#Debt crisis

[odinsblog]

Just so we are all really clear: Republicans are using the manufactured debt ceiling “crisis” as a bargaining chip, threatening to blow up the U.S. (and world?) economy unless Biden caves in to cutting things like food benefits for women, children, the poor and the working poor. Got it? That’s their deal—either eviscerate the social safety net, or economy go boom!

No doubt, a lot of liberals are pressuring Biden to acquiesce, because 1) the economy will absolutely positively go boom! and 2) because they will blame Biden if the economy crashes

BUT..! Here’s the thing: If Biden does cave in and give Republicans even a little bit of what they are demanding, I fuckn promise you that in October and November of next year, Republican ads are going to be like: “Vote for Trump! Remember how Biden cut food benefits for women and children? Trump won’t do that”

And it will not matter how many 8k high quality videos you have showing that it was really Republicans who took the economy hostage and demanded those cuts. By time the general election rolls around in ‘24, Republicans will be airing ChatGPT AI political ads where it looks like Biden was the one asking for all the cuts to SNAP and demanding ridiculously harder work requirements

Believe that!!

Did you even see those ignorant charlatans eating from Trump’s hands on CNN?? These are bomb throwers. They enjoy blowing up the economy, especially when it hurts poor people! You cannot in good faith make any policy decision about what to do based off of what Republican voters “might think” when it’s election time! They don’t “think” AT ALL, and even if they did, they still do not care! They’re unscrupulous deplorables. They will always always always find a way to blame Biden and the Democrats, no matter what, so Biden may as well go on and do what’s right while he can, and try actually fighting against these cartoonishly evil Republicans

AND..! Do I even need to remind anyone what happens when you cave in to bullies?? If Biden caves now, then Republicans will bully every Democrat from here on out, and the programs they take hostage next time will be Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

Caving in to the whims of Kevin pickme! McCarthy and Marjorie Traitor Greene is bad politics, and it will only get worse in the future if Biden folds now

[reasonsforhope]

Toledo City Council just approved a plan to turn $1.6 million in public dollars into as much as $240 million in economic stimulus, targeted at some of the Ohio metro’s most vulnerable residents.

“It’s really going to help people put food on the table, help them pay their rent, help them pay their utilities,” says Toledo City Council Member Michele Grim, who led the way for the measure. “Hopefully we can prevent some evictions.”

The strategy couldn’t be simpler: It works by canceling millions in medical debt.

Working with the New York City-based nonprofit RIP Medical Debt, the City of Toledo and the surrounding Lucas County are chipping in $800,000 each out of their federal COVID-19 recovery funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.

The combined $1.6 million in funding is enough for RIP Medical Debt to acquire and cancel up to $240 million in medical debt owed by Lucas County households that earn up to 400% of the federal poverty line.

“It could be more than a one-to-100 return on investment of government dollars,” Grim says. “I really can’t think of a more simple program for economic recovery or a better way of using American Rescue Plan dollars, because it’s supposed to rescue Americans.”

How It Works

Under the RIP Medical Debt model, there is no application process to cancel medical debt. The nonprofit negotiates directly with local hospitals or hospital systems one-by-one, purchasing portfolios of debt owed by eligible households and canceling the entire portfolio en masse.

“One day someone will get a letter saying your debt’s been canceled,” Grim says. It’s a simple strategy for economic welfare and recovery.

RIP Medical Debt was founded in 2014 by a pair of former debt collection agents, and since inception it has acquired and canceled more than $7.3 billion in medical debt owed by 4.2 million households — an average of $1,737 per household...

Local Governments Get Involved

The partnership with Toledo and Lucas County is the third instance of the public sector funding RIP Medical Debt to cancel debt portfolios.

Earlier this year, in the largest such example yet, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a plan to provide $12 million in ARPA funds for RIP Medical Debt to purchase and cancel an estimated $1 billion in medical debt held by hospitals across Cook County, which includes Chicago.

“Governments contract with nonprofits all the time for various social interventions,” Sesso says.

“This isn’t really that far-fetched or different from that. I would say between five and 10 other local governments have reached out just since the Toledo story came out.”

