Posted on 10/13/2013 7:12:05 PM PDT by tsowellfan
The dance we are watching this weekend is a very important moment in modern American history with big implications for how the executive and the legislative branches interact in the future.
The House Republicans have staked out a position that they can use their constitutional power of the purse to force the President to negotiate over key issues.
President Obama and Senate Democratic Leader Reid believe they can break the House Republicans and force them to reopen the government and pass a debt ceiling hike with no negotiations and no conditions.
Senate Republicans are split between a majority who want any deal that will end the pain and a militant minority who accept the conflict and pain as the price of forcing very large changes.
Obscured to some extent by the focus on the partial government shutdown and the anxiety over the debt ceiling is the continuing failure of Obamacare and the endless stories about websites failing and people discovering higher rather than lower prices.
What is increasingly clear is that President Obama and Senator Reid have adopted a calculated strategy of trying to isolate and break the morale of the House Republican leadership.
The President is faced with the danger that the conservative Republicans will learn how to use the power of the purse to design a plan for the next three years that will force concession after concession from him.
He has decided on a bold and very risky strategy of refusing to negotiate as long as the House attempts to use its power of the purse to force concessions.
The Democrats have adopted harsh language to describe House Republicans as terrorists wearing body bombs, hostage takers, and even traitors. The mainstream media has enthusiastically picked up all insults and repeated them endlessly.
The intensity of this vilification indicates the Democrats’ strategic desire to break the House Republicans.
Historically there have been 17 government shutdowns since 1976. All were settled. All were part of the American system of constitutional government when the legislative and executive branches are in conflict. This is the eighteenth shutdown but the level of hostility and vicious language is far greater than any earlier shutdown.
Similarly, debt ceilings have been negotiated with various amendments beginning in 1953 under President Eisenhower. For 60 years, Presidents have accepted that the constitutional give-and-take requires negotiating over debt ceilings.
President Obama is trying a very daring expansion of presidential power effectively taking away from the House its constitutional prerogatives and demanding it give him what he wants on his terms with no amendments and no conditions.
This is not a personality defect. This is a cold, calculated strategy.
If the House Republicans hang on and actually get concessions they will have set the stage for three more years of forced concessions.
If President Obama hangs on and coerces a clean continuing resolution and a clean debt ceiling hike he will have set the stage for three years of presidential dominance.
It was an indication of the President’s determination that after his Secretary of the Treasury warned that the financial world would collapse next week if we didn’t raise the debt ceiling, he rejected a six week clean increase of the debt ceiling because it did not meet his requirements.
It will be interesting to see if he accepts concessions on anything or holds out on everything through the weekend.
A lot is at stake.
That was a given long before the government shutdown discussions thanks to Speaker Boehner. You actually think the GOP would have held the House before this all began?
Sometimes I wonder why I bother to donate money to the GOP (stupid party)!
...and you're calling the GOP stupid?
And if the House doesn't fold either?
After a week or a month or a year?
What if the house doesn't care what the media says?
What if they don't care that they may not be reelected?
The side that wants it the most will prevail.
The House GOP is sending a temporary debt limit hike to the Senate.
IF “Obama will crash the economy on 17 Oct 2013” then he and his master Harry Reid will get the blame.
This is the right fight at the right time. The only counter they have to the House debt limit bill is a debt limit bill from the Senate passed by “the nuclear option”.
Well, unless Harry pushes the susan Collins bill through.
Since Reid is a member of the legislative branch as are house members might not he be acting against the interest of the Senate?
So on November 1 won't the RATS look a bit silly?
Hang the bastid by his thumbs, figuratively speaking, of course, and beat on him like a Christmas pinata.
I think “Presidential dominance” is putting it as nicely as possible. Too nicely, in fact.
Obamacare became a Dem nightmare. No matter how the MSM spins it, the people are not buying including Obama supporters. Read many pro Obamacare articles on internet, but the comment section of the article was negative. Other then not getting online due to crashes, the ones who got on were pissed at the premium increases and high deductibles. Many are working middle class (paycheck to paycheck) who supported Obama are now very pissed. Others are naive upper middle class types who thought the rich were the guys living on top of another hill above them. Now they find out they are paying higher premiums just like the rich. There comments are we are not that rich why is the gov hitting us so hard??!!! Bottom line is Obamacare WILL HURT the Dems and give even RINOS and moderate GOP a good issue to win with. Fake conservative Dems were vulnerable because all of them voted for Obamacare. Can you say PR nightmare for Dems from here till election day in 2014!!! This is such a simple strategy a child can figure this out. Instead we jump into a kill zone call CR, DL and gov shutdown with a POTUS (who by the way plays poker) who is willing to crash the US economy, and a MSM willing to place all the blame on the GOP. Even if the scheme half suceeds, the chaos and confusion just eliminated a clear cut issue for the GOP in 2014. Am I calling the GOP stupid, yes, STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!!!!!!!
I’m not ready to totally buy your point of view, but you may be right. At this point we need to run past Oct 17, then we’ll see the sky won’t be falling.... I’ve more to say, but you’ve depressed me with your statements ...
Go play over at DU. Debbie Downers not needed.
IF “Obama will crash the economy on 17 Oct 2013” then he and his master Harry Reid will get the blame.
From: Fiscal deals now focus on sequester, amid little Capitol Hill optimism about quick fix
And negotiations appears to be centering on whether Republicans will agree to undo or change the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts to domestic and defense programs known as sequester, which the GOP sees as crucial to reducing the country's deficit.
