by Patrick Appel
David Frum now believes that the debt ceiling is constitutional. But Felix Salmon says "it’s far from clear that it’s even possible to stop making the 3 million payments that Treasury makes automatically every day." He looks ahead:
The really depressing thing is that even if a deal does get done this month, the [contingency] planning won’t have been in vain. Now that the Republicans can see how much leverage the debt ceiling gives them, they’re going to pull this stunt every time it gets near.
The best-case scenario, with a big $2 trillion increase, would mean that we’re going to go through the exact same thing late in 2012; a more modest increase in the debt limit would set up a reprise of the current fiasco much sooner.
And that’s the invidious thing about low-probability events. Repeat the experiment often enough, and eventually they’ll happen. We’ll get a deal done this time. But one day, we won’t. And that day is not going to be a happy one.
Ezra Klein is skeptical of the latest reports about a grander grand bargin. But Kevin Drum is tenatively onboard.
The Dish 