What's the Deal with Medical Debt?

An estimated one in five households across the U.S. have some amount of medical debt, and they are disproportionately Black and Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau...

Acquiring medical debt is relatively cheap: hospitals that sell medical debt portfolios do so for just pennies on the dollar, usually to investors on the secondary market.

The purchase price is so low because hospitals and debt buyers alike know that medical debt is the hardest form to collect...

The amount of debt canceled for any given household has ranged from $25 all the way up to six-figure amounts. Under IRS regulations, debts canceled under RIP Medical Debt’s model do not count as taxable income for households...

Massive Expansion Coming Up

After not one but two donations from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, totaling $80 million, RIP Medical Debt is planning for expansion.

It’s using a portion of those dollars to create an internal revolving line of credit to expand to places where it can find willing sellers before it has found willing funders.

The internal line of credit means the nonprofit now has new, albeit still limited, flexibility to acquire debt portfolios from hospitals first, then begin raising private or public dollars locally to replenish the line of credit later and make those funds available for other locations.

“People often ask, do you only work with nonprofit hospitals, or do you work with for-profit hospitals? And I’m like, I just want to get the debt, regardless of who created the debt. If it’s out there, I want it,” Sesso says.

Fundamentally, they are not solving the issue of medical debt, but easing its pressure from as many lives as possible — while also upping the pressure on lawmakers and the healthcare industry.

“We’re intentionally taking the stories of the individuals whose debt we have resolved, and putting their stories out into the world with intention in a way that tries to push and create more of that pressure to fundamentally solve the problem,” she says.

-via GoodGoodGood, 4/6/23

[commonsensecommentary]

More debt. And more debt. And still more debt. Soon enough, America as we know it is dead.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

After The White House and Republicans in Congress reached a tentative agreement on the debt ceiling, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy went on Fox News Sunday to boast about making struggling Americans work in order to continue receiving food aid.

Although precise details have not been released, the deal will increase the maximum age at which adults must work in order to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamps from age 50 to 54. There are exceptions, however, for veterans, unhoused individuals, and those with dependents. The deal also includes changes to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) but those details have not been made public.

“We finally were able to cut spending. We’re the first Congress to vote for cutting spending year over year,” McCarthy boasted Sunday on Fox. “So, you cut that back. You fully fund the veterans. You fully fund defense. But you take that non-defense spending all the way back to 2022 levels. Now you get work requirements for TANF and SNAP. The Democrats said that was a red line.”

At another point in the interview, McCarthy claimed that “We’re going to get America working again,” and that the deal includes “work requirements to help people out of poverty into jobs.” At this, host Shannon Bream pushed back on McCarthy, arguing that the work requirements are not tough enough for the most extreme members of the GOP caucus.

"We're gonna get America working again … When Republicans had the Presidency, the Senate and the House, did they ever cut spending? No, they increased it."

“The White House, that’s an area where they’re celebrating,” Bream said of the work requirements. “They say there are no changes to Medicaid. You referenced SNAP and TANF. So basically, SNAP includes an expansion for veterans and people who are homeless. So there’s an expansion there to some extent… and the changes that you did get will lift the age and the requirements and those kinds of things, but they sunset. So they don’t last for very long.”

It should be noted, though, that the vast majority of Americans are working. Unemployment remains extremely low at 3.4% as of this April.

McCarthy also bragged about cutting funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “This is the largest recision in American history,” McCarthy said. “You can add up all the recisions from all the other Congresses. This is greater. And what are we pulling back? CDC’s Global Health Fund. So no longer are we sending $400 million of American taxpayers’ money to China.”

According to the CDC, the Global Health Fund supports HIV/AIDS prevention and care, immunizations, and global disease detection and emergency response. On the heels of a global pandemic, cutting this funding seems dangerous, but after seeing their response to COVID, it’s not surprising that Republicans in Congress don’t take global health seriously.

