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The Screaming Moderate

Will they raise the debt ceiling or won't they?

9/22/2021

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“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payments of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” – The U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. (Emphasis added)

Too often, the debate over raising the debt limit (the maximum amount the United States is allowed to borrow to pay its debts) turns into a political football when it isn’t political at all. Some argue the 14th Amendment doesn’t say what it does, but you read it and decide.

This year may be the most political it’s become in history, though, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has pronounced Republicans will not support an extension of the debt limit. The Democrats would need to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster (they only have 50) the likelihood at the moment is the debt limit will not be extended.

Not raising the debt limit is like you not paying your bills. In the U.S. Government’s case, the “bills” include things like Social Security payments, aid to folks hit hardest by the pandemic or hurricanes, the military wouldn’t be paid nor would federal employees.  Anything paid by the federal government could not be paid and we, as you would in your financial life, default.

There are those would say, “Great! Those federal employees don’t do anything anyway." But those employees, among other things, pay our bills. If, as is looking more likely than in past years, McConnell maintains control of Senate Republicans. All that is going to happen.

The debt ceiling was raised 72 times from March 1961 to May 2011, including 18 times under Ronald Reagan, eight times under Bill Clinton, seven times under George W. Bush, and five times under Barack Obama.

You really have no choice but to raise it. The ceiling is raised so the U.S. can pay the money it’s already spent. It has nothing to do with future spending. It forces no control on future spending. Republican and Democratic presidents have contributed to the debt and the Congress has approved every dollar spent that led to us owing trillions of dollars.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who also has served as head of the Federal Reserve, wrote in a Wall Street Journal piece last weekend: “Default could trigger a spike in interest rates, a steep drop in stock market prices and other financial turmoil. Our current economic recovery would reverse into recession, with billions of dollars of growth and millions of jobs lost.”

Just the threat of default in the past has had its negative effects.
In 2011, during the Obama Administration, the U.S. credit rating was downgraded from AA+ to AAA because the debt limit was threatened. That was the first time in history Standard & Poor’s downgraded our credit rating. Standard & Poor’s wrote: the “effectiveness, stability and predictability” of American policy-making and political institutions had weakened.

Imagine what would happen today with our political climate what it is, with how other countries are questioning if our democracy will survive. Imagine what Standard & Poor’s might say today.

This is not good. This is not Republican or Democrat, but McConnel is making it so. He wants the Democrats to take the blame if/when the debt limit fails to be increased. It’s politics. It’s about affecting next year’s mid-term election when he hopes to become Majority Leader again. Will he cave? Well, he did flip the "rules" when he stopped an Obama Supreme Court nominee from hearings claiming it was too close to an election, and that's never been done (it has). Then, when President Trump nominate a justice even closer to an election, McConnell's "rule" disappeared.

The federal government will have spent all its cash sometime in the next number of weeks.

Typically there is political brinkmanship played when it comes to raising the debt limit. McConnell’s threat, though, likely cannot be pulled back. He’d look foolish, and he knows it. Though, stranger things have happened.

What will happen? One hopes that somehow the brinkmanship will end. That’s what President Biden thinks anyway.

Biden, though, hasn’t served in the U.S. Senate for years. He’s never been up against the type of “social media driving, base appealing” Republicans that live in the Senate these days.

So what will happen? We’ll see.


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I know. I promised myself. But..

9/8/2021

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My promise to myself was to stop blogging about former President Donald J. Trump because he is the, well, former president and really doesn’t matter anymore. But even after a significant (some would say landslide) loss last year, and the loss of his Twitter account, he’s not the type to fade quietly into the woodwork

His elected people can’t let him fade because, well, they are trying to grab Trump’s still strong base of supporters. Who?
  • Cong. Matt Gaetz, for one, who is being investigated for obstruction of justice and paying for sex with a minor, who just said Trump will run again at the next election and who went on a country-wide tour with another Trumpie, Cong. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was stripped of her committee assignments for being nutso crazy. They went on that tour, that hasn’t been nationwide yet to build support with Trump voters.
  • Texas Gov. Greg Abbott whose spur-of-the-moment response made national news when a reporter asked why the new Texas rape law eliminates rape and incest as legal exceptions for abortion. First, Abbott said it doesn’t eliminate them because, well, a woman does still have six weeks to decide to have a legal abortion (even though for at least four of those six weeks even the woman doesn’t necessarily know she’s pregnant). Then to boost his argument he said that he will eliminate rapists with strong law and order-- in spite of the fact that there are more than 6,000 rape tests in Texas yet to be analyzed. Justice delayed..
  • Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who’s latest way of not ticking off the former president is to say that reports he is running for president in 2024 are  “purely manufactured” and “nonsense” even though the world knows he’s running for president in 2024 but trying to not tick off the former president.
Meanwhile, the former president intends to spend the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack by providing color on the Evander Holyfrield vs Vitor Belfot boxing match that night, apparently wanting to reinforce that he still lacks empathy.

Is he running? No one really knows. He’s not one prone to keeping a secret though so I’m guessing he hasn’t yet made his mind up. But he does want to freeze the race as long as he can to stop anyone else from running officially.

My guess: He won’t run. He’s already lost one race and is batting .500 running for president and holds a unique place in history for being the only president to be impeached twice. Does he want to put his record in jeopardy?

Meantime, he is proudly watching as Republican state after Republican state passes legislation that will restrict certain non-Republican voting blocs from voting, which would make his winning a future race a bit more likely. This in response to Trump’s lie that he actually won the last election but Democratic voter fraud stole it from him. Fact Check: well, you know.

For example, look at Texas in 2020. It’s like, you just can’t make this stuff up. Republican legislators in Texas passed and the governor signed what likely is the most restrictive voting law in the country. Why? They claim there was massive fraud in voting in 2020.

In fact, the Democrats inventing votes led to this result in Texas in 2020:
  • a 52-47 percent popular vote victory for Trump;
  • Republican incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn won reelection;
  • Republicans kept their majorities in the state house and state senate.

Damn Democrats and their voter fraud!!! Imagine if there had been no fraud!!! Oh.

If Donald Trump becomes president again, though, you need to think what that will look like. He of course will be emboldened to run his second administration even more self-interestedly than his first.

Who will be in the Cabinet this time? Typically, Congress is one place presidents have pulled people to join their Cabinets. There, of course, is a certain percent of those members he wouldn’t pick because he perceives them as enemies. And, Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state, called his boss a “moron” which I’m guessing is not the greatest recommendation for other, competent business leaders to accept a cabinet post.
 
Honestly, I doubt even Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared, would sign up for another four years.
​
I could go on, but I promised myself.
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    B. Jay Cooper

    B. Jay is a former deputy White House press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He also headed the communications offices at the Republican National Committee, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Yale University. He is a former reporter and is the retired deputy managing director of APCO Worldwide's Washington, D.C., office.
    He is the father of three daughters and grandfather of five boys and one girl. He lives in Marion, Mass.

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