Why today’s Supreme Court decision to accept a greenhouse gas case isn’t as worrisome as it might look.
After things collapsed on the House side, a Senate GOP aide told our Dylan Scott, “Ted Cruz and his Tortilla Coast Republicans are leading us to a default.”
House GOP leadership confirms no vote tonight on their mythical debt plan.
We were expecting a newly revised plan from Speaker Boehner to come up for a vote this evening, but that has now been delayed indefinitely. House leadership is saying no decision has been made yet and leadership will be meeting soon. But it seems clear that Boehner lacks the GOP votes to get this revised plan through.
Some classic Lindsey Graham special pleading here:
We won’t be the last political party to overplay our hand. It might happen one day on the Democratic side. And if it did, would Republicans, for the good of the country, kinda give a little? We really did go too far. We screwed up. But their response is making things worse, not better.
This is just one example – singing Amazing Grace at the caucus meeting planning the debt default. But as you survey the whole terrain of this multiheaded shutdown, ObamacareDefundo, debt default crisis, you start to see that the divide is not simply one of ideology but something more basic about the times we’re living in.
69% of self-identified Tea Party Republicans say the US “can go past the [debt default] deadline … without major economic problems.”
We have a winner. Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) is now on the record both dismissing default as overblown and touting the prospect of default as crucial leverage for the House to force the Senate to make concessions.
Nothing should surprise me with these folks. But apparently House Republicans are considering passing their bill (which is a nonstarter in the Senate and White House) and simply leaving town.
Meanwhile, Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) discusses plan to push House offer as close as possible to default deadline to maximize leverage.
With their plan dissolving this may become a moot point, but I mentioned earlier how the House GOP leadership plan unveiled this morning included a provision that would bar the Treasury Department from taking extraordinary measures to avert default whenever we approach the debt ceiling again the next time.
Enough of this skating around default — we want to feel the pain of imminent default quicker next time!
Here’s the rationale for that provision, according to the GOP’s outline of its plan: