Even as other GOP members are already plotting how best to cave without anyone noticing. Newsmax:
Republican Sen. Jim DeMint is threatening to block a vote in Congress on raising the U.S. debt ceiling unless he wins a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, according to Fox News. The filibuster threat comes a day after news that GOP leaders had offered private assurances to the White House that they ultimately would vote to raise the $14.3 trillion ceiling, regardless of whether a deal is reached on long-term spending cuts.
“I will oppose any attempt to vote to raise the limit on our $14 trillion debt until Congress passes the balanced-budget amendment,” the South Carolina conservative said. He first made the remarks to McClatchy, which his office confirmed to Fox News.
demint,jimOther Republicans say they just want to see a serious plan for closing the deficit as a condition for support on a debt-limit increase.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla,, said on “Fox News Sunday” that he needs to have “absolute certainty” a deficit reduction plan includes “critical changes.”“Unless we do that, there’s no way I’ll support it,” Coburn said on the debt ceiling increase.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said it’s “yet to be determined” whether he would support a filibuster on the debt ceiling vote.
A balanced-budget amendment would prohibit the U.S. government from running a deficit. Such a provision would take a two-thirds vote in Congress, in addition to ratification by the states.
White House spokesman Jay Carney did not address DeMint’s threat directly during his briefing with reporters on Monday, but he did say that the “cleanliness” of the bill — in other words, that there are no policy attachments to it — is not an issue.
“The issue here is the debt ceiling has to be raised, and it cannot be held hostage to a process that is very complicated and difficult,” he said. “We hope we will reach an agreement on deficit reduction — a bipartisan agreement on deficit reduction within the time frame. We believe that’s possible.”
Yes. Adding assurances to make certain spending addicts won’t relapse is holding the process of giving ourselves permission to spend more money we don’t have (much of which, in theory, would go toward servicing the debt on previous money spent that we didn’t have) “hostage.”
Only in DC.
Happily, though, the GOP is offering private assurances to the White House that they won’t try using any kind of leverage to stop this thing. And that’s because the GOP establishment is every bit as reckless and corrupt as the Democrats it pretends to do battle with. The only difference being that they’re cowardly, too.
Well, except when they’re going after the TEA Party members who ushered them back to power.
Spit.
Yup.
I say let’s try not raising it for one day. If the market drops less than it usually does after an Obama speech, let’s let it ride for another day. And so on.
Why not have some eggshells you can sink your teeth into to walk over, instead of the black cloud of Obama’s stupidity which is clearly as volatile as the Dow anyway?
Comparing anything to the black cloud of Obama’s stupidity is an insult to whatever it is you are comparing it to.
Including other’s black clouds of stupidity…
I’d be more than happy to raise it with the BBA attached to the selfsame bill ….
Please. All a BBA would do is make a balanced budget a Constitutional requirement. When have these fuckers ever paid attention to what is or is not Constitutional?
There is no need to raise the limit. Just don’t spend the money. Cut entitlement checks by a couple of percent each quarter; grandma can get her kids to chip in fifty bucks for groceries. Close the doors at two or three cabinet-level departments; let’s start with Education, since the states are perfectly capable of fucking up education all on their own. Take away the SEC’s high-speed internet service, so they can concentrate on numbers instead of downloading porn. Hell, just audit every federal office’s server logs, fire the drones who surf all day, and fire the managers who’ve been letting the drones perfect their Texas Hold’Em skills on the job all this time.
Look — when my dad’s income was cut in half, he didn’t go to the bank and ask for an increase in his credit limit; he cut his expenditures. He paid for the mortgage and Mom’s medicine, but the fine dining and the new cars and the trips to Mexico went away.
Why is this so hard for people to understand?
You’re being entirely too reasonable, Squid. That will simply not do.
I’m with Squid – refuse to raise the debt limit, period. Doesn’t mean we default on our debt service. Pay that first, and then everything else takes a bit of a haircut as they divvy up our now miraculously-balanced Federal Budget.
Not that such a reasonable thing would ever happen. More likely (faced with a hard debt limit) they’d just inflate the currency as needed to match the $3.7T budget. Which would presumably have the same effect as defaulting on the debt service, but hey, eggs, omelettes.
Either way, it’s gonna happen – let’s just get on with it already.
The BBA is a ‘neat’ idea that we should pass also, just on general principle, but it’s not going to help. It’ll take years to get it ratified by the states (too late to matter), and once it’s in-place they’ll either simply ignore it (like the 10th Ammendment), or pretend to comply with it through accounting tricks and wholesale redefinition of previously-understood terms, such as “is”.
Refusing to raise the debt limit at this point is politico-speak for cutting up the credit cards.
So, I’m really not seeing the problem.
Let’s just send Dave Ramsey to Treasury. Can you imagine the size of the envelopes?
True enough, Congress and the Obama administration ignore the Constitution at will. But there’s more to it than that. A BBA must be ratified by the states before it takes effect. Reviewing the history of the Equal Rights Amendment might be educational..