An Economic 9/11 on 8/2?
Tea Party terrorists elected last fall promised to change Washington, and they have—-turning it from a flawed vehicle that moves the nation’s business along, however bumpily, to a cockpit of fighting over a fabricated issue that is steering a shaky economy toward a smashup.
The sorry spectacle has roused the largest American corporations to sound alarms and rating agencies to issue warnings about plummeting credit ratings for U.S. debt
But GOP leaders, sitting up front, refuse to look ahead or even buckle their seat belts. John Boehner tells Fox News that “no one really knows what would happen” after August 2nd if no deal is reached but admits that a failure to do so could “spook the market, and you could have a real catastrophe.”
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is staring at the emergency exits and talking in tongues about a plan to let the President retake the controls for a time, while Republicans stand over him with box cutters.
9 Responses to “An Economic 9/11 on 8/2?”
Considering my complete and utter disdain for most of the House, I find it odd that I have more faith in Boehner than I do McConnell.
Maybe I just really really really dislike McConnell.
Congress will find a solution and it appears the one that McConnell has proposed will end up being the short term solution.
For the long term, congress needs to do the same thaing with the debt and deficit as they did with the Military Base Closing Commission and the Independant Payment Advisory Board for Medicare.
As a reminder, the MBCC provides congress with a list of closures and congress has to vote it up or down, without admendments. If someones sacred cow is closed, they can not be held responsible as “they could not do anything about it as they were only one vote.” As for the IPAB, a commission will provide congress with a proposal for Medicare spending and they will have to disaprove the expenditures if that is their choice. For those not liking the cuts that will occur and rationing of healthcare for the elderly, their representative can not be held resposible since “they could not do anything about it, they were only one vote”.
So lets vote in a budget commission and allow them the authority to se tthe budget of the USA. Congress has to vote it up or down with no amendments. If it raises taxes or cuts spending and your representative didn’t like it and the outcome, “they could not do anything about it as they were only one vote”. That way they protect their career and do not have to stand up for any position like they do today.
It doesn’t help to make it a premise of any debate that everyone on the other side is “terrorists”. Liberals used to (rightly) get very offended when it was done towards them during the Bush administration. I guess once again a change in standards accompanied a change in partisan control of the White House.
I am honestly getting worried that Cantor’s backers will get the default they seem to want so badly, and it will hurt all of us.
Oh, I’m not worried too much, though I indeed was annoyed, by the scumbag “terrorist” slandering of the now-generic “Tea Party”; it’s basic liberal dinosaur stuff — modern times leave some “befuddled”
Zzzzz: I suspect the Republican party leadership will prevent that Phyrric default. All it would take is more uneasiness from the business community, if nothing else.
The rest of us just to have to ask (I did this earlier), does either party want to be seen as responsible for the default?
(I realize you believe that the House GOP might not care about that.)
Let’s hope the TP gets all the negative press they’ve earned for thier part in this debacle. When I used to work in machine shops and factories we would sometimes say that a certain person knew just enough to be dangerous, and so it is with the TP freshmen.
Leon, when I first read your post-
My first impluse was to agree with you. (Of course, ignoring the minor problem with logic, saying that liberals were called terrorists during the Bush Administration and then calling it a change in standards when the same thing happens during the current administration. Continuing to do the same thing that was done before is not a change.)
But the more I thought about it the more I came to realize that the use of the word terrorist might be considered semantically correct. Here are two definitions of terrorism collected from the far flung internets.
From dictionary.com
#1 and 3 seem dead on. Certainly they are making these “threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.” They aren’t doing this to save the nation from debt. They had ample opportunity to do that when they controlled the White House and at least one half of Congress. They must be doing for political reasons, although I can’t really see what they are. And it is a “terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.” Although it is hard to decide if they are doing this as an inept attempt to govern or a malevolent way of resisting a government.
Let’s try everybody’s favorite, the first in the google line up, Wikipedia.
I am sure that forcing the nation to default on its obligations is producing fear in many different places and you can’t deny that they are doing it “for a religious, political or ideological goal” even if that goal isn’t obvious. And they certainly are disregarding the safety of non-combatants, no question.
So there is a prima facie case that you are wrong. What do you think?
And when did the Bush Administration call liberals terrorists? I don’t remember a time when liberals were trying to destroy the financial fabric of the country in an attempt to correct their own mistakes, like we are seeing now. I think I would have remembered.
Neither #1 nor #3 apply at all. (#2, too, obviously.)
The Tea Party aren’t terrorists, and they are only arguably extortionists. They’re not the only people at fault, either, with seeking a broad fiscal agreement in order to get approval to raise the debt ceiling.