Andrew Malcolm, IBD:
A new study released on Friday now suggests that slimmer federal tax receipts than anticipated from the sluggish Obama economy along with continued abundant spending by the Obama administration will likely move the date of the next debt deadline considerably forward so that it comes during this fall’s presidential election, with political debate beginning even earlier.
The Bipartisan Policy Center previously predicted the newly-enlarged borrowing limit would not be reached until well into the first quarter of 2013. But no more.
A new examination by the center, as reported in The Hill, now suggests the limit could be reached months sooner, possibly during the election month of November. That means the fall presidential and congressional campaigns would most likely contain highly-charged debt-spending debates in addition to other contentious issues.
Obama and his strategists have sought with some success to steer the early campaign discussion toward social issues such as birth control, abortion and education, where they feel Republicans are at a disadvantage, and away from the economy’s stubborn sluggishness, which is Obama’s major vulnerability.
The recently enacted payroll tax cut extension, unemployment insurance extension and Medicare fixes, all unfunded in the legislation, will cause further borrowing in excess of $100 billion, bringing the limit even closer.
Much of the timing depends on the federal government’s tax harvest come April 15 and beyond, including business taxes. They could be severely affected if, as expected, this year’s prematurely rising gasoline prices slow consumer and business spending, as well as confidence.
Once again, Obama could be expected to dodge the spending vs cutting argument in favor of how important it is to avoid default on the country’s debts and protect the nation’s credit rating, already reduced by credit agencies for the first time ever during his Democratic administration.
— a reduction brought about precisely by a raising of the debt ceiling without real spending cuts in return, a scenario predicted by “ideological purists” and “naive” “extremists” on the right that Obama and the Democrats then tried to spin — with some success — as a result of Republican obstructionism, which the GOP leadership, its enablers, and many Democrats in turn suggested was the result of dangerous political brinksmanship on the part of a handful of Hobbity holdouts who refused, for a bit, to “get their asses in line” and vote for the very measures that eventually led to the credit downgrade.
— Which is why in preparation for a potential political battle over yet another debt ceiling increase, the GOP-led House, under the steady hand of John Boehner, along with John McCain and the editorial boards of the WSJ, NRO, The Weekly Standard, et al., would like to pre-emptively surrender — but not before issuing a statement blaming everything that happens, no matter what that is going forward (another credit reduction, media attacks on GOP recalcitrance, the loss of the 2012 elections), on conservatives, the conservative movement, TEA Party assholes who just won’t let DC get back to its comfort zone, where “elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do.”
Me, I’d like to pre-emptively go on record once again with the argument that those who are trying to prevent the government’s massive deficit spending and debt by refusing to allow it to keep voting itself increases in its credit limit without real corresponding cuts in spending to balance the new spending limit, are not the reason credit agencies will decide to lower the country’s credit rating. And that, in fact, to even suggest such a thing — and have it disseminated as a kind of consensus truth — is a perversion of logic and common sense so profound that one is practically dazzled by the audacity (or, alternately, stupidity) of those proposing that we accept such a willful lie as an economic and political truth.
Just so there are no misunderstandings, I mean.
When they can’t even adequately estimate what they need to borrow, it almost makes me long for the days of Michael Dukakis saying his election was about competence.
I tend to think that when the President of the United States is saying we’re going to default, that’s the sort of thing that gives the ratings agencies the willies.
I’d like to think that the squishes at the top are terrified about a summer debt showdown, if only because their power over their caucuses will be sorely tested by the electorate’s demands for sanity. As a congresscritter, it would be hard to give a shit about Boehner’s latest promise/threat when your ‘career’ depends on not pissing off the Tea Party before the fall election.
I was thinking in my head, as I’m reading, this is the same GOP leadership that would have us nominate John Kerry, because of the electability. Then I realized, I meant Mitt Romney, not John Kerry. And then I realized, the difference is… what, exactly?
I still have nightmares about scandals forcing Obama and Santorum to bow out this summer, leaving Hillary and Mittenz on the November ballot. I would honestly be hard-pressed to choose between them. In the end, it’s still Mike Rowe for President, with the VP slot filled by an American Idol-style prime-time contest winner.
I’d like to think that Boehner, et al., actually thought this through and planned it when they folded on the latest round of payroll tax-cut extensions.
This may be giving them too much credit.
Dick Morris is now on record saying there’s no way, no how that Obama gets re-elected.
Dick is wrong a lot, but, stopped clocks?
Morris also predicted that the Rs would take some 900 seats in the House in 2010. Off by a little, but if he’s right on the underlying case, I don’t care about the over/under.
Morris predicted 60 to 80 House seat gain in 2010 and said it could go as high as 100. Actual gain was 63 seats in the House.
“Dick Morris is now on record saying there’s no way, no how that Obama gets re-elected.”
If he is still singing the same tune come November I might find it encouraging.
The dollar is worth-less
People looking to be productive members of society are at a all time low proportion
The housing market is currently driven by investors pulling money out of the stock market and into real estate sold at foreclosures
And cats and dogs living together
Yes, it has come to this.
I got a chuckle out of that bit of feigned naïvety. Almost as good as the way the media, because they fell for it every time, used to marvel at what a good a liar Bill Clinton was.