Well they, the Dems, now want the sequester cuts reversed. I guess while ObamaCare is the "law of land" and thus unchangeable as a mountain, but the sequester is something else.
It's the Republicans fault thought, as the MSM tells us so. Although surprisingly The Hil has a different spin.
Democrats have decided to ratchet up pressure on Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) instead of accepting a deal that locks in automatic spending cuts known as sequestration and makes reforms to ObamaCare.
We are now living in "interesting times".
My message to Speaker Boehner and the House Republicans: DO NOT GO WOBBLY! YOU CAN WIN THIS BATTLE, AND WHEN YOU DO, AMERICA WINS!
Here is the good news. By 17 Oct 2013 we will see what happens. Worst case is GOP capitulates with a clean CR and DL (as I write Obama actually added amnesty to illegals to his demands to the House) and the GOP takes lumps from their base. Six months later the public will forget and the problems with Obamacare will take center of attention to the public. Hopefully the GOP will make mends with the party base and Tea Party and use Obamacare as a hammer on the Dems, and the gov shutdown is a distant memory for most independents.
The flaw in your logic is this, name one failed program that died the death it deserved. Medicare? Social Security? Dept. of fill in the blank? They don’t! They just keep failing like The Living Dead. Nothing the libturds have done has been rolled back. High time we started.
The Conservatives just need to dig in and wait the 'Rats out.
Yes, he is, but these are interesting times.
Obama, in casual remarks a few weeks ago, referred to the Democrats as "the governing party". An interesting turn of phrase, for sure, for any of the few Americans who remember the Warsaw Pact nations' political systems.
As recently as 1967, when the Democrats in the Senate tried to exercise the "nuclear option" to end the filibuster (with 64-36 majority and VP Hubert Humphrey in the chair!), the chair was overruled 46-54, because a majority of Senators of both parties understood that the Senate had institutional interests that transcended party. This is no longer the case.
The Democrats are united (with the possible exception of Manchin) around the looming coup d'etat which will end the Republic forever, because they "just want to be on the side that's winning". They would rather be members of the governing party than Senators, IOW.
And the Senate Republicans have, for the most part, smelled the coffee, the same coffee that Rep.Peter King is drinking.
The GDR had opposition parties. The parties had leaders, but no members. Their leaders had cars, and state salaries, and seats in the Volkskammer, and as long as they recognized the Leading Role of the KPD they were good to go.
The Republicans and the Democrats are no longer playing the same game. The Republicans in the House think the Old Rules are still in effect. The Democrats know they are not.
Interesting times we live in.
My fear is Republicans will fold due to short term media pressure. Seems to me, if they hold on they not only get what they are looking for - less spending - but they will also regain the public opinion as a more and more desperate Obama team do more and more desperate, petty and vindictive things.
I could be wrong, but I expect Republicans to cave right at the very bottom of public opinion and lock in their losses.
The only way to roll back gov is win elections, take over the House and Senate in 2014 and take the WH in 2016. The biggest problem the GOP will face is GOP reps from purple states. Gingrich found this out in 1994. Many of the Contract with America promises floundered when GOP reps from purple states voted with the Dems to vote it down.
What we are discussing is peanuts. The US has a debt of 16 trillion which is about equal to the entire annual US GDP. Add unfunded liabilities (Soc Sec/Medicare), the two Bush Wars/nation building, bank bailout, FDIC (which GWB doubled from $ 100K to $ 250K), toxic assets and mortgages we brought from Wall Street banks as we bailed them out plus GM bailout, God knows what overseas banks and invisible dark pools that our banks are on the hook for that the Fed Reserve secretly volunteer to print money to cover. Experts think the US has debts with unfunded liabilities equal to 100 trillion to 200 trillion. To give you some perspective of scale, the entire economic domestic output of the world is about $ 60 trillion. The US debt is about 1.5 to 3 times that amount. There is no way Americans can pay it off and one day there will be a time of reckoning. In the mean time our gov (no matter who is in charge) will try to find drastic ways to survive as our debt saps our military strength and put out crisis that will erupt and threaten collapse.
Japan has been printing money and piling debt equal to 200 percent of her GDP and have survive 20+ years with no inflation nor collapse. The key to her success is 90 percent of Japanese T Bills are brought by her citizens. They are not at the mercy of foreign buyers of her gov debt. As a drastic measure, the US gov may force Americans to invest in US T Bills. Private pension funds (IRA, 401K) are prime targets as well as bank accounts. This is call financial repression. It was used by the US gov in the past to pay off the WW2 war bonds. This is how it worked in the past. Average Americans in the past had savings accounts in the bank. They paid a steady 1 to 2 percent. There were no CD, Money Market Accounts, stock investment accounts, etc etc like we have today. Some banks had it available, but required a large minimum to open. Only the rich had access to such products, the average working person did not have the knowledge or cash to open such accounts. T Bills were the only higher paying investment the average working American can buy. This was deliberate by the US gov to channel Americans to pay down the war bonds. it worked.
IMHO I think the US gov will use the Japanese approach and financial repression to keep our deficit spending going at low interest rates without triggering inflation. The trick is how will the US gov force Americans to convert from their current pension funds to T Bills? The gov has several schemes but are waiting for a crisis to offer it to the American public.
The treasury warned that world-wide financial collapse
would occur next week unless the debt ceiling was raised.
The president rejected a six week increase of the debt ceiling
because it did not meet his requirements.
If the House hangs on...
they will set the stage for three years of forced concessions.
If the president hangs on...
he will set the stage for three years of presidential dominance.
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