BROKEN HOUSE

I come from a broken home.

But in navigating the break, those in charge did not kill the future for their children.

Or themselves.

In Washington DC, we are now in week three of divided government. 

Joe Biden is President and his Democratic colleagues control the Senate.  

For their part, the Republicans control the House.

There is, however,  one problem with that last sentence.   

The problem is that . . .

It is not particularly accurate. 

While 222 members of the House of Representatives are registered Republicans who won their seats on that party' s line, only about thirty to fifty of them actually control the place.  This reality was born early in the morning of Saturday, January 7, when California's Kevin McCarthy prostrated himself before the GOP's off-the-charts right wing (OTCRW) in order to be (finally) elected Speaker on the fifteenth ballot. 

To get there, McCarthy promised the OTCRW that they could vote to end his Speakership anytime one of them moved to vacate the office.  Among many other things, he also promised them outsized presence on the powerful Rules committee that first decides what gets to the floor; eliminated the rule which allowed the debt limit to rise without a separate vote; and  agreed to the creation of a select subcommittee to investigate "weaponization of the federal government"

The OTCRW plans to use these powers to launch scores of  investigations and to force Democrats to make massive spending cuts.  They also plan to refuse to increase the nation's debt ceiling unless Congressional Democrats and President Biden go along with their proposed cuts.

The debt limit debate is a classic example of the GOP's endemic hypocrisy.  House Republicans voted to raise the limit without condition three times during the Trump administration, two of which occurred when they controlled both the House and the Senate.  This does not mean that some on the Democratic side have not played politics with the issue from time to time, voting against a raise or to limit the raise when they knew an increase was passing anyway and performance could trump the need for good policy basically because the performance did not matter.  No Democrat, however, has ever actually voted against the limit when doing so would have resulted in default.

That, however, is what the OTCRW is saying it will do now.

This would, of course, amount to economic suicide.  The dollar is the world's reference currency and America's bonds with their guaranteed interest payments are the world's safest and most stable investments.  Upon default, America's credit rating would immediately plummet, as would the value of everyone's retirement accounts. And as cash reserves were spent, default would in short order result in the suspension of Social Security and Medicare payments, government salaries, and all other federal spending (including payments on government bonds) as well.

The OTCRW's rejoinder to this parade of horribles is that it does not want the limit to be reached or America to default but rather is simply insisting the the administration and Congressional Democrats "negotiate" on spending cuts as a condition for the GOP agreeing to raise the limit.  They then spin Biden's "no negotiation" stance as the arrogant muttering of a man who does not understand that his side no longer controls the entire government.  

Were this true, it would be persuasive.

But it isn't.

In point of fact, all the "spending" which is now moving the United States toward the borrowing limit has already been voted on and approved. Or, to put it differently, all of that spending has already been "negotiated".  By the same token,  all future spending will also have to be "negotiated".  Congress will hold hearings, take testimony, and vote.  If Republicans want to limit that spending, cut the deficit, sunset all federal programs (as proposed by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson), limit military and financial assistance to Ukraine (as suggested by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ohio's JD Vance),they will have ample opportunity to do so.

In the current debt ceiling debate, therefore, the OTCRW is not asking to negotiate spending.

Instead, it is trying to negotiate . . .

Paying.

Back in the 1960s and '70s when he was a rising GOP star and on his way to the presidency, Ronald Reagan made a repeated point of comparing the federal government to any American family.  The latter, he noted, had to live within its means and so, therefore, should the former.  That advice was sound.  Reagan, however, never said that an American had the right to tell the bank or the dealership that he was refusing to make the payments on the mortgage or car loan he had negotiated and agreed to years before. 

If a family does that, it loses its home or car.

But if America does that, it will lose its shirt.

The debt limit as currently set is $31.4 trillion.  It will be reached two days from now but given cash on hand and likely to be received in the near term, default will not occur until sometime this spring.  On its editorial page today, The Wall Street Journal, hardly the mouthpiece of liberalism, warned that "The first rule of negotiation is never take a hostage you're not prepared to shoot."  Setting the table, it noted that "Speaker McCarthy has promised his Members he won't move to raise the limit without spending concessions from President Biden.  But Mr. Biden says he won't negotiate at all over the debt limit."  It then concluded "Something or someone has to give because the debt limit has to be raised."

The Journal anchors itself firmly in the rational side of conservatism.  It doesn't espouse or forgive attempted coups or violent insurrections. Last July, in assaying January 6 and President Trump, it wrote that "the brute facts remain: Mr. Trump took an oath to defend the Constitution, and he had a duty as Commander in Chief to protect the Capitol from a mob attacking in his name . . . Instead he fed the mob's anger and let the riot play out." On the debt limit, however, the boat is a bit unmoored.  "The U.S. has already borrowed and spent the money," it explained, "and debt held by the public is a contract.  Nobody sane in Washington wants to be blamed for triggering a default, and the bond market ructions it would cause, which means it almost certainly won't happen."  

Almost is the operative word in that last sentence.

And it is pregnant with doubt.

Over the course of the next two months, the debt limit dance will proceed.  Biden and the Democrats will correctly insist that no one can negotiate whether America must pay its bills.  If necessary, and as has occurred in the past, they will agree to vote en masse to raise the limit with the assistance of only a handful of Republicans needed to reach 218 and actually pass the measure. This will solve the problem while leaving the OTCRW and its enablers their fig leaf of opposition.  This will only be possible, however, if McCarthy allows  that measure to go to the floor for a vote.

McCarthy has promised not do this.

Even though sanity -- and The Wall Street Journal  -- say he must.

The weirdest part of the GOP's first week, four-day, fifteen vote meltdown over the Speaker's gavel was that it continued even after Kevin McCarthy had given his opponents all they were asking for.  The hostage takers, it turned out,  weren't particularly interested in concessions on rules or in "democratizing" a body where polarization has empowered leadership more or less as a condition of getting anything done.  

They just wanted a scalp.  

Because of his limitless ability to abase himself, McCarthy became Speaker anyway and held off his inevitable execution.  Sooner or later, however, that execution will come. The rules just passed by House Republicans allow it. 

And the current debt ceiling impasse may deliver it.

Because . . .

At some point point in the not too distant future, Kevin McCarthy will either have to renege on his debt ceiling promise and kill himself politically.

Or honor his promise . . .

And kill the country economically.

This is not a choice the country voted for last November.  It is not even a choice the GOP's iconic Ronald Reagan would have advocated.  His American family did not embrace suicide as the solution to its fiscal challenges, and most broken homes survive the break.

Mine did.

But then again . . .

There were adults in charge.