Tag Archives: debt ceiling

Stop the Kabuki: It’s About “the Great Betrayal”

Posted on September 22, 2013 by | 30 comments

By Joe Firestone

MSNBC continues on with its campaign to cast the Tea Party Republicans in the role of principal villains in the imminent Government budget/ government shutdown crisis and the likely coming debt ceiling crisis. The teabots, you see, are using the Republican majority in the House to demand more austerity in government and defunding of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). They’re using their bloc of votes in the House, along with the Hastert rule requiring a majority of the majority Republican caucus to veto any possible compromise vote of the whole House on a budget or a continuing resolution that would get bipartisan majority support keeping the government open past October 1.

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Ezra Is Terrified Because of His Framing

Posted on September 18, 2013 by | 52 comments

Here’s an exchange from last Friday’s Chris Hayes “All In” MSNBC show among Chris, Robert Costa of the National Review, and Ezra Klein of The Washington Post’s “Wonkblog.” In what follows I’ve slightly edited the MSNBC transcript to get rid of obvious verbal deviations but haven’t corrected for punctuation.

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Do the Democrats Really Want to Bear the Blame for a Crash that Wall Street Will Cause?

Posted on September 14, 2013 by | 41 comments

By Joe Firestone

This post by Lynn Parramore makes the point that the next crash is coming and probably will be blamed on the Democrats. It’s a great point, but it needs to be pursued further.

What if we have another Republican sweep in 2014, like 2010, but worse? Then we’re going to have more policies that increase inequality. Even less regulation, causing even more domination of our politics by corporations and the financial sector.

We’ll have more military spending and more wars, along with more shredding and privatization of the social safety net. We’ll have even less environmental regulation, and even more global warming; more drill baby drill, and less and less of public education. At the State level, we’ll have more of the war on women, blacks, seniors, and hispanics; more corruption from corporations and the rich giving “gifts” to officeholders; more voter suppression, even more police brutality and denial of first amendment rights, more religion in our schools accompanied by more guns everywhere, and more Scalias, Alitos, Thomases, and Robertses subjugating everyone to corporations.

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Declaring the Grand Bargain Dead Is Premature

Posted on August 31, 2013 by | 34 comments

By Joe Firestone

Stories in The Washington Post and the New York Times have some in the blogosphere proclaiming that it’s time to celebrate the death of the Grand Bargain, and others at least raising a question about its death. I’ll go on record as saying that celebrating its death is definitely premature.

It is so because we’ve yet to go through the budget or continuing resolution-passing activities coming up in September, and also have yet to go through the debt ceiling conflict to come in October. Mainstream Washington commentators believe John Boehner is determined to avoid a government shutdown crisis of the budget/CR conflict and that one or the other will be passed before October 1. Assuming they’re right, that still leaves the matter of the debt ceiling “crisis,” which the same commentators are saying will happen because Boehner has to promise his tea party caucus a chance to coerce the Administration, if he’s going to get their acquiescence on the budget/government shutdown matter.

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Jack Lew: Avoiding Default Is Your Responsibility Too

Posted on August 29, 2013 by | 12 comments

By Joe Firestone

With the end of the Summer break, now comes the return of the debt limit dance. From Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew’s letter to John Boehner:

“Congress should act as soon as possible to protect America’s good credit by extending normal borrowing authority well before any risk of default becomes imminent.

“Based on our latest estimates extraordinary measures are projected to be exhausted in the middle of October. At that point, the United States will have reached the limit of its borrowing authority, and Treasury would be left to fund the government with only the cash we have on hand on any given day, The cash balance at that time is currently forecasted to be approximately $50 billion.

“. . . A cash balance of approximately $50 Billion would be insufficient to cover net expenditures for an extended period of time. And, on certain days, net expenditures could exceed such a cash balance.

“. . . Protecting the full faith and credit of the United States is the responsibility of Congress because only Congress can extend the nation’s borrowing authority . . .“

OK. So, only Congress can extend the nation’s borrowing authority. But it doesn’t follow from that fact that protecting the full faith and credit of the United States is solely the responsibility of Congress.

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Mr. President, End Debt Ceiling Hostage-taking for Good!

Posted on May 13, 2013 by | 11 comments

On May 9, 2013, The Republican House passed H.R. 807 the Full Faith and Credit Act. The Bill says in part:

(a) In General- In the event that the debt of the United States Government, as defined in section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, reaches the statutory limit, the Secretary of the Treasury shall, in addition to any other authority provided by law, issue obligations under chapter 31 of title 31, United States Code, to pay with legal tender, and solely for the purpose of paying, the principal and interest on obligations of the United States described in subsection (b) after the date of the enactment of this Act.
(b) Obligations Described- For purposes of this subsection, obligations described in this subsection are obligations which are–
(1) held by the public, or
(2) held by the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and Disability Insurance Trust Fund.

So, in brief, the Bill provides for the Treasury, even when it is about to reach the debt ceiling, to issue additional debt to pay principal and interest on debt instruments issued to the public including foreign nations, and to pay principal and interest on Social Security (SS) “trust fund bonds” in the course of paying SS recipients. Continue reading →

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Is It Really About “Dysfunctional” Partisanship?

Posted on March 9, 2013 by | 24 comments

By Joe Firestone

The popular narrative in Washington, DC these days among the MSM pundits is that the Congress is “dysfunctional” in the sense that it is very difficult for it to pass a budget and rise above periodic “fiscal” “debt” and “deficit” crises. This difficulty is attributed to the failure of our representatives to rise above their party interests and to accept compromises proposed by “adults” such as the President, which would, it’s claimed, resolve our long term “fiscal sustainability”/”fiscal responsibility” problem through a “balanced” long-term $4 Trillion deficit reduction plan.

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“Fixing the Debt Without Breaking America” now available

Posted on March 5, 2013 by | 55 comments

NEP’s Joe Firestone has just published a kindle book  timed to coincide with the arrival of the sequester deadline. The book, Fixing the Debt without Breaking America: Austerity, the Trillion Dollar Coin, and Ending Debt Ceiling, Sequester, and Budgetary Crises, consists of reorganized content from Joe’s blogs plus three completely new chapters. You can follow this link to get a copy.

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L. Randall Wray’s Presentation at Lewis and Clark College

Posted on March 1, 2013 by | 13 comments

L. Randall Wray recently presented at the Steinhardt Lecture at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon. The title of his presentation was: “Fiscal Cliffs, Debt Limits, and Unsustainable Deficits: Can the US Really Run Out of Dollars?”

The video and matching slide presentation are provided below. Media Roots created a transcript of the presentation. You can access it via this link. Continue reading →

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Framing Platinum Coin Seigniorage: A Working Document

Posted on February 5, 2013 by | 9 comments

By Joe Firestone

Jack Foster proposed a framing document for High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, in a recent comment he made on one of my posts. In response, I posted a six-part blog series to accommodate readers who prefer the blog format.

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