Gambling on the debt ceiling

Ever since talks with the White House collapsed, the fight over the debt ceiling has fallen to Congress, where it's devolved into competing shows of force between the Democratic-controlled Senate and Republican-controlled House. Both have offered their own bills, and it's pathetic because neither bill actually has the votes to make it out of its own chamber. Harry Reid might be able to cobble together a majority for his proposal, but he'll need Republican votes to overcome a filibuster. Boehner can't even count on votes from his own party, whose restive Tea Party caucus is simply not interested in raising the ceiling (or governing, for that matter). And complicating matters for Boehner, Pelosi's Democrats are going to vote "no" en masse to force him to find the votes within his own conference. At the moment, the stalemate between the two chambers of Congress looks like nothing so much as an arthritic mating display, and they're not even fooling each other with their empty posturing and geriatric chest-puffing.

But the dynamics of the standoff may favor Harry Reid as things progress, even though Senate Democrats are currently unable to move his bill. It takes time to negotiate a new bill, for the agreement to be marked up as a bill, for the CBO to score the mark-up, and then for Congress to vote on it. Since we're only a week away from defaulting, Dems and Reps need to come to an agreement very soon. And as soon as either Reid or Boehner shows his hand by calling for a vote in his chamber, we will see that both are negotiating from a position of weakness. If the House votes first and their bill fails to pass, House Republicans might lose their leverage as moderate Senate Republicans scramble to work with Harry Reid. However, in the event that the Senate votes first and fails to move Reid's bill, I still don't think Boehner stands a much better shot at pushing his proposal through, since the far right-wing of his party is a main obstacle in the House and they seem uninterested in exploiting the looming deadline.

In order to propel his bill ahead of the Democrats', Boehner needs to show that he can assemble a majority. That would pretty much tank the Democrats' plans. But his prospects were damaged today by a disappointing score from the CBO and warnings by Wall Street that a short-term debt limit hike is insufficient - which spells bad publicity and destabilizes his standing among his base. In a sign that the Speaker recognizes his weak hand, the House vote has been put off until Thursday, so I can't say things are looking too bright for the poor guy. If the Tea Party even had one iota of interest constructive governance, they would stand behind the Republican leadership right now, hand themselves a victory, and cut their losses. But these people don't know how to quit while they're ahead. If they actually cared about leveraging their votes for policy, they would have agreed weeks ago to the grand bargain that Obama had been crafting with Boehner. Instead, they gave up their best opportunity for entitlement reforms in order to protect tax breaks for oil companies and a porous tax code for the rich. They torpedoed their own flagship just to make a point. And they'll continue this predictable holding pattern because their zealotry has reduced them to automatons.

The Democrats will prevail because they're playing strategically against people whose most salient dynamic is their lack of dynamism.

Debt limit negotiations

Boehner's talks with Reid are the latest round of efforts to end up collapsing over insurmountable roadblocks. But by making such a big show of quitting the negotiating table, the two party's camps are upping in the ante in a classic game of brinksmanship over who will take the blame for default. It's no accident that both have followed this same pattern throughout because it's scripted.

In fact, Reid reportedly didn't back out of the talks until after being summoned to the White House, where the Senate Majority Leader presumably conferred with Obama and decided to amplify the White House's narrative that Republicans are being intransigent.

And what will happen when markets reopen to the increasingly jittery investors tomorrow? The Republicans may see their resolve tested when the consequences become tangible

Speaker Emerita

I worked as a research analyst for a few months in 2010. On my first day, all the new RA's were introduced to the permanent staff and we played an ice breaker. We each said our names, the school we went to, a wild animal we would domesticate, what we would name it, and why. When came to my turn, I said, "I'd get a cougar and I'd name her Nancy Pelosi."

I said it to break the ice, but I only half intended it as a joke. I have a very complex adulation for Nancy, but she's a complex intersection of some of my favorite things. Maybe it's because I'm a gay guy, and it is a truth universally acknowledged that gay men are attracted to powerful women. Maybe it's that she's a Californian, or that she's the Congresswoman for my beloved gaysian San Francisco. Or maybe it's because Nancy Pelosi is single most effective, unwavering champion for liberal causes in national politics since I became politically conscious.

