;)
The Commentariat -- Oct. 16, 2013
Lori Montgomery, et al., of the Washington Post: "Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced a bipartisan deal on Wednesday to raise the debt limit through Feb. 7 and end the 16-day-old government shutdown. The bill must be passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and signed by the president, and it is unclear whether all that can happen before the Treasury Department exhausts its borrowing power Thursday. It avoids any major concessions on Obama's signature Affordable Care Act, a major victory for Democrats and a repudiation to House and Senate Republicans who for weeks tried to use the threat of a shutdown and potential default to force changes in the health-care law." ...
... Jonathan Chait: The debt ceiling crisis is over. ...
** Boehner Bites the Bullet? Burgess Everett, et al., of Politico: "The House will vote first on an emerging Senate proposal to open government and lift the debt ceiling, a move that would expedite bipartisan legislation developed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The move means that there is now a clear path to end the first government shutdown in 17 years, and the country now appears closer to avoiding the first potential economy-shaking default on U.S. debt.... The fact that House Republicans are now planning to go that route marks a stunning reversal for the speaker...." ...
... Jonathan Weisman, et al., of the New York Times: "House Republican leaders, who had appeared stymied in their efforts earlier in the day, rushed out a new proposal Tuesday afternoon that would reopen the government through Dec. 15, extend the government's borrowing authority until Feb. 7 and eliminate government contributions to lawmakers, White House officials and their staffs for their purchases of health insurance on the new insurance exchanges. Under the new plan, the Treasury Department would be forbidden to use 'extraordinary measures' -- juggling government accounts -- to extend its borrowing capabilities. Speaker John A. Boehner was hoping to bring a bill to a vote as early as Tuesday evening." CW: Sounds as if they want the government to default; otherwise, why prevent extraordinary measures, which has been the only thing keeping Treasury afloat while Congress fiddles. ...
... Update. New Lede: "On the brink of a historic default, House Republicans on Tuesday abruptly postponed a vote on their latest proposal to reopen the government and raise the debt limit, as a major credit agency warned that the United States was on the verge of a costly ratings downgrade. Hard-line conservatives and more pragmatic Republicans were in open revolt Tuesday evening, after the House Republican leadership rushed out a new bill in the afternoon, forcing a postponement of any vote on the measure. With the latest delay, chances increased that a resolution would not be reached before the Treasury exhausted its borrowing authority on Thursday." ...
... Update 2. According to the latest version of the story, Reid & McConnell are back to negotiating with each other, to what end I know not....
... ** Update 3. Clusterfuck Strategy. Let's hope Zeke Miller & Alex Altman of Time are right: "... in the perverse ways of modern Washington, [John Boehner's] Tuesday-night defeat may soon be marked in the history books as a step forward.... The path forward, which looked murky for a moment on Tuesday afternoon, now looks clear: the Senate will cut a bipartisan deal, and Boehner will be forced to pass it with Democratic votes. He has said repeatedly that the U.S. will not and cannot default." ...
... CW: My big mistake -- & I wasn't the only one to make it -- was believing that John Boehner & some of his House colleagues had the fortitude to stand up the the Tea Party. Maybe Boehner & Co. will pull something out of a hat Wednesday, but I don't know that today is so much different from two-plus weeks ago when they allowed the shutdown. Maybe nobody's using firearms, but this is a civil war, & the revolutionaries include ALL the House Republicans, not just the Tea Party tail that's wagging the dog. From Boehner on down, they're all traitors. Saul Jackman of the Brookings Institution just wrote a post urging President Obama to sign an executive order raising the debt ceiling, & he cites the President's emergency powers. I have been thinking along those lines exactly. The President no longer has the luxury of standing around making sandwiches for a few poor people. He has a duty to act on behalf of the country. Impeachment is a small price to pay. ...
... Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "Obama's debt ceiling gamble may be paying off.... Scorched by the July 2011 fight that hurt the economy and his political standing (though not so badly as the Republicans'), Mr. Obama was determined to undo the precedent he had set by making concessions -- in that case, more than $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, including the across-the-board reductions known as sequestration -- so that Congress would ensure that the government paid its bills." ...
