OK, I’m dreaming – but this could really happen.
1. Enough progressive House members vote against the debt deal to defeat it.
2. Wall Street, desperate at all the money they’re going to lose, tell their people in Congress to fix this problem quick.
3. At the last minute, Congress takes up a new bill to raise the debt ceiling without any of the policy riders – no cuts, no new revenue, nothing.
4. All the House Democrats vote for the clean debt ceiling increase, while Boehner (and Wall Street) round up enough Republicans to let it squeak through.
5. In the Senate, the Repulicans don’t have to vote for it, but they have to agree to cloture – see above comment about Wall Street.
If all that happens, we avoid default AND avoid throwing the country back into a deep recession, as the present deal is likely to do. (See Robert Reich’s excellent blog for a full explanation why this is likely.)
As I said, it’s a fantasy. Except for a few courageous individuals like Raul Grijalva, the House progressives won’t have the nerve.
You are a nut. Default? Another left wing idiot who does not understand the basics.
Thanks for commenting! However, while I may well be a nut, you missed the point of my post. I did not say at any point that the US should default — just that it’s bad bargaining to simply approve whatever deal you are offered. If the progressives had succeeded in defeating the bill yesterday, they would have been offered a deal that was more attractive (to them, maybe not to you, but that’s politics!)
Those were the tactics the Tea Party used; by voting down Boehner’s first proposal they forced him to come back with one they liked more. The left needs to learn the same effective bargaining style.