Ornstein: Staying Clear-Eyed About Republican Radicalism on the Debt Ceiling

[Nevilledog]

https://www.thebulwark.com/staying-clear-eyed-about-republican-radicalism-on-the-debt-ceiling/

*snip*

How radical is the proposal that House Republicans passed? You can read the bill for yourself here, but Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell summarized it well: Under the plan, “most overall nondefense discretionary spending would be slashed by nearly one-third on average in 2024, after adjusting for inflation. The cuts would then expand to roughly 59 percent, on average, by 2033, according to estimates from both the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center for American Progress.”

How cynical is the Republican proposal? It was not passed with any expectation that it would become law, since everyone knows that the Democratic-led Senate and the Democratic president would not allow that to happen. It is a complete nonstarter. Which means that the GOP is using the possibility of devastating cuts to programs on which millions of Americans rely—eviscerating crucial public services and safety net protections—as a kind of symbolic gesture for the purposes of negotiation.

How historically extreme is the Republican proposal? Of course, we have seen politicians take that kind of stance in the past, only to cut the necessary deals. Ronald Reagan, when governor of California, took a hardline stance over budget negotiations—only to compromise and say, “That sound you hear is the concrete cracking around my feet.” But Reagan was a more traditional politician, unlike today’s radical House Republicans like Bob Good, Ralph Norman, Matt Gaetz, Scott Perry, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and dozens more. They have already signaled that if McCarthy compromises to dilute the proposal—the proposal that, again, cannot pass but that McCarthy promised them was a bottom line, a floor not a ceiling—they will punish him.

In 2011, the United States came close to breaching the debt ceiling. Egged on by House Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy and Eric Cantor, Tea Party lawmakers pushed President Barack Obama with a series of demands, holding the debt limit hostage right to the brink, until Speaker John Boehner rescued America’s full faith and credit. But the consequences of the near miss were still severe. America’s credit rating was downgraded for the first time in history, and the resulting rise in interest rates cost taxpayers billions of dollars in the years that followed.

*snip*

[mopinko]

1. our credit ought to be in the shitter already.

our govt is badly broken.

[gratuitous]

2. Biden learned the lesson of 2011

But media outlets don't seem to have learned it. When the Biden administration characterizes the House Republican bill as ruinous for things such as veterans' benefits, the fact-checkers clamor in unison that that isn't true. After all, Republicans have said, publicly, that they don't want to cut veterans' benefits. Sure the bill doesn't specifically exempt vet benefits from cuts, but Republicans would never ever do that, and they're very insulted that people might think so. No, they won't rewrite the bill to specifically carve out any programs. What? Don't you trust them?