The crisis of 2011, in 2013

I would say the broad strokes are certainly correct, but the larger issue that’s looming here is not the shutdown but the debt ceiling. That really has the potential to turn into a constitutional crisis, because (this seems to be the consensus) there’s no executive action that Obama could take that wouldn’t in some way violate one of the duties of the executive branch. Theories are floating around that this is all a pretext for forcing Obama into a (legally) unwinnable situation in which he would have to break some law simply because he is obligated to do contradictory things, thereby providing grounds for another impeachment. This does not seem entirely incredible to me.

I suspect that without a compromise, which seems unlikely (or Republican defections, which seem even less likely), we will bust through the debt ceiling. The resolution could come in the courts or through some other mechanism, but in reality, no one really knows what happens next.

3: Declaring the debt limit unconstitutional does not pay the bills. He will still need the money, and/or to sell T-bills. The debt limit is actually an authorization by Congress to issue new/more bonds.

If Obama and Treasury start issuing unauthorized debt instruments, I am not sure how financial markets will react, and am not crazy about the precedent.

To me the debt ceiling isn’t so much about how much is spent (that is determined in the appropriations process) as about how appropriations are financed. Obama can no more legally “blow past the debt ceiling” than he could by executive order decree an 10% income tax surcharge. (And why not? Why aren’t we advocating Obama-decreed taxes if he has such Constitutional power? Why are we messing with full faith and credit?)

Yeah, and the impoundment act keeps him from moving enough money around.

5: The platcoin doesn’t help that much. Even if the Fed were to accept it, I still think the Fed and/or Treasury has to issue some kind of money instrument (T-bills, loans) to pay the bills.

Brad DeLong wanted a thousand billion dollar coins. I would go much lower, and simply have the Fed pay creditors and suppliers in platinum (coated, symbolic) coinage.

Now would Credit Suisse or the Chinese accept this unauthorized legal tender in exchange for their old T-bills? Would Boeing?

“since the Democrats are concentrated in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia while the Republicans are spread out all over”

Right. My understanding is that while the artificial gerrymandering is helping the Republicans, even a nominally fair drawing of district lines would leave the Republicans with a large advantage, since Democrats are concentrated in sky-high-percentage Democratic districts (usually called “cities”) and Republicans tend to live in just high enough to win reliably districts. Sigh.

Whatever. The Republicans either really believe (tea baggers) or pay lip service to the idea that government is bad, so they don’t mind all that much if the government shuts down. It doesn’t look good.

Digby thinks a plausible compromise might be Obama’s Grand Bargain, involving cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

The interesting political aspect of this, to me, is the way it exposes the weaknesses in the constitution. The house republicans aren’t doing anything extra-constitutional or that violates the constitution. Rather, they are breaking a set of norms that have existed for a long time around what exercises of constitutionally-approved power are acceptable. They’ve let a very powerful genie out of the bottle, one that can’t be put back absent a total political defeat for the Rs followed by constitutional amendments. There’s really no telling where its going to lead US governance.

Impeachment is not the trial. He won’t be removed, for sure, but he can be impeached via a party-line vote in the House.

As far as controlling the House goes: the 2014 election is an eternity away in political terms. Normally, the even money would be on the party not in the White House picking up seats, but these are not normal times. I’m not terribly optimistic about Democrats winning back the House in 2014, but 2016 is a real possibility because the increased turnout for a presidential election favors Democrats.

I don’t think there’s any sensible way of differentiating between gerrymandering and “Democrats just concentrate in cities.” In any situation, you are faced with the question of how to draw the districts. If you throw the entire city into a few districts and chop up the remaining space into many more districts, you have gerrymandered the results so that the city vote (which overwhelmingly goes to one party) is concentrated while the rural vote is spread out.

I take Sides’ point about having to compare with some counterfactual, but I think he’s ignoring the history of this development. It didn’t happen overnight; it’s been decades in the making. So taking incumbency into account but only going back to 2008 just prompts the question of what happened before 2008 that led to those incumbents.

Does this shutdown mean the NSA won’t be spying on emails, the CIA won’t be drone-bombing Pakistan, and so on, or is that stuff exempt?

