Obama Stands Firm on No Negotiating on Debt Ceiling While Hard Right GOP House Plays Games

The modern day Republican party stands for economic uncertainty, chaos, refusal to pay its own bills, and radical nihilism. Not exactly big tent.  (Sarah Jones, Politicususa.com)

How is Speaker Boehner going to handle all the rhetoric he and other GOP have been spewing during their five-week recess about they are not going to cave on the debt ceiling unless Obamacare is defunded.  Are they that stupid?  Sure looks like they think they can back the President into a corner but it is going to backfire major league on Republicans as the vast majority of Americans are waking up to the fact the House Republicans along with some Republican hard right Senators are the reason our economy hasn't taken off as fast as it should have.  Most of us are in no mood for GOP games in September after their 5-week boondoggle with very few Town Halls.

A chaotic fall awaits Capitol Hill when lawmakers return to Washington in two weeks and face imminent fiscal deadlines to avoid sending the economy into a tailspin. 

The spotlight is on Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who faces perhaps his toughest test yet as he tries to talk rebellious House Republicans out of risking a government shutdown or worse. Instead he’s floating a potentially riskier strategy: pass a short-term funding resolution, preserve sequestration and take the debt ceiling hostage to goals like unwinding Obamacare and cutting spending. 

On Oct. 1, funding for the federal government will expire. And later this fall, the U.S. will default on its obligations unless Congress raises the borrowing limit, or debt ceiling. Averting these two cliffs will be one of the more daunting tasks facing a wildly dysfunctional Congress and a fractured Republican Party. 

“It reinforces all the reasons why I thought it was a good time to retire at the beginning of the year,” former Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH), a friend and ally of Boehner, told TPM in a recent interview. “Because it looks like deja vu all over again. The same fights, the same cast of characters and the same unwillingness to find common ground.

When LaTourette announced his early retirement he did not hide the fact that it is almost impossible to get things done in the Congress unlike 25 years ago when he came into office.  The different IMHO is the Tea Party and shift to the hard right of the GOP with their no compromising attitude.  Thought this summed it up best:

"The Tea Party Republican Majority now has a sign outside their meeting room-- no moderates allowed," Jesse Ferguson spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a statement. 

A Democrat said it but I have heard the same thing from Republicans with the takeover by the Tea Party in the House that all they want to do is obstruct and only work for their base not their whole district like Congressman have in the past.  This is the most partisan group of malcontents I have witnessed in the House over the years.  Not sure Boehner can control them after they have been back in their districts listening to their hard right supporters.

This interview with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is one of the best I have viewed about the debt ceiling and sequestion effects on the budget.  We are lucky to have Lew as our Treasury Secretary IMHO:

”Treasure Secretary Jack Lew was on CNBC Tuesday where he reiterated that not only will the President not negotiate over raising the debt limit, but, we do not need another self-inflicted wound (courtesy of the GOP). 

“I will reiterate. The President made clear he is not negotiating. Since ’1789,' every congress has acted to pay the bills of the United States. This Congress needs to do the same. What we need in our economy is certainty. We don’t need another self-inflicted wound.” 

CNBC’s John Harwood talked to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Tuesday, August 27th:

Just yesterday the Speaker was threatening a “whale of a fight” over raising the debt ceiling. With consumer confidence heading toward a five year high, Boehner threatened to crash the economy if Republicans don’t get to rule as if they won 2012.  

The Republican leader told a Boise lunch crowd, “But I’ll say this: It may be unfair but what I’m trying to do here is to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would produce if left to its own devices. We’re going to have a whale of a fight."

(snip) 

The President also made sure the public knew that Congress tells him what to spend, and Congress is in charge of paying those bills (raising the debt ceiling): 

“This is a matter of Congress authorizes spending. They order me to spend. They tell me, you need to fund our Defense Department at such- and-such a level, you need to send out Social Security checks, you need to make sure that you are paying to care for our veterans. They lay all this out for me, and — because they have the spending power. And so I am required by law to go ahead and pay these bills. Separately, they also have to authorize a raising of the debt ceiling in order to make sure that those bills are paid. And so what Congress can’t do is tell me to spend X and then say, “But we’re not going to give you the authority to go ahead and pay the bills.” 

