I thought the issue was in the House, and this does not say that the House's game of chicken is over and anything has been resolved there, merely that "some" republicans are joining the democrats. Can someone explain why this item means good news?
If the Senate agrees on a bill and it gets put up for a vote in the House it will probably get through with all the dems and enough Republicans to pass.
They've supposedly had the votes for a clean CR for a while, but the Speaker has not permitted a vote to come to the floor due to the GOP's adherence to requiring a "majority of the majority" to approve a vote to reach the floor. If you exclude the Tea Party caucus Republicans, the majority of the majority just isn't there.
Really, the "rule" is common sense for the Speaker of the House. If the Speaker wishes to keep his job, he should follow the rule. But as demonstrated in the past, Boehner is willing to break the rule to get some bills passed.
Boehner is subject to two masters: the 8th district of Ohio, and the Republican Caucus. The first keeps him a Representative, and the second keeps him the speaker of the house. Keeping both pleased is necessary if he wants to continue working as Speaker.
It's assuming (IMO correctly) that it will be too politically difficult for Boehner to prevent the Senate's bill from coming to the floor of the House and being voted on.
In the House vote, it's likely the most conservative House members will still vote against it, but there should be more than enough votes for it to be passed (with the House votes coming from moderate Republicans + all/nearly all Democrats).
Both sides were standing firm by their "ideals". Neither side made any sincere efforts to find an actual solution.
Apparently, both sides want to open the government. So... why should Democrats cede the Republicans on issues? Compromise is when both sides give up something to meet in the middle. But Republicans haven't "given up" anything in any of their deals.
When the Republican leader of the house refuses to bring bills to the floor AND the Democratic leader of the Senate refuses to bring bills to the floor they're both playing politics.
I'm not arguing that democrats are to blame. I'm arguing that BOTH sides are involved in these games, and BOTH sides should have been willing to bring more to the table.
I'm disappointed in how quickly HN is heading towards Reddit in its down voting. You can't even try to keep the conversation factual and mention the issues on both sides. Either you jump in with the current media story of how it's all republicans fault or you get down voted.
The US has actually defaulted a couple of times. During the War of 1812 (duh, war) and in 1979 (glitch?!?). About half the debt limit raises have had other terms ("dirty").
I should mention debt limit and paying service on the debt are separate things and the US still has enough income every month to service the debt, but they tend to get put together to add to the stress.
Prior to the recent crop of idealogue Republicans in the House, much political compromise came about by horse trading legislation, earmarks, committee appointments, et al, behind closed doors. Now with earmarks mostly gone, Tea Party republicans have nothing to show off to their constituents except for achievements in idealogical concessions from the other side. This is a new and dangerous precedent because "compromise" on idealogy appears as a loss to one's radical constituents. Your congressman used to go home and brag about an earmark for a local library or bridge, now he goes home to brag about how to overturned a Obamacare.
In no way is the current disfunction "the way it's always been" or "business as usual"
Also, the idea that the US can prioritize payments like that is false. First of all, the Republicans have tried numerous times to actually ban the practice of prioritizing payments to avoid default. Secondly, the Treasury's ancient computer systems can't just be updated overnight to hand these kinds of changes, secretary Jack Lew said as much.
Republicans have no faith the government can fix healthcare websites, but somehow are willing to risk the health of the US economy on the treasury to be agile and fast moving enough to both update computer systems as well as navigate a legal morass of contractual obligations to avoid potentially missing debt repayments.
Trying to downplay a default IMHO is pretty irresponsible. We don't need to run this experiment.
You might want to check the history on that.
"Prior to the recent crop of idealogue Republicans in the House, much political compromise came about by horse trading legislation, earmarks, committee appointments, et al, behind closed doors."
We cannot keep paying for those. Even the sequester is a joke for spending cuts.
"Also, the idea that the US can prioritize payments like that is false. First of all, the Republicans have tried numerous times to actually ban the practice of prioritizing payments to avoid default."
The House passed a bill to prioritize payments that was not allowed to be voted on in the Senate. This is just plain a false statement.
"Tea Party republicans have nothing to show off to their constituents except for achievements in idealogical concessions from the other side."
They have showed how alike the party leaderships are and are making a lot of people think about third parties. The 2012 election also showed that the 2012 convention problems were not a fluke.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/10/10/house-debt-ceiling-...
I was with you up until this point, but saying "the Republicans" want to ban prioritization of payments is false. Most appropriations laws do not specify that the executive can spend "up to $X" on a given thing, but must spend exactly $X on that thing. To wit:
> Regarding the spending power, the picture is a bit more nuanced. In
> the early years of the Republic, Congress passed laws that authorized the
> president to spend “up to” certain sums of money, and the president was
> accordingly able to carry out his constitutional duties while spending
> money in amounts not precisely specified by Congress.
> In most areas of the federal budget, however, that practice has long
> since ended. Congress now typically specifies precise amounts of money
> (or, in the case of so-called entitlement programs, precise formulae to
> determine amounts of money) that the president must spend for each
> authorized program.
> When Congress appropriates the money necessary to fund those authorized programs, it effectively orders the
> president to spend no more and no less than those amounts. It would be
> odd, indeed, if a president were to assert that he could choose to, say,
> send Medicare beneficiaries (or their medical care providers) less money
> than they would be entitled to receive under the relevant statute. [1]
I agree with your other points. But the illegality of spending prioritization is (1) not a creation of Republicans and (2) a much bigger issue than changing some Treasury software.
1. p1199, http://www.columbialawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/...
1979 is interesting because of all the run-up that led to the glitch. 2006 is basically a reverse of today's position.
As I understand it, hitting the debt limit will nearly certainly quickly cause default due to timing issues of revenue and debt obligations combined with the fact that you then can't issue debt in advance to of obligations to address these timing issues.
But yes, this still needs to get through the house, and if it does we've just kicked the can to Jan.
This is funny. Even funnier is that the Republicans don't realize that most of society doesn't share their values or opinions.
http://www.taylormarsh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Obama_...
They should be dragged to a public square, tarred and feathered.
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) -- who has characterized the shutdown as something the Republican-led House (and the House leadership, particularly) did at the prompting of Republican Senator Ted Cruz --- would probably be pretty surprised to find that he was a Democratic PR operative.
It was only the House Reps who were claiming the moral authority to hold a gun to the head of our economy, in order to squeeze concessions that they cannot possibly win by any normal legislative procedure.
Senator Reid could choose to do so. He does not, because it would be stupidly disruptive to create a crisis for a debt ceiling.