“breaking a set of norms that have existed for a long time around what exercises of constitutionally-approved power are acceptable”

In that case, perhaps the simplest solution is just to declare the Republican party to be illegal combatants (remember, there is no due process surrounding this), and start approving drone strikes on the House. It’s not even a violation of Posse Comitatus, as the troops haven’t left their base!

@8 “Brad DeLong wanted a thousand billion dollar coins. I would go much lower, and simply have the Fed pay creditors and suppliers in platinum (coated, symbolic) coinage.

Now would Credit Suisse or the Chinese accept this unauthorized legal tender in exchange for their old T-bills? Would Boeing?”

If that’s true then wouldn’t $100 bills do just as well? Or is there some other rule that means they cannot just increase the money printing to pay those bills?

OK, $100 bills would be too small for the amounts, but does anyone know if or why there cannot be million $ bills printed and presented for payment?

It’s not borrowing, so doesn’t come under the debt ceiling. So why not?

Maybe he should print a bunch of Euros instead of Dollars.

Democracy only has a chance of working when what unites a society is more important than what divides it. Looking across the pond from a European liberal secular point of view, I am horrified yet fascinated by the collected schizophrenia of the US mindset.

The current crisis is just a battle in a political war, in which one side will never be satisfied by anything less than total victory. How long before this leads to secessions and/or a shooting war?

One thing for sure, the situation has been made far worse by the extremely malign influence of Rupert Murdoch. My conclusion from this is that progressives here in the UK should do their best to limit the extent and influence of his empire here. So far as I am concerned, he is an enemy foreign power.

I’d like to note that the question of whether or not debt Obama issues in defiance of Congress is good debt is, in fact, almost certainly a justiciable question.

US government debt is widely traded and used as a financial instrument. If someone tries to offer someone else debt instruments that have not been duly authorized by Congress (say, as a fulfillment of a contract that demands one person or group provide t-bills to another) that creates a legal question that has to be answered: is the debt legal? Does it fulfill the terms of the contract?

It’s possible that the courts could rule that it does, but it requires a very novel legal argument: “Congress authorizing expenditures is equivalent to them authorizing the government to go into debt to meet those expenditures should other revenue sources be insufficient.”

Courts hate novel legal arguments, especially ones that go against literally the entire history of jurisprudence on a subject. (Unless, of course, the novel legal arguments exist for the purpose of gutting the VRA. Then they’re wildly popular!) Under normal circumstances, I can’t see the courts letting the executive branch just issue debt whenever it wants to in clear defiance of one of the very few explicitly enumerated powers.

These are… far from normal times.

The chessboard has changed. New thinkers like Elizabeth Warren, Howard Dean, some other out-of-the-box thinkers from outside politics need to get together and come up with a new strategy.

The solution I’ve always liked is to get rid of the assumption that districts need equal population, and just weight the vote of the representative by the population if the district. Then you can get rid of redistributing and just draw the lines at natural boundaries. A few New York State counties actually use this system for their Boards of Supervisors.

Jerry, no it doesn’t. As I say, this system is actually in use in some New York counties, where it was adopted precisely to keep the existing town supervisor structure without violating one-person one vote. For example.

I don’t know how, or if, it would work at the national level but I am pretty sure it’s been upheld in New York. This system has been in use for decades.

Murc @ 30:

Here’s the thing: how do you distinguish between the good debt and the bad debt? Do these notes have serial numbers on them? If there is no reasonable way to distinguish between good and bad debt I don’t think there’s a judicial question on the legality of contractual fullfilment. The only way the judiciary can get involved is by directly ordering the president to stop issueing new debt.

I assume that this alone would not solve the problem and that you’d need to actually redraw the district boundaries to make it work.

I think the constitutional design is working properly. For a short period of time, the democrats had control of both houses of congress and the presidency. They passed what everyone agrees was a major change in health financing and policy. They did so without Republican support. To this extent, they changed what had been a long tradition of making on piecemeal movers towards a more complete national health policy.

The voters had a chance to vote after this action. The democrats retained the Presidency and the Senate but not the house of Representatives. The constitution provides for specific powers for the house and many of those powers are quite powerful such as the origination of revenue bills.