Very impressed with Treasury Secretary Lew and his explanations on the debt ceiling and making a deal on Sequestration and the budget.   Lew might be the most articulate Treasury Secretary we have had in years.  He laid out everything very succinctly and understandable to everyone.  He refused to take the bait on the Fed Chairman saying that decision is in the White House.  Gives me a lot of confidence we are on the right track.   Now if only the GOP would get their act together and throw out the Koch Bros Tea Party, they could negotiate in good faith to get this Country moving forward.  My reason for that statement comes from moderate Cong Sensenbrenner, R-WI, on the Voting Rights Act:

Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner is vowing to reverse the recent Supreme Court ruling that made them possible. 

“The first thing we have to do is take the monkey wrench that the court threw in it, out of the Voting Rights Act, and then use that monkey wrench to be able to fix it so that it is alive, well, constitutional and impervious to another challenge that will be filed by the usual suspects,” Sensenbrenner said Monday at an RNC event held to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. 

Sensenbrenner is a longtime advocate of the Voting Rights Act. As chair of the House Judiciary Committee when the law was reviewed in 2006, the Wisconsin legislator oversaw extensive deliberations which ultimately affirmed the VRA’s continuing necessity–and resulted in a 25-year reauthorization. So when the Supreme Court effectively gutted the VRA in June by voiding the requirement for certain states to get federal “preclearance” before changing their voting laws, Sensenbrenner was displeased. 

“Voter discrimination still exists,” he wrote in a June op-ed for USA Today, “and our progress toward equality should not be mistaken for a victory.”

Is it possible that someone like Sensenbrenner could be encouraged to join with other more moderate Republicans in the House (what few are left) along with Democrats to make sure the debt ceiling is passed.  Only need 18 to go with the Democrats to pass the debt ceiling increase with no strings.  If Republicans refuse to negotiate and compromise on the debt ceiling, they will bare the blame for the downgrade of American credit.  Even one of the GOP's budget guru's, Steve Bell, agrees:

The Republican government shutdown isn’t going to be blamed on the President.
Steve Bell, a longtime Senate Republican budget expert now at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told Talking Points Memo that Republicans are fooling themselves if they think that they can get the public to blame the President for a government shutdown.
“If Republican leaders are going to be all tied up again with the debt ceiling and government showdowns, that really is a big negative. We went through this with Clinton. I was in the room when we did this. And it isn’t going to be blamed on the President.”

“In the Republican caucus, there are significant internal divisions,” Bell said. “The House gets most of the attention because it’s pretty melodramatic. But the Senate Republican caucus is absolutely just as tough.”

When the Congress returns to town after their five week recess, the House has nine working days left according to their schedule to get continuing resolutions passed along with a debt ceiling increase. How they could have left town with this hanging is beyond me.  Most of the appropriation bills on how much money can be spent has not been passed so the American people are stuck once again with no timely budget and appropriations bills passed.  The House for several years blamed the Senate for not passing a budget but now that the Senate passed it in the Spring, the House has refused to name any people to a Joint Committee to iron out the differences.

Today's House run by Republicans is the worst in history with the most rhetoric and lies.  All they care about is voting to overturn Obamacare which was found Constitutional by the Supreme Court and is not on the table for any negotiation.  Time to send the GOP House to the unemployment line along with their Tea Party affiliation and staffs.  The GOP House's so-called Hastert rule where you have to have a majority of GOP support to bring up a bill is no way to run the House and is hurting the Country.  As long as their wealthy donors are happy, they don't seem to care about the average American so it is time we decided to elect people who care for all Americans not just the wealthy.