Returning to the topic of work requirements, McCarthy said, “At the end of the day, it saves more money, ’cause what does a work requirement do? It’s only on able-bodied people with no dependents. Instead of borrowing money from China to pay somebody to sit on the couch, we now give them the process to go get a job. Every study has shown when you do that, it puts people to work. And when they work, what happens? More people are paying into social security and Medicare.”

Sure, it may “save” some money in food aid, but at what cost?

[faultfalha]

Kenya is in chaos. The death toll mounts as the police crackdown on protests against the new US-IMF backed tax regime intensifies. The people are angry, desperate. They know that this new tax will only further impoverish them, that it is yet another way for the rich to line their pockets. The future looks bleak. But the people will not be silenced. They are fighting for their rights, for their future. Even in the face of violence and brutality, they refuse to give up. And they may yet win. The US-IMF may have overplayed their hand this time. The people of Kenya are ready to fight, and they will not be defeated.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

David Horsey

* * * *

McCarthy’s fake budget proposal.

         A federal budget is a massive undertaking. It proposes allocation of trillions of dollars across thousands of agencies and programs. The budget proposal made by President Joe Biden on March 13, 2023, is 1,345 pages in length. As the US approaches its debt limit in June 2023, Speaker Kevin McCarthy demands budget cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit. On Tuesday, he released his most detailed proposal yet. It could have fit on the back of a cocktail napkin. Despite its 320-page length, most of McCarthy’s proposed budget bill is devoted to reciting language from Biden legislation that would be repealed under McCarthy’s proposal.

         McCarthy’s budget is little more than a series of hostage-taking demands. For example, per Talking Points Memo, McCarthy proposes to

repeal the green energy tax credits passed in the Inflation Reduction Act, add more requirements to benefit programs like SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), cut money allocated to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and rescind the Biden administration’s order forgiving student debt.

         More to the point, McCarthy does not propose specific cuts. Instead, he proposes general cuts in spending to be determined by various House committees. What could go wrong?

         McCarthy’s proposal is unserious and indicates his inability to govern his caucus. See Talking Points Memo, Where Things Stand: Biden Shreds McCarthy’s Performative Debt Limit Bill.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[willtheweirdrat]

My religion teacher teaching us about the debt crisis instead cause "if the EU were good Christians, they'd forgive our debt"

[davidnelsoncfa]

Why July 6th turned the market upside down - Charting a new course

By David Nelson, CFA Outside of death and taxes, there are few absolutes in life. For investors the world can be just as narrow. Fear and greed are the only things we can count on. Yes we have thousands of data points to judge companies and the health of the economy. At any given moment, some subset of that data drives security prices. However, it’s fear and greed that are the driving force in…

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

LARGEST CAR REPOSSESSION CRISIS In History Is Here

In this video, we're going to talk about the auto loan crisis 2023. Not only are consumers NOT paying their auto loans, but banks are also in trouble due to the repo crisis.

P.S. An interesting video that raises the question: The government, banks and car manufacturers did not force these buyers of Dodge Chargers, Ford Mustangs and "luxury" (what a nonsense) pickup trucks to the car dealership, and didn't force them to take a huge loan??? Well, now these "lovers of alternative facts" complain that they have no money and that everyone else is to blame for their financial problems??? I am shocked! It turns out that the American capitalist society does not understand anything about reasonable budget planning!?

Against the backdrop of "luxury" pickup prices in USA, in fact the base Tesla Model 3, even the Chevrolet Bolt and VW ID.4 are very reasonable and "cheap" purchases...But as practice shows, there are very few smart people...

[odinsblog]

Republican hostage demands include:

Increasing and not cutting the defense budget, nor the Border Patrol budget

Cut funding to the following programs and agencies by 51 percent: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Social Security Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Veteran’s Assistance Program, Health and Human Services, Department of Education, Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Justice Department, the State Department, the Department of Transportation, NASA, the Labor Department, and more (source)

Rescind any student loan relief and make borrowers pay back any payments that were paused or recently forgiven

Defund the IRS so that it cannot go after wealthy tax evaders

New, harsher work requirements for Medicaid recipients

Raise the work retirement age for people enrolled in the SNAP, from 50 to 55 years old