... Wall Street Journal Editors urge the House to throw in the towel: "Republicans can best help their cause now by getting this over with and moving on to fight more intelligently another day." ...
I ran on defunding, burying and getting rid of Obamacare ... a lot of the members of our house, of our conference, ran on the same thing. So for us not to speak up is not to speak up for the American people. -- Rep. Ted Yoho (RTP-Fla.), defending his refusal to vote for any House bill that doesn't defund the ACA
... CW: During the interview (by Jake Tapper of CNN), economist Yoho claimed that "... You know, we hit the debt ceiling in 1985. We didn't raise the debt ceiling. We hit it and we didn't raise it for three and a half months. We're still here. We hit it again in 1995. For four and a half months, they didn't raise the debt ceiling. We survived that. We will survive this." What that genius Yoho doesn't understand is that in 1985 & 1995 the Secretary of the Treasury took extraordinary measures to pay the bills, something Jack Lew began doing months ago. ...
... Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post: "It's extortion for the sake of extortion," as it has been all along. ...
... Josh Barro, a self-described Republican, of Business Insider: "There is no serious argument for Republican governance right now, even if you prefer conservative policies over liberal ones. These people are just too dangerously incompetent to be trusted with power." ...
... Dana Milbank captures some of the absurdity of the moment, including House Republicans joining in a few choruses of "Amazing Grace." ...
... Maureen Dowd writes perhaps her worst column ever, tho she does have a few good grafs about Cruz & Palin & Vitter. ...
... Greg Sargent: "Dem Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a key ally of the Dem leadership and White House, told House Democrats at a private meeting today that a vote for the new House GOP plan is a vote for a deliberate Tea Party effort to sabotage the emerging Senate deal. In an interview with me, Van Hollen strongly suggested it will get no Democratic votes, which could call into question the ability of Republicans to pass this plan through the House, as some conservatives are already balking at it because it raises the debt limit 'This has no Democratic support,' Van Hollen told me." ...
... Neil Irwin of the Washington Post explains the "sunk cost fallacy" to House dimwits. "If there is to be a successful resolution of the debt ceiling and government shutdown standoff, it will be because House Republicans come to grips with an important concept that they have, to date, showed little appreciation for. It is called the sunk cost fallacy. A sunk cost is something you're not going to get back.... The fact that House Republicans have 'fought so hard' is irrelevant to the future costs and benefits of any deal. The more the caucus is making decisions based on what happened in the past, the less likely they are to make strategy decisions that are best for both the country's and their own future prospects." ...
... CNBC/Reuters: "Fitch Ratings put the US government's 'AAA' credit rating on 'rating watch negative' Tuesday, saying that the standstill on the U.S. debt ceiling negotiations risks undermining the effectiveness of the country's government and political institutions. U.S. stock index futures fell." ...
... Jim Tankersley of the Washington Post: The impending default could cause delays in distribution of Social Security payments.
Issa Unaware Government Shutdown Means Government Shuts Down. Andrew Restuccia of Politico: "Closing national monuments to make life difficult for the public during a government shutdown is 'disgusting' and 'despicable,' House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa said at the start of a hearing Wednesday on the National Park Service's decision-making. Democrats responded by asking who shut down the government."
Frank Rich: "The present-day anti-government radicals in Congress, and the Americans who voted them into office, are in the minority, but they are a permanent minority that periodically disrupts or commandeers a branch or two of the federal government, not to mention the nation's statehouses. Their brethren have been around for much of our history in one party or another, and with a constant anti-democratic aim: to thwart the legitimacy of a duly elected leader they abhor, from Lincoln to FDR to Clinton to Obama, and to resist any laws with which they disagree. So deeply rooted are these furies in our national culture that their consistency and tenacity should be the envy of other native political movements." ...
... Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post: "Today’s tea party-ized Republicans speak less for Wall Street or Main Street than they do for the seething resentments of white Southern backwaters and their geographically widespread but ideologically uniform ilk. Their theory of government, to the extent that they have one, derives from John C. Calhoun's doctrine of nullification -- that states in general and white minorities in particular should have the right to overturn federal law and impede majority rule. Like their predecessors in the Jim Crow South, today's Republicans favor restricting minority voting rights if that is necessary to ensure victory at the polls."
Paul Krugman on "the GOP tax": researchers at Macroeconomic Advisers have bound that bad fiscal policy promulgated by Republicans has cost the country billions & has resulted in a 1.4 percent higher unemployment rate. (And they're not even talking about the effects of the shutdown & looming default.)
Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "The greatest threats to the ultimate success of the new health-care law come not from the technical problems that have plagued its rollout, but from a hostile political climate in many individual states and from potentially serious weaknesses in its design. Those are the conclusions of a cautionary report just published by the Brookings Institution's new Center for Effective Public Management."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a major case challenging Environmental Protection Agency regulations concerning greenhouse gases. The case is a sequel to Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 2007 decision that required the agency to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles if it found they endangered public health or welfare. Two years later, the agency made such a finding, saying that 'elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere' pose a danger to 'current and future generations.' It set limits on emissions from both new vehicles and stationary sources.
Tom Edsall of the New York Times on campaign finance: "... more than a quarter of the money spent on political campaigns in 2012 came from 0.1 percent of the American population.... Corruption and the appearance of corruption are here to stay. The difference now is that the squalid character of the system has become institutionalized. It's so deeply integrated into the routine of Congress that, McCutcheon [-- the case before the Supreme Court --] notwithstanding, the American political-monetary complex provokes cynicism and apathy rather than outrage, protest or indignation. It is also kindling for fiery populists on both the left and the right."
President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to former Capt. Will Swenson. Quite a moving ceremony & the President got in a dig at Republican obstructionists:
... BUT. Jonathan Landay of McClatchy News: videos show that the story told by Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer, who also received the Medal of Honor for his part in the battle for which Swenson received his, is inaccurate & "show no Taliban in that vicinity or anywhere else on the floor of the Ganjgal Valley at the time and location of the 'swarm.' The videos also conflict with the version of the incident in Marine Corps and White House accounts of how Meyer, now 25, of Columbia, Ky., came to be awarded the nation's highest military decoration for gallantry." Swenson's account, and others, contradict Meyer's story. Landay does not question Swenson's actions. Via Charles Pierce, who writes glowingly of Landay.
President Obama made remarks Monday at Martha's Table about the government shutdown:
Local News
Greg Moran of the San Diego Union-Tribune: "Former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s professional and personal collapse continued Tuesday when he pleaded guilty to three criminal charges that he grabbed and fondled women during his brief time at City Hall. The 71-year-old Filner pleaded guilty to one felony charge of false imprisonment and two misdemeanor charges of battery at a hearing in San Diego Superior Court. The former 10-term congressman's pleas came just two days before a criminal grand jury was set to hear evidence against him. As part of the plea deal with the state Attorney General's Office, Filner will not face any jail or prison time. Instead he will be sentenced to three years of probation. He will also have to serve three months of home confinement and will be banned from ever seeking or holding public office again."
News Ledes
New Jersey Star-Ledger: "After an abbreviated but heated two month campaign, polls are now open and voters can cast their ballots in the special U.S. Senate election between Democrat Cory Booker and Republican Steve Lonegan." ...
... UPDATE: Election results at nj.com (No winner called as of 8:30 pm ET) ...
... UPDATE 2: The Associated Press has called the vote for Booker.
New York Times: "A month after JPMorgan acknowledged that 'severe breakdowns' had allowed a group of traders in London to run up $6 billion in losses, the bank has preliminarily reached a rare agreement to admit that the trading blowup itself represented reckless behavior, according to people briefed on the negotiations." ...
... UPDATE: "... the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ... announced on Wednesday that JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s biggest bank, agreed to pay $100 million and admit wrongdoing to settle an investigation into market manipulation involving the bank's multibillion-dollar trading loss in London."
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