Tuesday, April 26, 2011

"A simple desire to do what's best for one's country should preclude such madness."

Here is Speaker Boehner three months ago.

[A debt-ceiling default] would be a financial disaster, not only for us, but for the worldwide economy. I don't think it's a question that's even on the table.

And here he is yesterday.

If the president doesn't get serious about the need to address our fiscal nightmare, yeah, there's a chance it [the debt limit vote] could not happen.

My title is a quote from Steve Benen about this.

He knows what the right course of action is. He practically vowed to be responsible. He assured the nation that Republicans would take our collective obligations seriously. The Speaker's own rhetoric made it clear he wasn't going to risk a catastrophe as some kind of partisan game.

And yet, he we are, and Boehner is now prepared to do exactly that.

I have to hope that Boehner's hostage strategy continues to be a radical stunt, and that he doesn't actually intend to hurt all of us on purpose. He has the proverbial gun to the hostage's head (in this case, our economy), but he doesn't really want to pull the trigger -- Boehner just wants Democrats to think he will so they'll pay his ransom. That's how the game works.

But the damage might come without a bullet ever being fired. As Ezra Klein points out.

Remember that the danger here isn’t simply that we don’t make our payments. It’s that we run such a terrifying and uncertain process that we make the market think it’s more likely that we won’t cover our debts at some point in the future. Giving the market a demonstration of exactly how we could fail them is almost as bad as actually failing them.

The American people should not stand for such madness. Is anyone out there paying attention?

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