Mitch McConnell on CNBC yesterday:
What we have done, Larry, also is set a new template. In the future, any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling, it will not be clean anymore. This is just the first step. This, we anticipate, will take us into 2013. Whoever the new president is, is probably going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again. Then we will go through the process again and see what we can continue to achieve in connection with these debt ceiling requests of presidents to get our financial house in order.
To understand how nonsensical Sens McConnell’s and Gregg’s position is, you have to appreciate that Congress knows when they pass their budget whether it will breach the debt ceiling or not, just like you know when you order your lunch whether you’ll be able to pay for it. They’re saying, I’m going to keep ordering lunches I can’t pay for and when the cashier hands me the check, I’ll hand it right back and tell her it’s her problem.
The budget process is when you square the ledger. Or not—there will be budgets, especially in recession, that add to the deficit and breach the ceiling. In such cases, Congress must borrow to make up the difference, and sometimes that will mean raising the ceiling, as we’ve done without incident since 1917.
But Sens McConnell and Gregg would rather pass budgets they knowingly refuse to pay for, and then threaten default. You can call that budget discipline if you want. But I’m telling you, this is not the way of great nations.
McConnell and Gregg (whom Bernstein debated this morning on CNBC) are disingenuous as hell. They know that the normal give-and-take of the budget process doesn’t produce the kind of cuts they profess to want (although I doubt they’d want them if there were a Republican in the White House) and they’re expressing not only a willingness but a delight in the prospect of holding the entire US economy hostage in order to get things they can’t get any other way.
Statesmen they’re not.
* Yes, that’s a reference to George Wallace’s statement in his 1963 Inaugural Address when he was sworn in as Governor of Alabama: “I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”