got no choi ce Matt…I’m sick to fucking death of crying!!!
Kevin reminds me of the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when they arrived in Bolivia. Sundance was piss*d when it was basically a pigpen. In their argument, Sundance pushed back on Butch about his arrogance. He quipped, using the phrase, “the sheer tonnage of what you don’t know”. Kevin’s ignorance is measured in tonnage. By the way trump ran the deficit up more than any Democrat. You can’t give away a trillion dollars in tax cuts to the 1% and expect a balanced ledger.
The bit about trump and the deficit lines up with the fact that no one tells the repubs what to do-they tell the rest of us what to do.
The ‘pubes do not want a balanced ledger. If the ledger was balanced or even close to being balanced they would not be able to make the lives of the 90% of our nation completely and utterly miserable. They don’t care if a large portion of that 90% is their base because their base eats the shit given to them as if it is a rib-eye instead of the turd it is in reality. Having power, and the ‘pubes crave that more than anything, allows them to do this petty bullshit.
While I was in the Reagan 600 ship Navy they changed a rule regarding hostages on board a ship. If they had hostages say in the Ward Room just throw grenades into the compartment and go in with shot guns blasting. If the hostages were killed so sad too bad.
I think McCarthy is soon to be toast. Listen to Laurence Tribe’s interview with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC a week ago:
Tribe didn’t say this, but Biden would be breaking the law under the Constitution if he allowed the country to default on its debt, paticularly as Congress has already appropriated the spending.
If this hangs on, retirees are screwed. My husband’s military pension on 6/1won’t come ine. Neither will our Social.Security. Banks and stores don’t care why you can’t pay.