President Obama’s proposed debt ceiling deal is a disastrous solution to an imaginary fiscal crisis, but the pain it causes will be all too real. – Hawk Nation: A Guide to the Catastrophic Debt Ceiling Debate
Nothing focuses the mind like the threat of your Social Security check not showing up.
Pres. Obama putting the squeeze on Republicans via TV is the most effective thing he’s done so far and it’s needed, because the public is clueless.
No one, not Lawrence O’Donnell or his guest Dr. Dean, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann or his guest Sam Stein successfully explained why any of this is a win for Pres. Obama, because he laid his cards on the table with entitlements but remains with nothing solved.
When asked by Maddow what advice he had for Pres. Obama, Rep. Grivalja simply said, and I paraphrase here, he has to be stronger, keep standing up for what the people want, including the programs they need.
As Rachel Maddow rightly has pointed out, using a Mitch Daniels tape to do it, raising the debt ceiling is what this country has done for decades, it’s economic housekeeping, if you will.
Rep. Eric Cantor and the Tea Party aren’t buying it.
“Nothing can get through the House right now,” Cantor said after the White House meeting. “Nothing.” – Debt limit mood darkens as GOP muddles own message
Pres. Obama just might be forced to take Sen. McConnell’s cynical proposal seriously, no matter how onerous and convoluted voting repeatedly to raise the debt ceiling is, because Republicans seem to have checked out.
And, a Senate GOP aide said, if the McConnell plan did pass, Obama would have to go to Congress three times before the 2012 election and request an increase in the debt ceiling each time. Then, his request would be rejected by a bipartisan majority in Congress and he would then have to issue a veto in order to raise the debt ceiling. He would have to work to sustain that veto against an override using Democratic votes.
If that sounds complicated, it’s because it is. The process laid out by McConnell would begin with the president requesting a $700 billion increase in the debt limit. As soon as Congress received the request, $100 billion of that $700 billion would be released to give Washington some breathing room to let them get past Aug. 2.
But then, McConnell’s proposal would proceed to introduce a resolution of disapproval, rather than approval, putting Congress in the position of taking a popular vote — against raising the debt ceiling. If Congress approved the resolution of disapproval, Obama would then have to take another step toward owning the debt increase by vetoing the resolution. The resolution would then go back to Congress, where the White House would have to lobby Democratic lawmakers against voting to override the veto. A two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate is required to override a veto, and so yet another vote on the debt ceiling would be taken, and as many as 66 of 100 senators and 289 of 435 members of the House could vote against raising the debt ceiling, without actually preventing an increase in the debt limit.
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