The question that I don’t here many people addressing is “What changes to the Affordable Care Act is it reasonable to make based on a new distribution of power?”

The Republicans seem to be over-reaching (but not violating the constitution) by asking for a full repeal. But aren’t the democrats also over-reaching by expecting to maintain everything that was enacted even though they lost control of the house?

I understand that elections have consequences but that argument cuts both ways. The question at hand is “What consequence should the democrats face for the Affordable Care Act because they lost the house?” Neither Everything and Nothing seem to be the right answer but that is what each side is maintaining.

Both sides are finger pointing and both sides are guilty of dissimulation, but the constitution seems to prefer that the government we deserve, is the government that all three parties House, Senate and Presidency agree to fund

“But aren’t the democrats also over-reaching by expecting to maintain everything that was enacted even though they lost control of the house?”

No. PPACA is established, blessed-by-the-supreme-court (and refusal of the US voters to elect a president who promised to overturn it) law. Changing it, according to the constitution, requires holding the house, 60 votes in the senate, and either the presidency or a veto-overriding majority in the senate. The Republicans don’t have that. If the Democrats fold on this, what’s to stop the Republicans from dismantling the whole social safety net in the US, e.g. privatizing Social Security and handing the whole SS trust fund to Wall St.?

“Federal elections aren’t referendums on policy they are electing representatives to do the People’s business.”

Just love how you are glossing over the fact that the democrats actually received 1.5 million more votes in house elections.

“No the Democrats in the Senate would retain the right to block new legislation, correct?”

Exactly. That’s how the system is designed. Intentionally, on purpose, in the constitution. Passing legislation, or modifying existing law, requires all three branches of government to agree. PPACA passed the house, passed the senate, survived “reconciliation”, was signed by the president, was accepted as constitutional by the Supreme Court. It’s as legitimate a law as it’s possible for a law to be. What the Repugs are trying to do is unconstitutional. A vile and sleazy end run around the document they claim to hold holy.

The incredibly hypocrisy of the Repugs is, of course, beyond words: the mandate was an invention of the Heritage Foundation as a capitalistically acceptable means of avoiding taking health insurance away from the insurance industry, since the insurance industry was doing such a horrifically bad job. Preexisting conditions? Unheard of in any other industrialized country. Losing health insurance when you lose or change your job? Unheard of in any other industrialized country. Refusing to honor insurance policies because of mistakes in the fine print in the insurance application? Unheard of in any other industrialized country. Bankruptcy due to medical bills? Unheard of in any other industrialized country. Being uninsured at all? Unheard of in any other industrialized country.

Digby thinks a plausible compromise might be Obama’s Grand Bargain, involving cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Although she’s made that prediction almost as often as the Tea House has voted to defund the ACA.

What consequence should the democrats face for the Affordable Care Act because they lost the house?

That’s a bullshitty argument, not just given the discussion of gerrymandering. A more plausible reading of the ‘constitutional design’ is that it is designed to make passing laws difficult, and that any attempt to alter passed laws requires overcoming at least as many obstacles. A more worldly reading, reflecting the distribution of votes for House seats and the Senate’s structural bias towards small states and rural states, is that it’s already too bloody easy for Republicans to get their way.

What makes your comment especially bullshitty is this:

a long tradition of making on piecemeal movers towards a more complete national health policy.

Yeah, as we saw in the reaction to the proposed Clinton reforms. And the sleazy overnight vote-haggling for Medicare Part D. And if you don’t think the ACA is a piecemeal move (retaining the employer link, making private insurers in charge of administering plans on the exchange, supplementing existing state Medicaid implementations and largely maintaining Medicare) then there’s not much to be done with you.

As far as I am aware they have not used unconstitutional means to accomplish their ends. Is your understanding thaat the constitution requires congress to fund all existing laws and programs? If this is correct why have neither the Pres or Senate not pressed that issue?

MPA, I was not aware that margin of victory played any role in the process. I am not arguing that the People was the ACA stopped. I’m arguing that under the laws in place the house is controlled by people who oppose it and that it is not unreasonable for them to use their power to get what they want.