More stringent work requirements for food stamp recipients

Deregulation of drilling and mining permitting

Repeal any tax breaks that encouraged using renewable energy sources

Pledges to increase domestic production of oil and other fossil fuels

In short, the Republican demands to raise the debt ceiling is a manufactured crisis. It’s yet another GOP wish list to attack poor people by eviscerating the social safety net, while simultaneously deregulating big businesses and defunding the government agencies that could hold polluters and exploiters accountable

👉🏿 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/heres-whats-in-the-gop-bill-to-lift-the-u-s-debt-limit

👉🏿 https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2022/12/12/voters-want-congress-to-raise-the-debt-ceiling-and-protect-social-programs

👉🏿 https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/debt-ceiling-house-republicans-bill-limit-save-grow-act/

[missysippiiiee]

I am barely making ends meet, and being picky is a struggle I can't afford right now.

[commonsensecommentary]

“In the short term, we cannot afford the federal government we now have, and brutal cuts are inevitable, so the first question is whether we make the necessary reductions in the size and scope of government for ourselves—or take the stupid and cowardly route by waiting for a fiscal apocalypse to do the job for us.”

(From my blog archive)

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Americans’ Social Security checks will get a lot smaller in 2034 if lawmakers don’t act to address the pending shortfall, according to an annual report released Friday by the Social Security trustees.

That’s because the combined Social Security trust funds – which help support payouts for the elderly, survivors and disabled – are projected to run dry that year. At that time, the funds’ reserves will be depleted, and the program’s continuing income will only cover 80% of benefits owed.

The estimate is one year earlier than the trustees projected last year. About 66 million Americans received Social Security benefits in 2022.

Medicare, meanwhile, is in a more critical financial condition. Its hospital insurance trust fund, known as Medicare Part A, will only be able to pay scheduled benefits in full until 2031, according to its trustees’ annual report, which was also released Friday.

At that time, Medicare, which covered 65 million senior citizens and people with disabilities in 2022, will only be able to cover 89% of total scheduled benefits. Last year, Medicare’s trustees projected that the hospital trust fund’s reserves would be depleted in 2028.

LONG-STANDING FISCAL TROUBLES

Immensely popular but long troubled, Social Security and Medicare are on shaky financial ground in large part because of the aging of the American population. Fewer workers are paying into the program and supporting the ballooning number of beneficiaries, who are also living longer. Also, health care is becoming increasingly expensive.

Social Security has two trust funds – one for retirees and survivors and another for Americans with disabilities.

Looking at them separately, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund is projected to run dry in 2033, at which time Social Security could pay only 77% of benefits, primarily using income from payroll taxes. The date is one year earlier than estimated last year.

The Disability Insurance Trust Fund is expected to be able to pay full benefits through at least 2097, the last year of the trustees’ projection period.

Merging the two trust funds would require Congress to act, but the combined projection is often used to show the overall status of the entitlement.

Social Security’s projected long-term health worsened over the past year because the trustees revised downward their expectations for the economy and labor productivity, taking into account updated data on inflation and economic output.

However, the long-term projection for Medicare’s hospital trust fund’s finances improved, mainly due to lowered estimates for health care spending after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, the program is projected to take in more income because the trustees estimate the number of covered workers and average wages will be higher.

ADDED PRESSURE ON CONGRESS

The trustees’ reports are the latest warnings to Congress that they will have to deal with the massive entitlement programs’ fiscal problems at some point soon. But addressing their issues is politically challenging. Elected officials are hesitant to suggest any changes that could lead to benefit cuts, even though that could reduce their options in the future.

“With each year that lawmakers do not act, the public has less time to prepare for the changes,” the trustees warned in a fact sheet.

The programs’ shortfalls are back in the spotlight this year as President Joe Biden and House Republicans battle over how to address the nation’s debt ceiling drama and mounting budget deficits. GOP lawmakers want to cut spending in exchange for resolving the borrowing limit, while the White House has said it will not negotiate.

In a memorable moment in his State of the Union address in February, Biden garnered public acknowledgment from congressional Republicans about keeping Social Security and Medicare out of the debt discussions.

