11:30 AM
FleetAdmiralJ
Cantor got slammed yesterday online by suggesting that the GOP would allow the United States to hit its debt ceiling, forcing the United States to not be able to meet it's obligations (some people, including the Obama Administration call this defaulting since the US can't meet it's obligations, other people don't since we're still paying interest. It's hard to tell how the markets will read it).
He later backtracked and said this:
The House will consider a debt limit increase within the window put forward by Treasury Secretary Geithner. Should he shift his estimation for necessary action based on revenues or outlays, we will move as well. However, as Republicans have made clear, we will not blindly raise the debt limit without meaningful spending cuts and binding budget reforms to ensure that we don't continue bad spending practices and max out the credit card in the future.
To consider what Cantor is threatening to do, consider this scenario:
There is a thermonuclear bomb sitting in Grand Central Station. Two bomb experts, who really don't like each other but are forced to work together, arrive at the scene. However, the bomb is so complex that it is impossible for just one of them to fix it, so they need to work together. When they arrive, the countdown clock on the bomb is at 5 minutes until detonation.
Basically what is happening is that Cantor is saying that, well, one of the bomb experts really hates the other. In fact, he hates him so much that he's willing to use the nuclear bomb crisis to essentially extort tons of money and whatnot from the other bomb tech. Now, the other bomb tech obviously sees this as completely unfair and criminal. However, the first bomb tech makes it abundantly clear that, hey, if he doesn't meet his demand, he'll let the bomb go off, not only killing both of them, but blowing away the rest of the city with them.
Not only this, but the extorting bomb tech decides that he's just going to sit around and not even discuss things or even try to defuse the bomb until the clock ticks to under 1 minute to go. In doing so, he's hoping to force the second bomb tech to give in to his demands lest be responsible for letting the city get blown up.
This is the situation we face when we have the possibility of a cataclysmic federal default combined with someone, who we are forced to work with, who is just fine with blowing everything up just so they can squeeze concessions out of the other side.
And the Democrat's problem with debt ceiling is similar to the poor innocent bomb tech above: not cutting a deal might have catastrophic consequences, but at the same time you don't want to validate their hostage taking because, after all, if you do then they'll just come back and do it again.
So what does one do?