Precisely. I’m trying to figure out what one legitanately gets for controlling only the house. I think both everything and nothing are the wrong answers, but apparently there is no middle on this one. I don’t care for either side but I do care about legitmacy somewhat which makes me want bipartisan policies even though those are tough to come by. I don’t think most voters in Republican districts consider the house’s actions illegitimate and those voters seem entitled to some say under the rules. Obama professed to want that also but settled for a win and now we have a response. Like it or not.

@Martin:
That seems quite simple: You get a veto on any new legislation, meaning you get to negotiate the contents of any new legislation, which means all new legislation needs to be bipartisan. See e.g. the various stimulus and recovery bills negotiated between GWB, Democrats and Republicans and passed by the 110th Congress for examples.

You don’t get to legimately demand to re-write any legislation ever passed.

You don’t, legitimately, get to vote against things that you actually favor like, you know, funding the federal government (note that a majority of the House actually favors a clean CR, but Boehner is not allowing a vote on that). As I’m not the first to point out, that’s not negotiating, that’s hostage taking.

What you *don’t* get is the ability to repeal any law that you don’t like.

Let’s be clear about the terminology here: this is a nullification strategy. We have seen it in the GOP refusal to name appointees to bipartisan institutions, which, lacking a quorum, cannot exercise the legal authority granted them.

What GOP has gained by its control of the House is the right not to even consider large swathes of legislation. Martin James may be squinting, Magoo-like, at the legislative activities of the do-nothing House, but his field of vision doesn’t cover the proposals that never even got on the calendar.

Government by grand mal seizure is not government.

And, at least as long as Congress is divided, the executive can effectively legislate through regulation.

Which is in fact what the executive has been doing for decades. Except now it’s pretty much the only option left.

The thing I don’t get is why they are forcing this issue now, over the CR. The debt limit is a much better hostage. Why not agree to the CR this past weekend (without all the ridiculous obamacare demands), allowing a media narrative in which they appear reasonable. Then go to the mattresses over the debt limit.

You are assuming a rational calculation, which is maybe not warranted? We’re talking crazy fucks living in a non-reality based media bubble (as, e.g., Krugman has stressed several times). Trying to attribute a rational strategy here seems like a mistake—at least to me. Which is also why the future looks grim.

I don’t think the Teas can give up. Obamacare has initiated an existential crisis: Fear of death. If the economy gets better after Obamacare ramps up, it destroys their ideology. For 30 years, the GOP has preached their economic theory as follows. 1) smaller government leads to more economic growth; 2) tax hikes must slow economic growth. This is the whole theory.

The Teas lapped it up, then got themselves elected, and now, they don’t have another idea in their heads.

Better economy, coming after MORE government? = end of Reaganism/Thatcherism.

In addition, admitting defeat quickly may not avail them anyway, because with this shutdown action, they may have permanently damaged their reputations.

It looks like the Tea Party (and therefore the rest of the Republicans) are losing the sympathy of the independents in the middle. We are seeing more phrases like “petulant children”, “terrorists”, and “the Republicans must split up”. This will not be so easy to reverse, and will hurt them in the next election.

This is news, because independents tend to hold a sympathy for proponents of smaller government. Trumping that however, they tend firmly to oppose rudeness and lack of comity, lack of regular process, disrespect for standing law. Indies think that if you want to change something, there are normal channels to try to do it, etc.

The Teas would have been smarter to wait for the debt ceiling, because the scaredy-Dems might have caved-in a little, on that. Too late now! Shutting down gov’t is a lesser inconvenience, and it has the virtue to Dems of still being harmful and newsworthy, and indeed a Democrat’s dream come true, as an easy opportunity to destroy the Tea’s moral profile for wanting to deny healthcare, well in advance of the debt ceiling.

Note that the President has appeared in front of the cameras, two days in a row, taunting the entire GOP.

Thus by pushing this way, the Teas may have gone a bridge too far — and the error may not be merely tactical, but strategic, and apply to the entire Republican Party.

To a considerable degree the people the Affordable Care Act will most benefit live in the places that elect Republicans. It is a puzzlement that their elected representatives are doing their utmost to make certain that they are denied access to medical care, but since they’re shutting down everything they can in furtherance of that goal, it’s difficult to conclude that they have something else in mind.

