House GOP Eyes Default and Government Shutdown
Janet ♦ 01/14/2013 ♦ 1 Comment
House Republicans are seriously considering their options which includes a government shutdown, and default to force Obama to agree to cut spending by the end of March. The idea of allowing the country to default by refusing to increase the debt limit is getting more widespread and serious traction among House Republicans than people realize, though GOP leaders think shutting down the government is the much more likely outcome of the spending fights this winter.
“I think it is possible that we would shut down the government to make sure President Obama understands that we’re serious,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state told us. “We always talk about whether or not we’re going to kick the can down the road. I think the mood is that we’ve come to the end of the road.”
GOP officials say more than half of their members are prepared to allow default unless Obama agrees to dramatic cuts he has repeatedly said he opposes. Many more members, including some party leaders, are prepared to shut down the government to make their point.
House Speaker John Boehner “may need a shutdown just to get it out of their system,” said a top GOP leadership adviser. “We might need to do that for member-management purposes — so they have an endgame and can show their constituents they’re fighting.”
And of course should this happen the Democrats will do their damnedest to make all the Republicans’ fault, when in fact the fault lies with Obama, for not cutting spending.
The country would eventually default if House Republicans refuse to raise the debt limit, which the Treasury estimates will hit in late February or early March. The government would shut down if House Republicans instead were to refuse to extend the law funding current government operations on March 27.
Boehner thinks he can talk them out of default, but not shutting down the government. Meanwhile, Obama is gambling on the fact that Republicans would never be so foolish as to put the economy at risk to win a spending fight. Conservatives say he’s definitely wrong on that score. They say he’s the foolish and reckless one for piling up $6 trillion in debt on his watch.
You people voted for an inept fool, and gave him a blank check….now when he’s overspent, you still support him.
“For too long, the pitch was, we’ll deal with it next time,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a conservative from Utah. He said GOP lawmakers are prepared to shut things down or even default if Obama doesn’t bend on spending. “No one wants to default, but we are not going to continue to give the president a limitless credit card.”
Technically speaking, Democrats don’t know how to balance a budget. For decades, all they’ve known is tax and spend.
On Monday, Boehner meets with the GOP leadership and then he will head to Williamsburg, Va., to meet with the entire GOP conference on Thursday and Friday. He will walk them through the political and economic consequences of default and his plan for forcing spending cuts without allowing any new tax hikes to get smuggled in. “It is more likely you default than you raise any taxes,” said a senior GOP aide.
To pacify conservatives, he made two promises to his members that will greatly restrict his ability to craft a compromise in the spending fights ahead. The first promise was to bring to the floor only legislation a majority of his members support and do it through the committee process. The second was to increase the debt limit only in exchange for a dollar-for-dollar decrease in spending in the time period covered by that debt increase.
The hope is that Obama will see reason and Congress will ultimately work out a grand spending compromise that raises the debt limit, keeps funding the government and changes the $1.2 trillion in automatic “sequestration” spending cuts set to kick in on March 1. But that scenario has a problem:
Republicans don’t want to compromise. Those cuts, designed initially by the White House and GOP leaders, were agreed to by the last Congress and Republicans consider them a done deal, in the bank. They would negotiate the specific programs that get cut — but not the total number. Right now, half the cuts target defense, half other programs.
GOP officials said 90 percent of their members are prepared to allow the cuts to take effect, rather than compromise, based on their preliminary head counts. This seems like the most likely outcome right now.
Look for members to push for an idea, crafted by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), to
cushion the effect of default by passing legislation beforehand that prioritizes
the order that government bills will be paid in the event the debt limit is not
increased.
Newsdesk International 
OK obama, here’s a real simple economics lesson. You say the debt ceiling needs to be raised to pay the bills for money you have already spent? That’s like me going to the bank and saying ” Hey, I wrote more checks than I had money in my account so you need to put some more money in there. Oh, and don’t worry, I’ll pay it back at some unforeseen time. Or not.”