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Let me file that under fuck it.

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Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

T R E 4 5 O N

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: Debt Limit Drama / Dramedy

Late Night Open Thread: Debt Limit Drama / Dramedy

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Bad for the country, but thrilling for the horserace media… not to mention a batch of back-benchers, mostly Republican, who get to see their names onna teevee. Serious people keep doing the serious parts.

… With a possible default now projected as soon as June 1, Democrats on Tuesday began taking steps to deploy the secret weapon they have been holding in reserve. They started the process of trying to force a debt-limit increase bill to the floor through a so-called discharge petition that could bypass Republican leaders who have refused to raise the ceiling unless President Biden agrees to spending cuts and policy changes.

“House Democrats are working to make sure we have all options at our disposal to avoid a default,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, wrote in a letter he sent to colleagues on Tuesday. “The filing of a debt ceiling measure to be brought up on the discharge calendar preserves an important option. It is now time for MAGA Republicans to act in a bipartisan manner to pay America’s bills without extreme conditions.”

An emergency rule Democrats introduced on Tuesday, during a pro forma session held while the House is in recess, would start the clock on a process that would allow them to begin collecting signatures as soon as May 16 on such a petition, which can force action on a bill if a majority of members sign on. The open-ended rule would provide a vehicle to bring Mr. DeSaulnier’s bill to the floor and amend it with a Democratic proposal — which has yet to be written — to resolve the debt limit crisis.

The strategy is no silver bullet, and Democrats concede it is a long shot. Gathering enough signatures to force a bill to the floor would take at least five Republicans willing to cross party lines if all Democrats signed on, a threshold that Democrats concede will be difficult to reach. They have yet to settle on the debt ceiling proposal itself, and for the strategy to succeed, Democrats would likely need to negotiate with a handful of mainstream Republicans to settle on a measure they could accept…

House Democratic leaders have for months played down the possibility of initiating a discharge petition as a way out of the stalemate. They are hesitant to budge from the party position, which Mr. Biden has articulated repeatedly, that Republicans should agree to raise the debt limit with no conditions or concessions on spending cuts.

But behind the scenes, they were simultaneously taking steps to make sure a vehicle was available if needed…

Clown shoes:

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  4. 4.

    AlaskaReader

    According to economists at the ECB, businesses have been padding their profits. That, they said, was a bigger factor in fueling inflation during the second half of last year than rising wages were.

    No duh.

    Someone should explain that to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors,

    …

  5. 5.

    BellyCat

    Overlooked possibility: The Turtle covertly heavies up on 5 GOP cronies in the House to join Dems in a last ditch effort to save the entire Graspers Of Plutocracy party from ruin so they may continue dismantling democracy in discrete and well-compensated fashion.

    The premature arrival of pitchforks and tumbrels would disrupt the more orderly smash and grab he has carefully orchestrated, robbing his paymasters of even greater profits while dashing his life’s ambitions.

  6. 6.

    Geminid

    Rep. Greene says a defection by any Republican would be “a career ending move.” What about Repubublicans who intend to retire anyway? If I had to sit in caucus meetings with that dingbat I’d be thinking about retirement every day, even without a debt ceiling crisis.

    And David Valadeo (CA) and Dan Newhouse (WA) voted to impeach Trump and still won reelection last year . How would defecting on this issue doom those two?

    I’m not saying Jeffries can win over 5 Republicans with a proposal that his own caucus will accept. But Greene’s analysis here is wrong. If the debt ceiling is raised without a financial crisis, I’m not sure how many people will even remember a year from now, much less care. On the ogher hand. If Republicans blow the economy up people will care intensly.

    Also, Greene does not take into account the pressure members will face from constituents, especially business owners, when the financial system starts seizing up. They are not going to accept Greene and company wrecking their businesses in order to push through 20% cuts for the SBA, Veterans Administration, Homeland Security and nutrition assistance. Auto dealers, home builders and others  are going to be screaming.

    The Club for Growth will urge Republicans to hang tough, but when did that outfit ever help a Republican win a general election?

  7. 7.

    Rusty

    The Freedom Caucus, MTG et al., have really no interest in governing, it’s more politics as performance art.  The speaker doesn’t either, anyone interested in actual governance wouldn’t have accepted the conditions he did to become speaker.  The rot however isn’t limited to the fringes of the Republican party, it has reached the core.  The Heritage Foundation is compiling massive lists of ideologues to fill government agencies when the Republicans eventually regain the presidency.  Those people will replace large numbers of currently career federal employees to destroy the agencies from within.  It’s hard to see how we can negotiate with people that are ideologically nihilists at their core and performance artists in their actions.  It’s going to be a bumpy ride, not just in the next month but for years to come.

  8. 8.

