Posts tagged Debt Ceiling

Cantor Can’t

74
3 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

Can­tor Can’t

Over the past cou­ple of days, we got to see Pres­i­dent Obama’s balls. We’ll see how that pro­gresses; once upon a time, he insisted that he wouldn’t accept a deal out of Con­gress that didn’t seri­ously address the bud­get issues. That appears to no longer be the case, as he announced yes­ter­day that he would sign a three-​​month deal pro­posed by the House.

The House votes today on House Res­o­lu­tion 325, a debt ceil­ing increase that is expected to last until May. It’s nice to see that Con­gress isn’t wait­ing until some bills are past their due dates, unlike last time. Some have sug­gested it’s because Repub­li­cans have dis­cov­ered that they lost far more in that pre­vi­ous bat­tle than did the Democ­rats. Cer­tainly the debt ceil­ing bat­tle didn’t pre­vent Obama from being reëlected, nor did it throw the Sen­ate to the Repub­li­can Party.

House Major­ity Leader Eric Can­tor (R-​​Richmond, VA) ini­tially pro­posed deny­ing Con­gres­sional pay unless a bud­get was passed. It is per­haps a fine idea (Cal­i­for­nia imple­mented such a pol­icy for its own leg­is­la­ture), and could per­haps have been imple­mented dur­ing the Rea­gan years. But it can’t be imple­mented today. (more…)

Fiscal Cliff Diving

12
9 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Back in May, I pre­dicted a series of likely bud­get con­fronta­tions fac­ing Con­gress late this year or early next: the expi­ra­tion of the pay­roll tax hol­i­day, the need to again raise the debt ceil­ing, expi­ra­tion of the Bush tax cuts, the seques­tra­tion of funds man­dated by the last debt ceil­ing deal, the annual Octo­ber 1 end of the fis­cal year, and pos­si­ble moves on spend­ing, Social Secu­rity, and Medicare. Last week, I gave an update deal­ing with seques­tra­tion, and another update this week on votes con­cern­ing the Bush tax cuts.

These impor­tant issues might go in unex­pected ways. Yes­ter­day, in a rel­a­tively quiet no-​​drama bipar­ti­san deal, lead­ers of both Houses and both major Par­ties reached agree­ment to keep the fed­eral gov­ern­ment run­ning until after the Novem­ber elec­tion. It’s but a six-​​month con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion, which means they’ll have to come back to the sub­ject next year, but they got it done two months early instead of wait­ing until well after the last minute.

This may point in some new direc­tions, though I doubt we’re about to see a bed of roses. Well, maybe the thorns part. (more…)

Scoring with an End Run

25
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in

Since announc­ing the Amer­i­can Jobs Act, Pres­i­dent Obama has taken a more com­bat­ive stance toward Con­gress. Through the first two and a half years of his first term, the Pres­i­dent has tried to work with Con­gress, attempt­ing to cajole them and nego­ti­ate with them, push where he could, back off when nec­es­sary, in his attempt to get the best deals he could for the Amer­i­can people.

Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion, on issue after issue, has been unyield­ing, absolute, and inflex­i­ble. Since the Repub­li­cans took over the House, this has been espe­cially appar­ent. Repub­li­cans will not allow any­thing to be enacted that is sup­ported by the White House.

Pres­i­dent Obama’s response has been to take off the gloves. No more Mis­ter Nice Guy. The era of try­ing to nego­ti­ate with a brick wall is over. Rather than try to work with peo­ple whose only objec­tive is to defeat him next year, the Pres­i­dent is act­ing on his own to help Amer­ica recover from the Great Reces­sion. His strat­egy is work­ing, and Repub­li­cans are play­ing right into his hands. (more…)

Scarborough Unfair

40
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

Are you going to Scar­bor­ough Fair
Pars­ley, sage, rose­mary, and thyme
Remem­ber me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

From Eng­land long ago comes the song “Scar­bor­ough Fair”, more recently pop­u­lar­ized by Simon and Gar­funkel. It struck me as some­what of an alle­gory to the debt ceil­ing. Allow me to explain.

(more…)

Here’s the Deal

55
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Pres­i­dent Obama made a deal.

It was a nail-​​biter up until the final vote, but on Mon­day, August 1, just hours before the Treasury-​​imposed dead­line, the House passed leg­is­la­tion allow­ing for an increase in the debt ceiling.

The House voted 269–161 to pass the bill, once called “An Orig­i­nal Bill to Make a Tech­ni­cal Amend­ment to the Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences Reform Act of 2002″ but now gut­ted and reborn as the Debt Con­trol Act of 2011. (Roll call votes at the embed­ded link.) As of this writ­ing, the Sen­ate has sched­uled a vote for noon Tues­day August 2, but pas­sage is vir­tu­ally certain.

As I watched the drama unfold, first from an unfa­mil­iar hotel room and then in an air­port wait­ing area, I found myself ask­ing two questions.

1. How did this come to pass? What were the House whips doing?

2. What’s in the deal?

So, here’s the deal. (more…)

Burning Down the House

135
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

In this House, the M.D. doesn’t stand for More Debt

Here we are, two busi­ness days away from the hard ceil­ing on the debt limit, after blow­ing through the acoustic tiles a cou­ple of months ago. And yet, there’s no passed increase in the debt ceil­ing. The House is sup­posed to be vot­ing on their bill as we post this. It’s not clear that the House alone can pass a bill on the debt, let alone the House, Sen­ate, and Pres­i­dent together.

It’s fine to make a state­ment via one’s votes, or to grand­stand in a debate. That’s the polit­i­cal side of gov­ern­ment, and it’s a nec­es­sary part of get­ting peo­ple involved in the dis­cus­sion. But, at the end of the day, government’s first job is to run the coun­try. The debate comes second.

Draw­ing on my House ref­er­ence above, it’s fine to remind an obese per­son who’s hav­ing a heart attack that they really need to diet. But per­haps the car­diopul­monary resus­ci­ta­tion is a lit­tle bit more impor­tant right now.

(more…)

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