Any money cut from the increased IRS funding will actually cost multiples of the amount cut with wealthy individuals and corporations getting away with continued cheating.

Sure, but one eighth is a lot less than all of it.

But they could never cut all of it. So why are we laying down?

I thought we didn't deal with terrorists...

I've got an answer but I think I'm going to front-page it.

The whole process is designed to be mysterious and opaque, and relying on the media to explain what's really going on is a mug's game. If you accept the description of the consequences of not raising the debt limit, it is irresponsible not to negotiate with the terrorists, ugly precedent it is. Politics is going to be a whackaloon shit show for the next year and a half, better get used to it. Democrats won't stand up to the bullies and make them back down, because they know they won't back down. Republicans are convinced chaos is their ally, and the more chaos the better their chances get.

It will be an insane dance whenever Republicans run the House. And no, I don't accept the "consequences" of not raising the debt limit. I am not convinced the world will explode if we ignore it.

And even if there are bad initial consequences, feck 'em. Everyone will know who to blame, and it won't be the Democrats.

There's a tribe of cannibals at the gate, and we're asking if they approve of the dinner napkins? Let them explain why they're blowing everything up.

It's the perpetual stance of the Democrats - no balls. How about the Republicans shoulder the blame for their madness? They're using terror tactics, not us.

Which for Republicans is, of course, a feature and not a bug.

"Gratuitous nastiness toward Medicaid patients" as you say it should be an absolute red line that cannot be crossed.

Work requirements for Medicaid eligibility drives a stake into the heart of the possibility the ACA can ever serve as the backbone of a universal healthcare system and upends the progress of states like MA that have reduced the uninsured to basically just right-wing malcontents and undocumented residents.

If it’s FY2023, as the White House wants, the CR would just be what every CR is: a freeze at current levels. That would be a best-case scenario for Democrats, and House Republicans know it, which is why I don’t buy that it will happen.

I take the point, but might it not also be what MOST Republicans also (secretly) want? Non-defense Federal dollars flow a LOT of places (agricultural subsidies, highways, federal facility construction, just to name a few) that wet Republican beaks, including local small/medium-sized businesses that are run by regular Republican donors. Republicans TALK a lot about "cutting spending" as code for "no money for Lazy Inner-City Types or Illegals," but that ain't where most of the dollars actually go.

They'll take it for sure, and will go back to their districts and brag about what they got for them. But when the cameras, mics and internets are on, they will scream in high dudgeon, as they are now, because the pain quotient for "the other side" that is always needed to sate their base sense of grievance and vengeance, ain't there.

Certainly ought to be what most Republicans want, if they have an opportunity to find out, which Fox News etc. won't give them, and I think there's some evidence they do. If I tell them they won't believe me because I'm an enemy.

> (last time there was a real chance was probably 1993)

If we ever return to the conditions of 1993, all of the unexploded ordinance lying around will suddenly seem not very urgent, and nothing will be done. Probably. There will just be a vote to undo the undoing of the Gephardt Rule and there we'll be.

That's how it was then. Who was thinking about the debt ceiling? Clinton was busy planning to eliminate the deficit (in which he eventually succeeded!!!).

Clinton was planning to de-homophobia-ize the military and get some kind of national healthcare system enacted, in 1993. Both of which blew up in his face. I don't have notes, but I don't think the deficit elimination thinking seriously started til the 2nd term.

And really, given the success he had with integrating gays in the military and getting his national HMO set up, maybe we shouldn't be too quick to assume he could have permanently disarmed the debt limit.

You're so quarrelsome.My line is a throwaway joke line meant to suggest how rare it is in history that Democrats are in a position to eliminate the debt ceiling. It is not a serious argument about Bill Clinton.

I'm not very interested in Bill Clinton--I'm interested in the composition of Congress, which would have allowed them to eliminate the debt ceiling in 1993, if any of them had thought of it.

I'm not even criticizing them for not thinking of it. If you want to argue, show me who was seriously trying to eliminate the debt ceiling before 2011, that's something I'm interested in.

Clinton's budget surpluses were a noteworthy attainment, mostly achieved by not screwing up, aided by the runup of the dotcom boom.

How the Republicans have failed to become the Party of fiscal profligacy after pissing that away... it's enough to make you question the Press' role as an honest broker of information, intended to inform the Public so that they can be better citizens and more wisely pick their leaders.

Clinton folded on the out gays in the military issue but "Don't Ask Don't Tell" although chickenshit was a definite step in paving the way for the later change to nondiscrimination. Everyone found out that after DADT nothing happened. This took the air out of the later repeated "this will ruin unit cohesion and be the end of military effectiveness" nonsense.

"It wasn’t until 1982 that the military enacted a policy explicitly banning gay men and lesbians from their ranks. Before that, however, same-sex relations were criminalized and cause for discharge. And in the early 1940s, it was classified as a mental illness, disqualifying gay men and lesbians from service.

In 1993, the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy went into effect allowing closeted LGBTQ people to serve in the military. Under the policy, service members would not be asked about their sexual orientation, but would be discharged for disclosing it. Eighteen years later, Congress repealed the policy, allowing openly gay, lesbian and bisexual people to serve in the military."

"this will ruin unit cohesion and be the end of military effectiveness"

They sad the same thing with women, black people, and so on. It's their standard, go to argument, and they're always wrong.

You'd think these Republicans would eventually get tired of being WRONG all the time and on the wrong side of history.

Already there's screams from the freedumb caucus that the deal as reported is unworkable; for them its damn near all or nothing. Even if McCarthy is able to whip up enough "moderate" republican votes -- and that's far from a surety -- then the hammer he agreed to always have over his head will drop and destroy his speakership. And for a man to have gone through 15 rounds of humiliation just to be speaker, there's no guarantee he will be willing to fall on his sword, effectively, to TRY to whip the votes to get this deal done.

If these lunatics blow up this deal Biden should ignore it, invoke the 14th and direct the Treasury to pay the debts anyway. Then dare the crooked supreme court who no one trusts to claw back the money that's been authorized/borrowed for payment before the injunctions hit. Let them go to court and expose their game to the world. Privately, McCarthy may even be asking for it to get his ass off the hook.

Biden should have never negotiated to begin with. To continue to entertain this lunacy to satisfy these people who don't give a rat's behind about the US or anyone who ain't on board with white supremacy makes the entire country look sick. Get back to governing, invoke the 14th, isolate the freedumb caucus and make them pay a price for this craziness.