    Amir Khalid

    @opiejeanne:

    Emmer seems to think Kevin the Squeaker is in an actual position to exact from POTUS everything the House Republicans want. If that were true — which it clearly ain’t — there’d be no stand-off.

  10. 10.

    Hildebrand

    Why is it that the media always fails to note that when we have a Republican president the Democrats don’t hold the country hostage?

    How many times was the debt ceiling raised during trump’s time weltering around the White House?  3?  That should be the lede in every story written about this latest crisis.

  11. 11.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Hildebrand: ‘In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”‘ –Abraham Lincoln

  12. 12.

    lowtechcyclist

    I can’t help but notice that these ‘seven days in May’ include weekdays May 9-12 and 15-17, but don’t include the weekend of May 13-14.

    What, these bozos are going to take the weekend off in the middle of a national crisis of their own making? Seriously, fuckem.

  13. 13.

    Tony Jay

    @Hildebrand:

      Why is it that the media always fails to note that when we have a Republican president the Democrats don’t hold the country hostage?

    FTFNYT Headline – “After Years of House Budget Smooth-Sailing Under GOP Presidents, A Democrat White House Fuels Minority Intransigence – We Ask Who Benefits, And Is Compromise Even Possible?”

    Like That? /s

  15. 15.

    satby

    @lowtechcyclist: I assume that the party of forced motherhood intended to “honor mothers on Mother’s Day”.

    because nothing says “We love mothers” like letting them nearly die with a septic miscarriage.

  16. 16.

    Gvg

    The way I read the debt ceiling vrs the 14th, only actually not meeting our debts is unconstitutional. Messing around with our budget twice instead of once is just dumb. This whole thing is a show I am tired of. The media may find it exciting. It is a potential world shaking disaster but we are in formulaic repetitive season after season of a show I found tedious at the start and I bet a lot of normies have come to feel the same way. The republicans need to quit doing this. They are like children who learned a tantrum works and haven’t noticed the audience is tired. The media also needs to wake the fuck up.

    Not just on this issue either. Some plot lines have worn out and audiences aren’t reacting the same. It’s not always just generations either. Sometimes if the same things happen too often, people just get bored or tired of what they used to like. I always thought that was part of why Clinton beat Bush the elder. Reaganism got old IMO at that moment, which is also why the nostalgia got so loud right then. His coat tail people missed him and didn’t get that not everyone did.

  20. 20.

    lowtechcyclist

    The Onion had a few things to say about the FTFNYT’s coverage of trans issues:

    “Quentin” is a 14-year-old assigned female at birth who now identifies as male against the wishes of his parents. His transition was supported by one of his unmarried teachers, who is not a virgin. He stole his parents’ car and drove to the hospital, where a doctor immediately began performing top surgery on him. Afterward, driving home drunk from the hospital, Quentin became suicidally depressed, and he wonders now, homeless and ridden with gonorrhea, if transitioning was a mistake.

    We just made Quentin up, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean stories like his aren’t potentially happening everywhere, constantly. Good journalism is about finding those stories, even when they don’t exist. It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like, then offering misleading evidence in service of preordained editorial conclusions. In our case, endangering trans people is the lodestar that shapes our coverage. Frankly, if our work isn’t putting trans people further at risk of trauma and violence, we consider it a failure.

  28. 28.

    Tony Jay

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Right, and right to the point. I look forward to the silken-togaed ascended masters of Et Griseo Domina pretending not to notice their lessers’ grumbling, even as they burn with the urge to yell “Shut up, ignorant Plebian!” from their high and airless promontory.

     

    @AxelFoley:

    And a very happy birthday to you.

  37. 37.

    Steeplejack

    Technical note:

    I am opening a brief period of public comment before upgrading my computer to Windows 11 later this morning. My research indicates status of “What could go wrong?,” but I’m open to unsupported anecdotes and scare stories.

  40. 40.

    VOR

    Only Democrats have agency, it seems. Republicans do things just because, like a force of nature. The responsibility to act like an adult is only attached to Democrats.

    People like Emmer are not worried about a default being used against them in 24. First, that’s 18 months away. Second, they will blame it all on Biden’s actions. They will say the default happened in his watch. He should have known we were actually going to shoot the hostages, not our fault we did the shooting.

    Finally, I believe there are many financial illiterates who do not understand the consequences of a debt default, who genuinely believe a default stop spending on anything woke.

  41. 41.

    BretH

    @Steeplejack: It’s been long enough you are far, far from the bleeding edge. Unless you have some ancient applications that are critical I wouldn’t worry at all.

  44. 44.

    Steeplejack

    @BretH:

    Yeah, I’ve just been procrastinating on it, but the reminders have gotten more frequent lately.