But “not touching” Social Security means a hefty cut in benefits within a decade or so.

“Change is inevitable because without changes to current law, both Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance would go insolvent, subjecting program participants to sudden and severe payment cuts,” said Charles Blahous, senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and former Social Security and Medicare trustee. “The outstanding question is whether change will be tolerably gradual, or instead highly damaging because it is too long delayed.”

Though Biden has repeatedly vowed to protect Social Security, his latest budget proposal did not include a plan to stabilize its finances.

However, his proposal did call for extending Medicare’s solvency by 25 years or more by raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year and by allowing the program to negotiate prices for even more drugs.

Spending on the entitlement programs is also projected to soar and exert increased pressure on the federal budget in coming years.

Mandatory spending – driven by Social Security and Medicare – and interest costs are expected to outpace the growth of revenue and the economy, according to a Congressional Budget Office outlook released in mid-February.

[feckcops]

Dinners for debt justice

“Darcy: Jubilee is a fundamental challenge to our economic system, which depends on domestic and international debt. While paying off payday loans, loans to offset fuel bills, etc, we are less able to meet everyday needs and our purchasing options are limited. International debt cancellation would prevent multinational companies perverting markets and forcing poor nations to sell resources to pay debt off at high interest rates.

“We run a free public meal at the end of every month. Its purpose is to incrementally build networks of solidarity – connecting activists, community groups and vulnerable people through open dialogue and simple but meaningful support.

“Ci: My guiding principles have been ‘think globally, act locally’. The Black Panthers used mutual aid as a direct-action strategy. Mutual aid allows us to build a larger base of local support, recognising people’s immediate concerns and the need to look after one another.”

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Upon former Premier Herriot (upper left) and President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, France is basing its hope for amicable settlement of the war debt problems. The government of Joseph Paul-Boncour, who is shown, upper right, just after he had presented names of his new cabinet to President Le Brun’s expected administration. The French chamber of deputies shown center at the time, Premier Herriot demanded payment of the war debt installment; meanwhile is working on domestic financial problems. France is prominent in the debt deadlock.”

- from the North Bay Nugget. January 9, 1933. Page 4.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

THE IDIOTS HAVE NO CLUE   ::  That’s Another Fine Mess

Back last May, Heather Cox Richardson wrote this:

“This is no longer your mother’s Republican Party, or your grandfather’s…or his grandfather’s.

“Today’s Republican Party is not about equal rights and opportunity, as Lincoln’s party was. It is not about using the government to protect ordinary people, as Theodore Roosevelt’s party was. It is not even about advancing the ability of businesses to do as they deem best, as Ronald Reagan’s party was.

“The modern Republican Party is about using the power of the government to enforce the beliefs of a radical minority on the majority of Americans.”

You can apply this excellent analysis to anything the House Republicans do, but it is particularly relevant to the current drama over the debt ceiling.

One of the oddest things about this year’s version of the debt ceiling drama is that even the crazy people instigating it don’t appear to have much interest in the subject of the national debt or deficit reduction. Marjorie Traitor Green was asked the other day what programs she specifically would like to cut, and replied, “I don’t have a list of those yet.”

That’s probably because the World’s Dumbest Airhead doesn’t actually know anything about what things government does, other than she doesn’t like Social Security and Medicare, but since she’s attempting (so far, unsuccessfully) to appear “responsible,” she knows the Party Line is that “we won’t touch Social Security and Medicare,” and that even the guy on whose ticket she wants to run as Vice President (!) - the World’s Dumbest Moron - has been smart enough to say the party shouldn’t touch those. So, beyond those, she probably doesn’t have a clue.

Even J.D. Vance gave a thumbs-up to Trump’s tweet about not taking after Social Security and Medicare.

Alleged “moderate” (there really are none left in the party, but some get called that because they don’t slaver when they talk) Nancy Mace was asked on Meet The Press what she wants to cut and couldn’t name anything to cut, but specifically ruled out Social Security and Medicare cuts. Demonstrating her lack of knowledge about how the government actually works, the Big Idea she’s pushing is that Congress should mandate some kind of non-specific overall reductions in discretionary spending and then leave it up to the agency heads to decide what to do.

