In Foreign News
While it looks like the Congresscritters have finally figured out that they are actually going to have to do something about the mess they created, I thought I would pass along a couple of items from beyond US borders.
Mark Mardell is the BBC editor for US news and he notes: Republicans raise grandstanding to an art form.
The Canadians get a bit harsher, asking: Is the debt ceiling a ‘stupid’ idea?
The debt ceiling was not much of an issue until 1995, when the Gephardt rule was repealed. Named for Democratic congressman Dick Gephardt, and in effect since 1979, the rule meant the debt ceiling would rise whenever a budget was passed, based on the amount of spending that was authorized, [economist John] Blank explained to CBC News.
But, in 1995,with Democrat Bill Clinton in the White House, Newt Gingrich, then the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, saw that he could replace the Gephardt rule with “negotiations on the debt ceiling and use it as a whip to get people to make deals” with him, Blank said.
In his view, the debt ceiling is now “based on a divisive cudgel mentality that was propagated by a minority leader who was looking for a way to bully the president.”
The Republicans own this mess – lock, stock, and barrel¹, and they used it to shoot themselves in the foot.
1. Those are the three main parts of a firearm, principally a flintlock musket.
