Politically-devised symbolic votes are usually just partisan garbage. The party in power in either chamber devises a vote not for the purpose of legislating but to put the minority party in a bind. Sometimes though, it’s a totally fair shot. And the minority party gets called out for a genuinely egregious hypocrisy. That’s what the Republicans are doing to the Democrats today.

The Republican strategy this summer will be to use what amounts to extortion to force massive and not particularly popular spending cuts on the White House — by refusing to allow the country to keep paying its collective mortgage unless the White House caves on various draconian spending cuts. The consequences of that defaulting — i.e., the USA for the first time in its history defaulting on its debt — are catastrophic. Read More