  45. 45.

    Another Scott

    @Steeplejack: I don’t like them locking down the interface even more with 11.  E.g. you can’t move the taskbar to the right side of the screen.  And they require more clicks for some things.  Otherwise, eh, it’s Winders.

    Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  47. 47.

    SFAW

    @VOR: ​
     

    a default stop spending on anything woke

    “It does? Well, then, I’m ALL IN!!!!!”
    — typical Rethug voter

  52. 52.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: Would Democrats in the party-switchers’ districts go along? Most of these Republicans have challengers already, and even if House leadership were to promise a defector a free ride in the primary, that promise could not be enforced. Republican defectors will be on their own, it seems to me.

    That’s why I think the pool of potential defectors is limited mainly to Representatives who intend to retire. Valadeo and Newhouse might be exceptions because they will face “jungle primaries, and have already survived votes for impeachment.

    Fitzpatrick (PA-1) could possibly win a Republican primary in his Philadelphia-suburban district even if he crossed over to vote for a debt ceiling raise. That vote might help him in the general election.

  55. 55.

    artem1s

    the worst GOPers always project when they open their mouths. I wonder which Reps MTG is afraid are going to defect that she feels compelled to threaten them on social media? did she threaten Qevin with defection to get something she wants? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

  56. 56.

    Geminid

    Ukrainian President Zelensky arrived in Helsinki this morning. He will attend a summit of Nordic leaders from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.

    Photos show it’s a sunny Spring day in Finland.

  57. 57.

    Ohio Mom

    @Steeplejack: I was just thinking, is Steeplejack here, surely he is making a note of this birthday.

    Happy Birthday, AlexFoley, May the coming year bring much happiness to you.

  61. 61.

    Geminid

    There’s nothing like an election to bring people together!

    Yesterday police in Marseilles, France had to break up brawls between Turkish expatriates at a voting site for their country’s presidential and parliamentery election. Four policeman were injured trying to separate pro- and anti-Erdogan voters; authorities eventually resorted to tear gas to suppress the fights.

  62. 62.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Kinda wonder why the Democrats aren’t pointing out that either those socialist Europeans or China is likely to benefit most from US debt default…I mean, where is the world going to go if the dollar is no longer the preferred reserve currency? Either to the EU, or China. They should be asking every time they’re in front of a camera why the GOP wants to help China at our expense.

  64. 64.

    Eolirin

    Even if it’s unsuccessful, the discharge petition is necessary to show that the Democrats did everything in their power to prevent a debt default except give in to Republican hostage taking.

    We still have a budget fight coming up. At the end of the year the house can go force a government shutdown all the way through the 2024 elections if they want. They don’t need to be using defaulting on our debt to try to force concessions when they can hold the entire federal government hostage through the budget process. And if our media wasn’t such garbage they’d be making this point far more forcefully; spending levels can and should be addressed in the actual budget negotiations not as part of a procedural action to keep the US solvent.

    But by forcing a choice between member defections or global economic catastrophe they’re setting themselves up to have a weaker position in that budget fight, unless they want to go full nihilist and burn everything down and I very much doubt that rebounds in their favor.

    Otherwise it gets easier to break with the party if you’ve already done so, and getting to an agreement that works around Republican house leadership opens the door to doing the same in the budget fight. Dems holding strong here makes it clear they’re being serious when they draw lines in the sand over the budget too

    ETA: that seven days in May thing is not even remotely accurate, as there’s zero requirement that the house and senate and Biden need to be available at the same time to get any of this done. We have until the 25th for the house to pass something that the senate is okay with.

    I guess that’s not flashy enough for our braindead media though?

  67. 67.

    andy

    @opiejeanne: We were so lucky Dayton beat that pig for the governorship back in the teens. For a while Dayton was the only one holding the line against the MNGOP- otherwise we could have been a GOP dictatorship like Wisconsin.

  69. 69.

    Geminid

    @Eolirin: That projected date Yellen gave may not be a hard deadline. The federal government is not like a bank that can be put into receivership by a superior institution when it becomes insolvent.

    But June 1 may very well be a threshold which, if crossed, brings on successively greater financial stress and political pressure. That could be what it takes to break Republican resistance.

  72. 72.

    Steeplejack

    @Steeplejack:

    Windows 11 update complete. Yee-haw! Took almost exactly an hour for the download and upgrade, then another 30-60 minutes of me seething about and fiddling with various settings, mostly minor and bordering on OCD. Things okay now, although, as Another Scott said above, it takes a few more clicks to do some things and they have taken away a few interface options. Oh, well, for Microsoft that’s usually how progress goes.

  75. 75.

    Ryan

    Clearly MTG has never heard of Omaha and how it went for Obama.  And Biden.

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