John Boehner pledges a hostage/credit rating drama each time the debt limit is raised. “It’s the only way to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would if left alone.”
It’s quite a spectacle to see this since Boehner seems to be promising increasing numbers of reckless grandstanding that will probably lead to more and more credit-rating drama.
There’s no way to understand the jousting and positioning over the ‘fiscal cliff’ without understanding the following facts: Both President Obama and congressional Republicans are moving right along to the edge of the cliff. Both say they’re ready to go over the edge. Only President Obama is gliding along in a hot air balloon and John Boehner and co. are on foot. So the repercussions over going over the edge are quite different. And both sides know it.
TPM Reader EL takes things in a different (or perhaps deeper) direction entirely …
Regarding the Republicans and Benghazi, you write
TPM Reader EW has more on “dingbat oversight” …
Josh Marshall in his piece today, reflected on the Republicans obsession with sensational rather than substantive investigations. He was also right to point out that it isn’t just time and money they are wasting. These investigations function like a magician’s slight-of-hand deflecting the interest of the public from real issues.
Let’s start with the fact that our entire system of government and economics — in some sense our whole culture — is based on the idea that adversarial relations create social goods. Competition between parties, competition between businesses and so forth. And much of what keeps everyone in government on their toes is the impulse of partisan advantage. It’s a feature not a bug.
By and large that’s all true. But it’s also true that Congress can play its role in such a nonsensical and histrionic way that it not only wastes all sorts of time on bizarre conspiracy theories, it also neglects real, actual oversight, which is one of Congress’s key functions. Read More
As Ezra Klein noted, the message between the White House’s budget proposal is that President Obama is done negotiating with himself when he sits down with congressional Republicans.
Dems laugh off GOP demand that they make first move on Medicare benefit cuts.
Republicans push back against claims they’re about to cave on taxes.