A growing army of Republicans wants to push the debt showdown past the August 2 deadline.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) are leading the charge in their respective chambers. They both tell National Review Online that if Republicans hold firm, President Obama and Senate Democrats will buckle and pass a balanced-budget amendment.
Jordan, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, which authored “Cut, Cap, and Balance,” a fiscal-reform package that passed the House earlier this week, says that his group is ready to dig in. He acknowledges that two other plans — the one proposed by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), and the one proposed by the bipartisan “Gang of Six” — are gaining steam. Yet as the clock ticks, he is unwilling to deal — or accept doomsday warnings.
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“What is irrational about saying that we need to cut spending? What is irrational about saying we need to limit the size of government?” Jordan asks. “There is nothing irrational about that. We have to make the case. You make the case by going to the American people, you let that build, and then you can get Democratic support for something.”
Jordan notes that 59 Republicans voted against the spending deal brokered by Speaker John Boehner and President Obama in April. If a debt-limit solution without a balanced-budget amendment is proffered, that same bloc, he says, will rally in opposition. “Potentially, I think there could be that many or a lot more,” he says. “We are trying to build a big number.”
Rep. Joe Walsh (R., Ill.), one of 20 freshmen to vote against the spring spending compromise, tells NRO that disappointment over that deal weighs heavily on those who opposed it and on many who were reluctant supporters. “It left a sour taste in our mouth,” he says. “We believe that we really let the American people down.” For conservatives, he says, passing “Cut, Cap, and Balance” was an attempt to win back the public’s trust.
Walsh has gathered more than 90 signatures on a letter to House GOP leadership urging them not to bring the McConnell plan to a vote, which seems to be having an impact. Walsh tells NRO that Republican and Democratic Senate staffers have been calling his office to gauge the level of opposition to the plan, which appears to be the Senate’s preferred option. “The rank and file, through the letter, is making that clear that it is not going anywhere in the House,” he says.
Meanwhile, House Republicans are urging Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to take up “Cut, Cap, and Balance,” or as they’ve taken to calling it, the “Gang of 234” proposal, after the number of votes the plan received in the lower chamber.
In the Senate, DeMint is also counting noses, hoping to stir an eleventh-hour movement. Conservative voters, he says, will lose faith in the party if it backs the “Gang” plan and does not fight for a balanced-budget amendment. “Frankly, I believe if we had 41 Republicans who were willing to go past August 2, these things would happen in a hurry,” he says. “I don’t know that we do, but that is the kind of approach we need, and the approach we should have had all along.”
DeMint, who is working closely with Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), sees hope for a last-minute standoff, even as many of his GOP colleagues flock to the “Gang,” which is led by Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), a respected fiscal hawk. So far, he can count two established Senate dealmakers, Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), as allies.
Graham, for instance, attended a closed-door confab with DeMint and conservative activists on Tuesday, urging the various groups to push Republicans to hold. He told the audience that if Republicans did not battle for a balanced-budget amendment in the summer heat, the chances for its passage would quickly wilt. Waiting until August 3, he argued, would give the GOP sufficient leverage. Hatch, for his part, tells NRO that he sees “real problems” with the “Gang” framework and calls “Cut, Cap, and Balance” his preferred path ahead.
I would agree with Costa and Stiles there is a good possibility that the debate will extend well beyond August 2 with no resolution in sight. This is, after all, Washington we are talking about where deadlines and disruption of the rest of the country mean almost nothing.
In the meantime, I am preparing for the floating rate on my home equity loan to go stratospheric. To save money I have cancelled my fax line at home, downgraded my satellite TV and internet package, failed to renew my magazine subscriptions and do not plan a vacation this year.
I am but a microscopic example of what playing around with our debt ceiling will do to the economy. Multiply my actions by several million and you will get an economy in double dip.
Thank you very much Grover Norquist and all you economic literacy challenged Tea Party patriots.
It seems quite clear that a deal between the two parties is nowhere in sight! We, all of us, will go off the cliff together. Maybe, this is the moment that defines the future of the US of A. I am not optimistic!
No, not August 3!!! That's the One's huge birthday bash for $38,500 per person. It would be extremely unseemly for granny to starve without her social security check, while the Bamster rakes in the bucks.
Let's think this through a little bit. The president is going to get clubbed in 2012 so long as the republican candidate has a pulse. So Obama has not one thing to lose to let the House drive the economy off a cliff... it is already teetering, and so why not let Republicans get in the passenger seat and buckle up. The results are not difficult to imagine. First the stock market will tank - everyone gets their 401k reset to 2008 levels, or lower. Same for any stock portfolio. This does several things: 1) resets the "fear" that puts people in the arms of the mommy state 2) shows how an unwieldy market just cannot be trusted, hello more social security 3) shows that wild markets cannot be trusted for privatizing anything 4) invites more regulation of the markets 5) raises interest rates on everyone 5a) mortgage rates go higher, meaning you can't sell or buy 5b) auto loans go higher 5c) personal loans go higher 5d) business loans go higher. Stock prices depressed means more cost cutting - ie layoffs.
Help me out here. I'm not seeing the grand design in the plan. It's foolish to raise taxes in a struggling economy (or ever). It's foolish to cut costs in a struggling economy. Putting public sector employees in the streets en masse is still unemployment. Not to mention that almost every large company sells into the public sector. Inflating money, while not ideal, still makes US businesses who export more competitive via the rest of the world. More competitive means more sales, means more jobs, means growth, means tax revenue.
There is a time and a place for everything (except raising taxes). It seems that a large push to cut costs can easily be handled in 2012, with a Republican president, with an improving economy. Why participate in mutually assured destruction? The Republicans will once again own this economic disaster. Most people will blame them. I will blame them and I'm a conservative, because this debt limit debate has been arbitrarily tied to all of this other untimely foolishness.
I appreciate the concern, but right now the rating agencies won't buy what you are selling. The debt ceiling isn't the trigger. A realistic assessment of the deficit spending, with a realization that no matter how high we would jack up rates, it cannot generate enough revenue to offset Obama's spending wishlist, is what the agencies need to see. McConnell and Gang of 6 don't stop the chaos.
we have to recall president
Glover Cleverland. within his
two separate terms, in the
1800's, he had vetoed about
571 bills. in 1895, after a
major hurricane hit Glavaston,
Texas, the president asked
these Texans to help thyself.
President cleverland was the
original tea party member.
Perhaps, we can get his
DNA from his grave.
The concerns raised by LERobb of "playing around with our debt ceiling" are but a small taste of what is to come should we continue to play around (i.e., raise it at unsustainable rates) with our total debt.
Democrats will never admit to their love of spending and big government as reasons to oppose a Balanced Budget Amendment. They will hide behind protestations that the American people don't want it (or, if the polls suggest they do, not in the "extreme" form that the Republicans have put forth). Played well, this could be leveraged to get the BBA passed. Here, Democrats, is $2.4 trillion more to add to our debt, and in return all we ask is that you let the states, 3/4 of which are required, to determine whether or not the Federal Budget should be balanced. We encourage you to hold your nose about, protest that you are totally against it and only doing it to prevent calamity, whatever. If it really is so bad, then never will 3/4 of the states adopt it, and you have gotten your debt increase.
That being said, Republicans need to draft a flawless amendment. This opportunity won't come around again soon and poor language could lead to a defeat in the states out of necessity.
The debt, debt ceiling and deficit are three completely different things.
Your concern is with the debt and deficit, as is mine. The place to address those concerns is in budget negotiations.
If the stock market falters and GDP slides as a result of all the debt ceiling political posturing--as opposed to debt ceiling negotiation--Republicans will be hurt politically far worse than Democrats.
Obama offered three parts cuts to one part tax increases. I am a Moderate Conservative accountant. Getting 75% of what you want looks like a win for Republicans from where I sit.
Just take the deal and keep the economy afloat while you start meaningful budget negpotiation.
You are dreaming. Obama may well win again -- as far as I can tell his coalition is intact. And anyway our supposedly most "electable" GOP candidates have no more taste for dismantling the welfare state than he does.
I think we have to try hard to do the right thing now. Take the credit card away, and they will have to argue about how much to cut and where, not how much more to borrow.
75% of what we want would be good; but, unless the cuts are clearly specified and immediate, we'll just get snookered like we have in every other compromise with the Dems.
Obviously, conservatives will not be confused by the Left's attempts to claim that Republicans are "arbitrarily linking our long term and short term problems." We've got 60 years of political history now from which we know that the long term problem will never be addressed as long as it is, in fact, a long term problem. Kicking the can down the road is sufficient to meet the needs of incumbents, and so it's all we'll ever see. Since 1995, I've thought our only hope was for Europe to go bankrupt in time for us to recognize the danger. But today we have Greece, and still people seem oblivious. I suppose one can hope that France and Germany going belly up from the fallout will get through, but I'm not eager to (in this case, literally) bet the ranch.
Having said all that, I'm not convinced we should be trying to amend the constitution under the gun this way. Frankly, every amendment since the 11th has turned out to have been somewhere between useless and counterproductive. For example, look at the "anchor baby" problem we now have, thanks to our poorly thought-out attempt to assure the citizenship of the former slaves. My point, of course, isn't that we shouldn't have enacted the Reconstruction Amendments. Rather, the point is that we did so too hastily, and so they were defectively written. If anyone thinks we can pass a BBA that won't end up being horribly flawed in this short time frame, they're showing a decidedly un-conservative tendency to ignore the warnings of history.
We can blame the pols all we want; the fact is we are getting the government we deserve -- one that spends all the money it can lay its hands on on whatever "programs" will buy the most votes. The chickens are now coming home to roost, as we enter what appears to be the first really serious government fiscal crisis of our time. The first of many, I think.
Obviously the problem is the entitlements. I am 52, and I have understood for some time that I will not have the Medicare and Social Security benefits that my parents enjoyed. I accept that, and I am ready to take the cuts. All I want is three things -- for our public officials to speak truthfully about the problem, for cuts to be applied equably, and to be given enough lead time to prepare.
Boehner: “I’m not going to give up hope on ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance,’ but I do think it’s responsible for us to look at what Plan B would look like,”
The problem with the establishment GOP is that the telegraph Plan B in the beginning, thus making it Plan A. If you want to "look at Plan B", do it behind closed doors within the party and with your cards close to your vest.
The CCB bill has passed the House. It is the only plan. So we will see if the Democrats have the stomach to face default and down-grading since they are the ones and their money machine that are trying to convince the electorate of the doomsday scenario. They have no place to go. They will be blamed for not 'compromising' with the Republicans. We are all in the same fiscal boat and ideology makes a pour rudder.
Stop this trope that 'Obama will win'--he and his party win nothing but the undying approbation of the public.
Please stop referring to people like Bachman, Demint,and Jordan as conservatives, it cheapens the brand. Truth is they are the looney whackjobs from the tea bagging wing of a once proud party, nothing more!
