The play on the debt ceiling this week

Major Garrett:

...

Republicans want to play short. That means extending the debt ceiling seven to eight months, holding another vote then and locking in deeper spending cuts about the time the GOP primaries and caucuses are in full roar. The economics? Republicans argue the nation has extended the debt ceiling for six months or less numerous times and shouldn't fear it now. Republicans know they moved President Obama from a demand for a "clean" (meaning no strings attached) debt ceiling to a weeks-long debate about the magnitude of deficit-reduction. Phase two.

Democrats want to play long. They want to avoid a debt ceiling debate until after the 2012 election. Obama and House congressional leaders don't want to re-litigate the nation's debt load before facing voters. If they do, the ugly contours of this debate (debtor nation adrift in a stagnant economy) are unlikely to change for the better. Plus, a short-term fix intensifies the threat of a downgrade of America's AAA bond rating - a specter that would haunt Obama and congressional Democrats right as the GOP presidential race receives maximum media coverage.

These calculations and these alone will drive the size of spending cuts. Policy no longer drives politics — as it did during the various negotiations — Vice President Joseph Biden's or Obama's.

...
I suspect the Reid formulation has the best prospect at this point if he can get specific on the cuts he is proposing. Otherwise his proposed cuts are just more fairy dust in the form of projections whose assumptions are likely invalid.

I do think the Boehner plan would provide more substantive cuts to the projected deficit, and give the Congress time to do its job.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more