It's not just that I want to differentiate myself by worshipping at the altar of someone other than the president. I admire President Obama, but when the White House wanted to abandon comprehensive health care reform in favor of a piecemeal approach after RILF Scott Brown's election to the Senate, it was Nancy who famously rejected the White House capitulation and declared, "You go through the gate. If the gate's closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we'll pole-vault in. If that doesn't work, we'll parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people."

via the Economist
Along with Russ Feingold, Nancy's speakership was the biggest casualty to liberals in the 2010 midterm elections and it's a travesty. I'll never forget that November day when Democrats took back Congress just a few years ago in the 2006 midterms. Bush and the Republicans had been running around unfettered for 6 years - really as long as I knew anything about politics - when Nancy Pelosi appeared on television to declare that "Democrats are ready to lead." It was the first time I remembered a big electoral victory, and the speech was music to my ears. And boy did she give Bush a hard time for the remainder of his presidency. Nowadays, John Boehner calls the shots in the House, but I for one will keep trumpeting the awesomeness of the first woman Speaker of the House until she gets that gavel back!

via the Economist

On Osama bin Laden's death

September 11th will always be seared into my memory as a day when our nation lost a little bit of its innocence. This sentiment is perhaps most vivid for those of us for whom this moment was also a coming of age. The attacks occurred on my second day as a freshman in high school, and marked in a very pronounced way the start of a sobering new stage in my life. I think we mostly agree looking back that compared to the decade that preceded it, the years after 9/11 saw a renewed patriotism and sense of solidarity, but that the attacks brought us together while fanning the flames of our fear and distrust of outsiders. In some ways, I actually do miss those days of a nation united by its shared outpouring of emotion - whether it was grief, fear or defiance. It gave us an identity. But I think the net effect, apparent after just a few months, was debasing rather than uplifting, with defiance supplanted by righteousness and grief evolving into wrath. The rash, unmeasured reaction to 9/11 took us to war in Iraq within two years - a decision that had no relation to the war on terror and whose disastrous prosecution continues to overstrain our military even today.

Now that the initial shock of hearing that Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces has worn off, those of us who remember 9/11 this way might be left to contemplate the kinds of emotions on display among some of the celebrating crowds. The mostly young people who turned out to cheer bin Laden's death probably feel, as I do, that al-Queda's actions robbed us of our childhood insouciance, or at least precipitated its loss. I too feel relief that an ugly chapter in history has come to an end, if only symbolically. However, the ecstatic cries of "USA! USA!" in celebration of a death struck me as inappropriate, if not deranged. And as others have pointed out, their zeal for death bears a chilling resemblance to that of anti-American extremists' celebrations (complete with jingoistic banner waving and chanting) following 9/11 and other murders of American civilians in the Middle East.

via TalkingPoints Memo
Have we already forgotten the unmeasured, emotionally-charged foreign policy disasters of the past decade? David Sirota wrote a great piece today criticizing the untempered displays of joy and the media for condoning it:

This is bin Laden’s lamentable victory -- he has changed America’s psyche from one that saw violence as a regrettable-if-sometimes-necessary act into one that finds orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed. In other words, he’s helped drag us down into his sick nihilism by making us like too many other bellicose societies in history -- the ones that aggressively cheer on killing, as long as it is the Bad Guy that is being killed.

Our reaction to the news last night should be the kind often exhibited by victims’ families at a perpetrator’s lethal injection -- a reaction typically marked by both muted relief but also by sadness over the fact that the perpetrators’ innocent victims are gone forever, the fact that the perpetrator's death cannot change the past, and the fact that our world continues to produce such monstrous perpetrators in the first place.

When we lose the sadness part -- when all we do is happily scream "USA! USA! USA!” at news of yet more killing in a now unending back-and-forth war -- it’s a sign we may be inadvertently letting the monsters win.

We can all understand jubilation in victory but it would have been a little more human to see some solemnity in remembrance of those who lost their lives in this conflict.