John Boehner to Decide Whether to Blow Up World Now

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Entering into the final few days of the economic and constitutional crisis, the outcome remains uncertain and unsettled. Last night, the Senate appeared poised to end the government shutdown and lift the debt ceiling. The plan was for the Senate bill to attract a wide, bipartisan vote, and as the debt-ceiling deadline approached, force the House, which has passed nothing, to accept its plan.


Even a lot of sophisticated observers have failed to grasp why this isn't a ransom.


Let me explain. The crucial fact about of the emerging Senate plan is that it fulfills the core Democratic demand that the debt ceiling not be ransomed for policy concessions. Democrats prefer to simply lift the debt ceiling, or abolish it altogether. For the sake of appearance, Republicans have asked to tie policy changes onto the debt-ceiling bill. But Democrats have insisted they won’t pay a ransom: The policy changes must be reciprocal. The Senate compromise accommodates that, by adding on two changes — beefed-up Obamacare income verification and the delay of a small tax — which are both minor in nature and a trade Democrats would have made without a debt-ceiling threat. Attaching mutually acceptable deals onto debt-ceiling hikes is historically normal. Using the debt ceiling as a hostage to force a party to accept policies it doesn't like is not.


That deal has not yet been finalized. Politico floated the possibility that the two Obamacare provisions may be removed, which underscores the fact that the Senate is keeping the tit-for-tat structure of the bargain. Republicans could also ask for a bigger add-on — suspending the medical device tax — but then Democrats would need a correspondingly larger add-on of their own.


The principle undergirding the emerging Senate bill — ending hostage tactics, and making all deals reciprocal — is unacceptable to House Republicans, who want to preserve debt-ceiling hostage-taking as a form of policy leverage. So, rather than wait for the Senate to act on its own, the House is attempting to move its own bill, which demands a small ransom: suspending the medical device tax, and eliminating employer health-care subsidies for congressional staff. The ransom is minor, but preserves the principle that the House can use the threat of default to force the president to accede to otherwise unacceptable policy demands, without making any policy concessions of its own.


But the House is a chaotic, bizarre chamber, and any number of things could happen. Jake Sherman reported a week ago that Boehner has told fellow Republicans he has “something up his sleeve.” The most chilling possibility, floated this morning by a source to National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, is that the House could pass its small-ransom bill and then leave town. No other sources have confirmed this speculation yet, but it would be an incredibly dangerous form of brinksmanship. Leaving town after passing the bill would make the small ransom the House’s final offer before default. It would force the Obama administration either to sign the bill, and make debt-ceiling extortion a permanent part of the new constitutional architecture, or else allow default. The game here would be to force Obama to be complicit in an excruciating dilemma constructed by the House Republicans.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/boehner-to-decide-whether-to-blow-up-world-now.html