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#1 WorkingPoor
WorkingPoor
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Interests:I’m a Canadian living the simple life in Mexico. Instead of Sleepless in Seattle, I am Stuffless in Mexico. Oh, and I have been posting on bearish forums since 2000. I have been here before as CivilBear and PoorSoul.
Posted Today, 09:27 AM
The fiscal showdown is complicated because it wraps up not only major differences in policy goals but also an equally large disagreement about what methods of obtaining those goals are legitimate.
Republicans say the debt ceiling is merely leverage, and using it is at worst just a slightly more aggressive form of regular politics.
The Democratic position is that using the debt ceiling to extract policy concessions of any kind is inherently dangerous and illegitimate. Using the debt ceiling as leverage means threatening not to raise it, and threatening not to raise it means, potentially, not raising it, which would have unpredictable but potentially devastating and permanent effects.
Threatening not to raise the debt ceiling is not like threatening to block a health-care bill. Republicans argue that passing a health-care bill is worse than not passing one. They don’t argue that not passing a debt ceiling increase is better than passing one.
That’s what makes it a ransom rather than a regular political negotiation: One party is using the threat of doing something that it concedes will wreak irreparable harm.