It’s not out of the question that they’re more outraged by access to contraception or the teaching of evolution or attempts to mitigate the threat of global warming than the prospect of their fellow citizens living longer, but it’s clear that they’re dead set against that.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the “Tea Party” wins this. Because they are not a small minority of crazies.

The Tea Party agenda is the general agenda of a big chunk of corporate America. They despise you and want you living at the same level as a 3rd world shanty town. Tea Party Republicans are just the shock troops.

Until you guys get it out of your head that this is run by a few old crazy racists in Red State, you will never understand why they keep winning the terms of the debate.

“Better economy, coming after MORE government? = end of Reaganism/Thatcherism.”

You seriously underestimate the power of doublethink.

@ Martin

It’s clear you think for the majority in one house to threaten to withhold funding for the government to achieve a legislative purpose they could not otherwise achieve is a legitimate and reasonable tactic. How far can they carry the threat before it becomes illegitimate or unreasonable? Is it legitimate for them to withhold funding for a month? A year? Can they withhold military funding and remain legitimate?

I think you’re missing the Constitutional issue here. The President is required to execute & enforce laws. By withholding funding, Congress (by inaction rather than legislation) prevents the President from carrying out prior Acts of Congress – in essence preventing the executive from carrying out its responsibility to the law. Though it is not as clear a case as it is with the debt ceiling (where Congress refuses to authorize borrowing to pay debts Congress has already approved), it is the same issue – Congress is attempting to change the law by doing nothing, rather than by legislating. Because they can’t succeed in a law repealing or defunding the ACA, they’re preventing execution of virtually every law until their demands are met. Do you think that’s a proper, Constitutional exercise if their office?

Mao Cheng Ji #74: “You seriously underestimate the power of doublethink.”

Quite the contrary. I think it is so powerful that it can ONLY be defeated by challenging both sides of the doublethink logic at the same instant. The first result of this effort will almost always surface as a genuine personal existential crisis. My hypothesis is that this is what we are seeing, and Obamacare is the final instigation.

The personal crisis is dimly intuited beforehand, and is met by denial, and extreme last-ditch action. You could see this vector starting to crystallize in Republican rhetoric during the healthcare reform battles and after its passage.

I have been arguing in these comment threads for 4 or 5 years now that this was going to be the end of the Republican Party in its current form. I have gotten lots of static about this, but mine is the only hypothesis still standing. Racism (against a black president) and resentment (at the undeserving poor) doesn’t begin to explain what is going on in the House of Representatives.

Yes, some people will double back on their old beliefs with some new, self-serving explanation, and others will disappear into bitter fear and loathing. But some will change into better people.

If the economy gets better after social welfare spending, if Rush Limbaugh starts having to interlard his certitudes with caveats in dependent clauses, well … that’s too much like real “thinking”. It is tantamount to the end of True Believing. It will be the end of the Tea Party, and the end of the current Republicans as a viable electoral force.

I tend to agree with Mao Cheng Ji that neither the Tea Party leadership, nor its followers (quite different groups, with differing ideas and motives), are likely to be affected by experience in a way that would resemble empirical learning. I think one could reverse Lee A Arnold’s observations, though, and make a case for the Democratic coalition dissolving from a combination of centrist overstretch and the experience of impotence.

Obama’s power rests on his ability to sell the plutocratic program to traditional constituencies of the Democratic party, partly on the basis that the “other guy” would be worse. The Republican clown show exists to provide a continuous flow of information confirming that the “other guy” would be worse, even as median wages continue their inexorable decline, and everything gets worse for the 99%. Continuous enactment of these dramas, like the current “shutdown” cum “debt ceiling” farce, wears thin, though. And, even though the spokesmodel-politicians from the Republican Party mouthing criticisms of Obamacare lack credibility with Democratic loyalists, the criticisms, themselves, have considerable face validity, to use an academic turn of phrase. The critics are wrong; the criticisms are right. And, that last fact will corrode the Democratic coalition.

The Republican clown show will end when it is no longer politically useful to make Obama look better than the threatened “alternative”. That could well be when the Democrats give up completely, their support deserting the Party and its coalition as a mere marketing ploy, which it largely is.

