The Kabuki debt-limit dance

A Senate Insider Reveals 3 Doomsday Scenarios That Could Blow Up Debt Limit

Excerpt:

“What usually happens with the debt limit,” says Manley, “is that Republicans go through a Kabuki process of having show votes before they do the right thing. They pass a bill [raising the limit] with all sorts of conditions attached, those get stripped by the Senate, everyone freaks out. Then at the last minute they pass a clean bill.” The reason Goldman Sachs and other observers are so mellow about the deadline this time is that hardline conservatives who threaten default lack a key point of leverage: They can’t oust House Speaker John Boehner because he’s already said he’ll resign next week. Boehner has said he wants to “clean up the barn” before leaving, which has been interpreted to mean he’ll put a “clean” debt limit bill on the House floor and pass it with mainly Democratic votes, as he has in the past.

Comment: Kabuki

The Kabuki process .... involves what is essentially a game of hot potato: To appease conservatives, the House passes a bill on a party-line vote with provisions attached that no Democrat can support; the Senate strips those provisions and passes a clean bill, which it sends back to the House; as midnight approaches, Boehner puts the clean bill on the floor and it squeaks through. But this back-and-forth takes time, owing to procedural rules and the glacial pace at which Congress operates

Eliminate the debt ceiling?

Geithner: Eliminate the debt ceiling
Excerpt:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says he believes the U.S. debt ceiling should be eliminated in a new interview with Bloomberg's Al Hunt.

"Do you agree with Alan Greenspan that we ought to just eliminate the debt ceiling?" Hunt asks Geitner.

"Oh, absolutely," he replies.

Comment: Image source. The American Thinker continues: "Don't you think it's a good idea that the executive branch should be forced to ask permission before they spend our children's money?". Without the debt ceiling there would be no conversations and debate about the national debt!

Obama's leadership on Debt Crisis: "a cool, chill character, a fish who sits deep in the tank and stares, stilly, at the other fish"

Obama and the Debt Crisis - To lead us out of it, he will need to learn some new political skills.

Excerpt:

Barack Obama is different, not a political practitioner, really, but something else, and not a warm-blooded animal but a cool, chill character, a fish who sits deep in the tank and stares, stilly, at the other fish.

He doesn't know how to confuse his foes with "outreach," with phone calls, jokes, affection. He doesn't leave them saying, as Reagan did, "I just can't help it, I like the guy." And because he can't confuse them or reach them they more readily coalesce around their own explanation of him: socialist, destroyer.

This isn't good, and has had an impact on the president's contacts with Republicans. And it's added an edge to an emerging campaign theme among them. Two years ago I wrote of Clare Booth Luce's observation that all presidents have a sentence: "He fought to hold the union together and end slavery." "He brought America through economic collapse and a world war." You didn't have to be told it was Lincoln, or FDR. I said that Mr. Obama didn't understand his sentence. But Republicans now think they know it.

Four words: He made it worse.

Obama inherited financial collapse, deficits and debt. He inherited a broken political culture. These things weren't his fault. But through his decisions, he made them all worse.

Comment: The always astute Peggy Noonan!

Raise the Debt Ceiling?

What happens if Congress blows the debt ceiling?

Excerpt:

It's a ridiculous position to put any treasury secretary in because the debt ceiling is not a cause of rising debt or a "license to spend more" -- as some incorrectly allege. It simply authorizes Treasury to pay the bills Congress chose to incur when it passed years worth of spending increases and tax cuts that are now law.

Comment: The problem is Congress .. (and the weak leadership (oxymoron!) of the President)