Robert Reich explains the irresponsibility of the GOP on the shutdown/debt ceiling

Found on Facebook, courtesy of Robert Reich.

“I would dispel the rumor that is going around that you hear on every newscast, that if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we will default on our debt,” says Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. “We won’t. We’ll continue to pay our interest.”

This is crazy talk. While the Treasury Department could prioritize interest payments after October 17 – the day the Treasury Department says it no longer has legal authority to pay the nation’s debts – and not pay Social Security and Medicare, this would buy a few days at most. Meanwhile, interest rates will soar, stock prices will plummet, and the global economy will begin spiraling downward. So why are Republicans talking like this? Because they want to sound as if they’re willing to blow up the economy if they don’t get their way. A crazy person with a bomb is much scarier than someone holding a bomb who looks and acts reasonable. Sounding crazy is part of the Republican bargaining strategy.

But the President and the Democrats must not give in. If we get to October 17th and the Republicans are still holding the nation hostage, the President has only one option: He must ignore the debt ceiling and order the Treasury to continue to pay all the nation’s bills – relying on Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which says the “validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” The debt itself is clearly “authorized by law” because it’s the direct result of laws authorizing the U.S. to spend and to tax. The showdown over the debt ceiling is over payment of the debt, not the legality of the debt itself. If Republicans disagree, let them try to impeach the President.

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8 thoughts on “Robert Reich explains the irresponsibility of the GOP on the shutdown/debt ceiling

  1. FWIW, if David Dayen’s piece below is on target, Mary Burke, or whomever the Dem candidate is, will have an easy victory in 2014.

    “The right’s antics could cause a Depression: The terrifying default aftermath
    Normally with a financial crisis, there’s at least agreement on the need for a response. Not with these lunatics”

    http://www.salon.com/2013/10/09/gop_antics_could_spur_a_post_default_depression/

    The austerity-hawks are way to the right of where the GOP used to be. Republicans used to believe in things such as “economic mobility,” and “growth.”

  2. Robert Reich – the long Con(man)

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/09/robert-reich-inequalitys-intellectual-fraudster.html

    There is nothing that Reich says that I don’t first put through this filter.

    Just as so-called progressives on climate change, McKibben 350.org, who for example are funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and are basically paid as good guy front groups, whose real purposes are corralling dissent and controlling/deflecting it for big energy.

    1. Thanks nonquixote.

      Yves at Naked Capitalism is gold standard.

      Very sorry to hear about McKibben and 350.org.

      Again, didn’t know.

    2. Good article link but I sort of disagree on STEM importance. See the Atlantic article below and take a look at the comments. Although if our country becomes really good at educating our children, we’ll have to darn well make sure there are good jobs in these fields available for them and so we’re back to the problems of free trade, improper taxation of multinationals and strategies employers use to drive down wages like H1B visas.

      http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/americans-are-way-behind-in-math-vocabulary-and-technology/280413/#disqus_thread

  3. It is just another in a, “grain of salt,” theory I adopted since buying my first car about 1969. When you see (one of many stories about this particular occasion) re-done Obomba signs, no police presence at all (as was NOT the case with any Occupy event) and even when watching some of these, “leaders,” getting arrested for chaining themselves to the WH fence, (what are they really risking with their attorneys just off camera?) orchestrated propaganda and not much more.

    http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/playing-golf-planet-burns-obama-meets-oil-man-protesters-call-halt-keystone

    I no way am I implicating those protesters are insincere, just saying they need to look behind the curtain a bit farther.

  4. Reich is doing a great job building awareness of economic inequality and its key drivers. He’s generally thin on specific solutions and I think really has to address the role free trade plays. That is doubtless a very painful subject to him given his role in the Clinton Administration but necessary as TPP will be voted on soon (assuming there is a functioning Senate).

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