@78 and @80

A demarkated split of Republicans into what might be labeled as small -r Republicans and TeaParty republicans might not be as awful as one might imagine. There are likely a sizeable number of Center and Center-left voters who would migrate towards a small-r republican party because that group might not be nearly as unattractive as it currently is pandering to its far-right wing.

Maybe said differently – if you removed the ugliest most far-right bit of the R party, the balance might seem a good bit more centrist and if cultivated properly might usurp some of the middle which the Democrats currently collect because centrist voters are more put-off by the loony right than are worried about the left-most faction of the Democratic party.

Clearly getting these positions and boundaries set would take some time – but the likelihood that the Republican party “ends itself” seems more wishful than likely. Indeed there might even be some “blue dog” Democrats that would cross into a Republican party that had disassociated itself from Tea Party Republicans.

Assuming I read you right, the purpose of my questions is to determine what, for you, would go too far.

There is no “too far” in politics. There is only winning and losing.

Too bad liberals have forgotten this.

Pete @75

Your account of the civil wars is flawed in almost every way. The Church of England was NOT the same as Roman Catholicism. Even though Archbishop Laud was accused of papist tendencies, there was in those days no “Anglo-Catholic” faction comparable to that which appeared in the 19th century. Like the Lutherans, the Anglican church had bishops, hence the name “Episcopalianism” across the pond. The church in Scotland was Presbyterian, Calvinist and had no bishops. Charles I’s attempt to impose bishops on Scotland started the wars. Parliament was dominated by the Presbyterians, who were generally as puritan as can be, and wanted to impose their church on everyone. The Army was dominated by the independents who opposed this. Cromwell was in many ways the most liberal of all the leader at the time. He wanted everyone to have liberty of conscience – even Catholics in private so long as they did not break the peace. When urged to impose religious uniformity, he famously replied “I had rather that Mahometanism were permitted amongst us than that one of God’s children should be persecuted.” But Cromwell was less a dictator than a chairman of the board. His personal intervention failed to prevent the severe punishment of James Nayler in 1856, though it may have saved his life.

There was not an overtly catholic monarch until James II of England in 1685. His brother Charles II was much more pragmatic and generally popular.

As for George III, his first episode of “insanity” was brief, and not until 1765. His first serous bout was in 1788, but he recovered before a regency could be established. It was not until after his insanity of 1810 that his powers were given to his son by the Regency Act of 1811.

MPAVictoria

The Republicans are asking for a delay of a year in the individual mandate, which would simply match the delay in the corporate mandate Obama (predictably) has already granted. Such a delay wouldn’t deny access to anyone; it would prevent some people in desperate financial situations from being fined for failing to buy high deductible policies, which would never do them much good.

There’s nothing the least bit sincere about the Republican gambit. It’s all about propaganda. But, the Republicans can raise some politically resonant points, because Obamacare has many shortcomings, as policy and politics.

I haven’t gone off any edge. I’ve stepped outside the fenceline and away from the cattle prods. You should try it.

“The Republicans are asking for a delay of a year in the individual mandate”

…in return for which they won’t kill the hostages, this time.

Martin,

The 4th clause of the 14th amendment was intended precisely to forbid a government decision to default on debt. Congress cannot stop the government from paying it’s debts; and if the government must borrow to meet an obligation which has been previously authorized by Congress, Congress cannot renege on the obligation or, by extension, prevent borrowing for the same. The USSC has long held that the clause refers to any debt of the government, not just bond debts. Thus interest payments, payments for goods and services, Social Security payment – all of them qualify as obligations which cannot be repudiated. A government shutdown, if kept up for long enough, will lead to a conflict with the 14th amendment. A debt ceiling crisis will just get there faster.

We don’t really know to what extent the Supreme Court has been signaling to the house what they would do in the event of a constitutional crisis. We do know that certain justices including Kennedy didn’t like the way things turned out the first time with the ACA.

Such a delay wouldn’t deny access to anyone; it would prevent some people in desperate financial situations from being fined for failing to buy high deductible policies

The actuarial foundation for the policies on offer is the individual mandate, thanks to yer standard principles of moral hazard and adverse selection. A year’s delay blows a big hole in that. You may not like the model that the ACA uses, but the way to improve it is not to amputate limbs at birth.

