(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Has Biden already blown it on the debt ceiling? The New York Times' Paul Krugman thinks maybe so [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2023-05-16
As Krugman writes:
As soon as Republicans took control of the House last November, it was obvious that they would try to take the economy hostage by refusing to raise the federal debt limit. After all, that’s what they did in 2011 — and hard as it may be to believe, the Tea Party Republicans were sober and sane compared to the MAGA crew. So it was also obvious that the Biden administration needed a strategy to head off the looming crisis.
But thus far, as Krugman observes, there appears to have been no coherent strategy to deal with the truly cancerous mutation that the Republican party has metastasized into since the advent of Donald Trump. The administration, he believes — possibly with the complicity of an uninterested Democratic Senate majority during the prior lame duck session — has simply sleepwalked itself into a potential crisis that anyone could have seen coming months ago. Perhaps they didn’t have the votes at that time for a lasting solution. But as Krugman cogently points out, they didn’t even try. As a result, the American public remains largely ignorant of the potential consequences that could befall them in a matter of weeks.
But all we’ve seen from Biden officials since the House changed hands has been a combination of assertions that a U.S. default would be catastrophic — which may well be true — and denigration of any and all possible end runs around the debt ceiling. My heart sank, for example, when Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, repeatedly rejected the idea of minting a platinum coin — one of several possible ways to bypass the debt limit — as a “gimmick.” Yes, it would be a gimmick, but it would also be harmless. As I explained the other day, it would not mean printing money to cover the deficit; in practice, it would amount to carrying out normal borrowing through a back door.
As Krugman argues, any solution to this crisis must be unconventional by definition. Because the Republican party in its modern form is not normal. It does not respond to reason, logic, or even self-interest. It is a party of Mad Hatters each living in his own insular social media and Fox news-fueled bubble, a strange and unreachable netherworld that doesn’t acknowledge reality or even cause and effect. The idea that an antiquated vestige from the 1930’s such as the debt ceiling could conceivably be used as a tool of outright extortion, however, was not new. Biden had a front row seat to this tactic during the Obama administration, albeit with a less toxic and nihilistic group of House Republicans. The idea that such a group would ever exhibit anything close to “good faith” should have been recognized as preposterous from the get-go.
The very last thing that you want to do with such people is give them a reason to double down. But that, Krugman believes, is exactly what President Biden has done.
Many people have pointed out that this sets a terrible precedent, that having seen that extortion works, Republicans will engage in it again and again. Even these concerns, however, seem to me to be taking too long a view. Now that Republicans see what seems to be an administration on the run, there’s every reason to expect them to keep escalating their immediate demands — quite possibly to the point where no deal is possible.
The salient characteristic of all right-wing fanatics is that they are never going to be satisfied. Neither moderation nor forbearance are words appearing in their playbook. In the case of the debt ceiling, many of them have already convinced themselves that default would be a good thing: that they could blame all of the catastrophic economic fallout that follows on Biden, thus securing a path for their Fuhrer, Donald Trump, whose shadow looms darkly behind all of the party’s machinations.
Krugman allows that Republican intransigence may force President Biden’s hand, effectively giving him no option but to “adopt unconventional methods” to resolve the crisis. But thus far he is singularly unimpressed by the administration’s tactics:
I don’t see any way to regard this whole episode as anything but a disastrous failure to face up to the reality of an opposition party controlled by extremists.
Perhaps President Biden is playing his cards so close to the vest that even Krugman can’t discern them.
We all better hope that’s the case.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/16/2169739/-Has-Biden-already-blown-it-on-the-debt-ceiling-Paul-Krugman-thinks-maybe-so
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
