Uh-ho

It's beginning to look a lot like the Mayan New Year:

The U.S. government will hit the $16.4 trillion federal debt limit on Monday and turn to "extraordinary measures" to continue borrowing, the Treasury Department said Wednesday, beginning a countdown until Congress either passes legislation to allow for more borrowing or the government defaults on its debt.

So once again, and sooner than thought, we encounter those five most terrifying words in the English language: "Beginning a countdown until Congress ..."

The degree to which the debt ceiling's somewhat premature collapse complicates the government's already deeply destructive, gratuitous gridlock is immeasurable. For years, contemporary Republicans have distinguished themselves as America's most destabilizing force since the 1850s' Southern Democrats--and now the horrible power of the GOP's threatened nihilism is effectively doubled.

As are the prospects of total war, which, like most wars, is being provoked by a bottomless fatuity. The post-apocalypse upside, assuming Democrats entrench? (And I do mean unwaveringly.) We won't have this Republican Party to kick around anymore, for it will have made history of itself.

Comments

[Jim Milstein]

I think Obama should just use the Constitutional Remedy. It sits there waiting expectantly. Republicans, until recently vaunting the Unitary Executive, could surely find no fault with a Chief Executive & Commander in Chief who saves his country (and the world) from fiscal collapse.

This would immediately lead to the House drawing up a Bill of Impeachment, but so what?

[Peter G]

This is better than I hoped for. The Republicans might have been tempted to stretch a solution, even a small one, to the fiscal cliff up to the time of the debt limit crisis. There was a lot of very real damage that might have been done by delay and by the uncertainty engendered by a never ending series of artificial crises. I don't know if a perfect storm can yield perfect calm but, by God, it ought to fracture the Republicans like nothing else.

[BobH]

I agree with Peter G.

Better than I had hoped also. And, an extra added bonus...a new Congress on January 2, 2013...thus reducing the number of tea party crazies in the House.

Perhaps a new beginning. One can hope.