Martin,

The Supremes are ideologues but not suicidal. Exactly what they decide will depend on what gets brought to them, but the result will almost certainly clarify the law in a manner most beneficial to the full faith and credit of the US. If the matter is the conflict between appropriations and the debt ceiling, they’ll toss the debt ceiling. If the President has worked around the debt ceiling in the interim, by issuing some other kind of debt instrument, they’ll hold that instrument is valid and payable. If the President has minted the platinum coin, they’ll endorse it in at least a limited way, while inviting Congress to change the law. They may criticize those actions, but they’ll endorse them. They have to – anything else triggers a credit scare, and they won’t do that.

The immediate point, though, is not to critique Obamacare, which is a complicated mess of a policy, but to respond to the idea that the popular experience of it will be so uniformly positive, as to change the dynamics of American politics.

We’re experiencing a constitutional crisis, and the President, just like his nominal Republican opponents, bats for the Plutocracy. At bottom, this political contretemps must be a dispute between factions of the Plutocracy, because no one else fields a team.

My “hysteria” is about for profit insurance, not private insurance. I guess bolding and italics are not enough to bolster some people’s reading comprehension skills.

I doubt that many of the Republicans have considered any end game other than Obama giving in to their demands. Remember, these are the people who were stunned by Obama’s re-election. They live in a bubble impervious to reality.

And I’m not even considering the house members who simply don’t care about anything other than their own immediate political advantage. If they prevail, they’re victors, if they don’t, they’re martyrs. Either way, they win.

Health insurance in Germany is predominately the sickness funds, which are not for-profit. Etc. But, lets not hijack this thread any further.

Nothing in particular, he’s the flavor of the month. From what I have read from his father he raised his son to have something of a messianic streak. No, it just that what he considers possible may be a bit more imaginative than the rest. I don’t remember the other republicans attacking each other so much. Why do they fear him? I think the republicans created a beast they can’t stop.

Its partly to test the rhetoric of people who say the right wing crazies are really crazy.

So, the question is whether or not the USA of today is that different from Syria, Egypt, Libya in terms of revolution and civil war.

Martin James: “I think the 14th amendment is a stretch. Is it questioning the validity of a debt to miss payment?”
Yes it is. Talk to some bondholders. Missing a single payment triggers action.

Mao Cheng Ji #79: “the Clinton admin pushed through, by a single vote, ‘the biggest tax hike in history’… If you ask a true believer who was responsible for the boom, the answer is, inevitably: ‘the republican congress elected in 1994’… not going to make things better; on the contrary: it’s going to intensify the resistance.”

It will make them into a smaller percentage minority, by less new pick-ups, and may even diminish them numerically. Clinton actually made in-roads here: some moderate Republicans now consider that Clinton was a good President.

But, “intensify the resistance?” You cannot intensify your resistance, beyond a personal existential crisis. That is the resistance end of the road. A sort of Einsteinian speed limit.

And who will join their numbers, in the face of “everybody getting healthcare” and employers happy to save the administrative and maintenance costs? The Teas are flipping out because they know it’s a done deal.

(Next up, we agitate to push up the medical loss ratio to Medicare’s 98%: so everybody gets an additional 20% healthcare rate reduction. Because if they are all the same price on the same page, then it can be non-profit. There is no excuse for private insurers to be in healthcare, they give no value-added, unless it’s upper-tier concierge coverage for the 1%, and thus freedom for the rhinestone-encrusted lifestyle.)

Yet now, Teas are holding up the entire government, making more people recognize that they are just stupid.

I would guess that even the plutocracy is becoming alarmed, because you cannot have business without having paying customers: the money must circulate and so on. And you certainly cannot run a business in a general insurrection. Or in broken credit at a debt ceiling. Collateral for the overnight shadow repo market, around $15 trillion and growing, is almost entirely Treasuries, with a few returning mortgage derivatives?

2. Meantime, Obamacare is going to increase the number of earners in an indispensable sector of the economy, so I predict a positive GDP impact.

