He forgot to add, until we elect another Republican president. From Think Progress -- Mitch McConnell Vows To Hold Debt Ceiling Hostage In The Future: ‘We’ll Be Doing It All Over’:
August 1, 2011

He forgot to add, until we elect another Republican president.

From Think Progress -- Mitch McConnell Vows To Hold Debt Ceiling Hostage In The Future: ‘We’ll Be Doing It All Over’:

While a deal has been struck to raise the debt ceiling for now, many progressives have worried that the damaged has been already been done in that Republicans learned that “raw extortion works and carries no political cost,” as the New York Times’ Paul Krugman wrote today. “Irresponsible brinksmanship” is now “a proven effective negotiating tactic,” ThinkProgress’s Matt Yglesias noted.

This afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) confirmed this fear when he told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto that Republicans will hold the debt ceiling hostage in the future, saying this debate “set the template for the future”:

MCCONNELL: It set the template for the future. In the future, Neil, no president — in the near future, maybe in the distant future — is going to be able to get the debt ceiling increased without a re-ignition of the same discussion of how do we cut spending and get America headed in the right direction. I expect the next president, whoever that is, is going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again in 2013, so we’ll be doing it all over.

As they noted, progressives should be pushing to repeal the debt ceiling all together. And Dave Dayden reminded us today just who started this hostage taking in the first place -- Blue Dog Democrats and Lieberman in the United States Senate back in 2009 -- The Hidden History of the Debt Limit Hijack: Democrats Started It.

As Dave noted, it was the usual suspects, ConservaDems along with some Republicans and "Independent" Joe Lieberman who used the debt ceiling to leverage getting that deficit commission set up:

But before Tuesday’s hearing was over, Sens. Conrad, Gregg, Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) publicly vowed to vote against raising the debt ceiling if a budget reform commission bill doesn’t come along with it.

I don't know if it's fair to say that Republicans would not have pulled this recent hostage taking if that had not happened a few years ago, but it certainly opened the door for it. Mitch McConnell later said in this same interview that if Republicans aren't happy with this plan, they should be trying to get more Republicans elected so they can continue to completely dismantle all of our social safety nets.

I think liberals had better take the same message. It's ridiculous to think that anyone is going to mount a serious primary challenge to President Obama, but we sure as hell need to be forcing him to deal with some better congressional members and vote more of these ConservaDems and Blue Dogs out of office.

As McConnell noted, the other side is never going to give up. If we throw up our hands up in disgust, we get what we deserve. We all need to be taking a page from Wisconsin right now, putting our collective anger to some good use. One way to do that is to go on over and support the Blue America PAC and help get some progressives elected to office in districts where they're not getting much help from the DCCC or the DSCC.

And one last note, McConnell vowed that when the members of this commission they're going to set up are appointed, Republicans are going to make sure whoever they appoint to it will never agree to any tax increases. Is anyone surprised? I'm not. Time to start getting members of the Senate to vow to put a hold on or filibuster any bill that extends the Bush tax cuts again, no matter what hostage taking they resort to this time around.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon