Boehner wants to pass a six-week debt ceiling hike but keep the government shut down. Reihan analyzes:
My sense is that the reason for a short-term increase as opposed to a long-term increase is that while a short-term increase has at least some potential of garnering enough Republican votes to pass, a long-term increase does not. And one has to wonder why this is the case. Assume that we pass a short-term debt limit increase and that the Obama administration and Senate Democrats still refuse to offer Obamacare concessions to reopen the government. Do we have any reason to believe that the president and his allies will bear the brunt of the blame? If House Republicans remain united in resisting a clean CR for six weeks, will they be in a more favorable position the next time the federal government approaches the debt limit?
They’re in panic-mode right now, so trying to see any reason behind this is a bit of a mug’s game. My sense
is that even the total loonies have begun to realize that if they blew up the entire US economy and the world’s, it wouldn’t be the first step toward achieving Mark Levin’s utopian new constitution. It might be their last act as a viable political party.
But the underlying issue is not resolved. Sustaining a government shutdown in order to defund Obamacare is not going to work, and must not be allowed to work. Repealing or reforming laws should be done through the regular process, not by shutting down the whole government as blackmail. More to the point, as Reihan also notes, it’s killing the GOP brand:
We’re in this situation in which no matter how unpopular Republicans get, some conservatives will claim that the reason Republicans are unpopular is that they haven’t been sufficiently audacious in making demands. We’re dealing with something akin to a death spiral. Recall that while GOP unfavorables are rising among self-identified Republicans, some number of Republicans will eventually become ex-Republicans — there is some point at which a threshold is crossed. So the 27 percent of Republicans who view their own party unfavorably don’t represent 27 percent of the larger universe of center-right voters. Rather, they represent 27 percent of the residual Republicans left after earlier moments during which other Republicans defected from the party.
My italics. But, leaving the GOP’s implosion to one side, the important thing right now for the country is for the hostage-takers to take the gun away from our collective head. That’s a positive first step. The next step is for them to put the gun down altogether. They haven’t. As for delaying the debt-ceiling Armageddon, Chait notes the remaining weirdness:
The putative reason for delaying the debt limit is to open fiscal negotiations with Democrats. But Republicans have been dodging fiscal negotiations with Democrats for most of the year. Why? Because they don’t want to compromise on the budget.
They want unilateral concessions. Obama won’t give Republicans unilateral concessions. Any deal Boehner strikes with Democrats will have to contain some concessions to Democrats, which will further enrage the tea party. So there’s no deal Boehner can cut on the budget that won’t anger the base, which brings us back to the same stalemate — waiting until the next debt-limit hike, when he needs to prevent catastrophe again.
Kilgore weighs in:
There are a thousand things that could go wrong with Boehner’s gambit, and it obviously doesn’t solve any of the underlying problems created by GOP hostage-taking. But it could at least avoid an immediate financial and economic crisis, with the “winners” including the craziest of conservative Republicans whose appropriations-centered strategy will again be the official GOP position, and the big losers being federal employees looking at at least six more weeks of furloughs.
In this self-induced emergency, lifting the threat of default -even for a few weeks – is something. But I fear that simple non-concession concession has only been granted because the GOP is sinking in the polls like a stone. How much further do they have to sink to start behaving like legitimate actors in government? Another ten point Gallup drop in another week? This is not over.
The Dish 