But let us say it does NOT: instead, let’s say that Obamacare proves to have no economic effect, and say the recovery looks good simply because the downturn was so bad. It doesn’t matter for purpose of running the following experiment. You still have this to employ:

Once Obamacare kicks in, and the economic recovery kicks in, then ask of any True Believer the basic riddle of the universe: Why did the economy get better, after a bigger government program? According to the laws of your reality, that isn’t supposed to happen! It cannot happen, because “gov’t is inefficient”!

What do they say next? That, “it was really the sequester wot did it”? (Are you saying the sequester outweighed the anti-Reaganomic drag of healthcare, which is 1/7th of the economy?)

That, “it’s because the Republicans made Obama toe the line, on spending”? (After you complained about all the trillions he spent?)

That, “it’s because, after a downturn, the GDP numbers always look better”?

–Er, uh, no, not that last one, that’s a syllogism too far, just like a bridge too far. Conceptualizing both short-term and long-term effects in macro may be asking a bit too much, since it appears to be such a widespread cognitive disorder, even among some economists. … Anyway if they DID know, well then, you could have a conversation, and always reply, “Well, it’s the same thing wot happened with Reagan, you dunce! He sat through a good macro recovery, and then took the intellectual credit for it. But it wasn’t him.”

3. Now redirect your pictograph; consider the current moderate GOP — let’s say, those Republicans who perhaps later decided that Clinton wasn’t such a bad President. If there are any of them remaining, that is — and if there are, they probably are wondering how to regain moderate control of their party. Probably the best thing, for middle-run basic human needs, is to help the moderate Repubs regain control of their party. But please god not quite yet.

For now, the thing to do is attempt to cause as big an existential crisis as possible. Destroy the stupid anti-welfare state zombies meme by meme, and employ Guerrilla Rhetoric, to do it: “All dissent must be of a higher logical type than that to which it is opposed.” Here it means, applying continuous pressure to both sides of the Reaganic alchemical formulary of doublespeak. Try this one: there will be a welfare state; there will be economic growth. They won’t be able to handle it. The current occupant of the Oval Office is at least one person who understands this.

Lee, there are organizations with budgets of tens of millions, working hard, producing talking points, superficially convincing emotional arguments, rationalizations, to influence the media.

I don’t know how they will choose to play it, but (just off the top of my head) they could, for example, start scandalizing medical mistakes and screw ups, blaming obamacare. The system is overloaded and you now at risk of getting the healthy leg amputated – and of course you’re the one who’s paying for it, with your taxes. This could be a successful campaign – no? Talk about fear and loathing. Politicians will demand to stop the atrocity – how many more must die? It’s not that hard.

Mao Cheng Ji #114: “It’s not that hard.”

No one you can save that can’t be saved. Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you inside. It’s easy.

but you can learn how to be you inside
but you can learn how to be you in time

Herschel

Sorry about the misattribution.

By the by, somewhere in this tangle of comments I believe some European fellow asked under what authority Obama has kept “essential operations” of the federal government in operation? As an American let me tell you that I have no clue, and ask, does anyone here know the answer?

When the Constitution was written the power to withhold funding was treated as a key power of Congress, and specifically, the power to withhold military funding was to be key to Congress’ preventing the President from engaging in unauthorized wars or domestic tyranny. For this reason the Constitution explicitly prohibits Congress from authorizing military funding more than two years in advance (no prohibition exists for other programs; they could pass 5-year or indefinite budgets if they wanted to). So it’s pretty darn clear that the intent of the Constitution is that, in absence of Congressional funding, the military at the very least must immediately shut down. This is not some unforeseen situation; when the Constitution was written the US did not have a standing army and was not intended to.

There is also a federal law explicitly prohibiting federal employees from volunteering or working without pay.

So how in the heck is it legal for the US to still have a military, air traffic controllers, FBI, CIA, and the rest still in operation? By law they should have all suddenly shut down (in disorganized, chaotic fashion). My best guess is that Obama is brazenly breaking the law For the Good of the Nation. Guess Clinton probably did the same.

Personally if I were gonna illegally operate a giant military For the Good of the Nation I would bloody well make sure everyone got their food stamps and unemployment benefits too (I assume those are shut down but haven’t seen reporting on it).

Thanks, I stand corrected. Apparently everyone’s required to work for free. Except the military. They passed a last-minute funding bill for military salaries because soldiers are more important than other people.