That neither the alleged moderate Mace, or the trying-to-be-serious Greene have any slight understanding of how the government they allegedly are supposed to direct works is all the proof needed that the modern Republican party has no interest in actually governing.

Of course, Republicans will never opt to address their concerns about the deficit with higher taxes. But right now, they seem to have no clue about what to cut. They just want to hold the debt hostage and more than a few of them would like to see the country default. At the same time, there is a faction in the party that sees doing this as poltiical suicide. They just don’t know how to bring themselves to oppose it without setting their constituents on fire.

The truth is that Republicans may say they are trying to hold a negotiation, that mean old Joe Biden won’t participate in, but they don’t actually have a negotiating position.

They’re certain that passing a clean debt limit would mean they’d be yelled at by the real leaders of the party over at Faux Snooze, and their followers would likely fill their in-boxes with death threats, but they really don’t know why they don’t want to do the responsible thing an actual governing party would engage in, other than that nobody wants to surrender.

They also have a vague sense that “bad stuff happening” would be bad for Joe Biden. Those of them who were around 12 years ago believe that the belief a debt ceiling crisis will damage the incumbent president is how they got leverage over Obama.

But now they’re faced with a President who was “in the room” the last time, and who seems to have learned from his failed attempt to do the “responsible Democrat thing” and run up the white flag and then say “let’s negotiate” back then didn’t work, made things worse, and today backed by a public with a deeper understanding of the issue and thus giving more support to the White House to oppose the crazies, on some level even the Marjorie Traitor Goons know they don’t have that leverage.

If they knew anything about how the part of government they are in actually works, they would know that if they want to reduce appropriations for the discretionary budget, there’s an established process for that.

Last December, a bipartisan majority in the House and Senate passed an omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal year 202, which offered an unusually large increase in nominal spending. Republicans scored a key win in that the defense budget grew faster than non-defense appropriations for the first time since defense/non-defense parity written into the Budget Control Act of 2011.

Looking at the history of that is a good way to demonstrate how the actual process the Republicans don’t seem to understand works:

Back during the 2011 debt ceiling fight, Obama refused to cut Social Security and Medicare unless Republicans would raise taxes. Naturally, Republicans refused to raise taxes, so they settled on a group of discretionary spending cuts. By 2013, when the next attempt to create a debt crisis happened, Republicans felt those cuts were squeezing the Pentagon unfairly, so they agreed to lift the budget caps while maintaining the parity principle. In the FY2023 omnibus, they won an end to parity by agreeing to an unusually large increase in appropriations.

But whatever you think about this whole series of events, we have a process in place for setting discretionary spending levels.

If today’s Republicans want to write appropriations bills that set lower spending levels - Quiverin’ Qevin has set a goal of paring spending back to the levels of FY2022, which would mean some big cuts - and pass them in the House, nothing stops them from doing that. Since it is likely Democrats would not agree to those cuts, there then might be a government shutdown in October and we’d find out who the public sides with.

Or they could pass appropriations bills with the cuts they want but avoid a shutdown by agreeing to a continuing resolution. A continuing resolution (CR) that maintains current spending levels is in fact a cut in real terms, and the longer that CR and any supplemental CRs run, the deeper the cut.

When Republicans held the White House, House and Senate in 2017-18 and didn’t cut discretionary spending, the demonstrated their actual level of commitment to the issue of spending.

The point is, there is a way to fight about discretionary spending if that’s what they want to do. They can even have their dramatic crisis moment in the form of a government shutdown.

There’s no need to do this debt ceiling fight, which will harm their voters as much as it harms Democratic voters

.It’s likely that the real thing they want to do is trash Medicaid. It’s been a Republican dream since then-Speaker Ryan waxed nostalgic about how he had dreamed of doing that since he was in college. This is why they tried to repeal Obamacare, which had put a lot of money into expanding Medicaid; a repeal of the ACA would generate a big cut to Medicaid eligibility. Look at how many Republican-dominated legislatures have refused to take the free money for Medicaid expansion that the ACA offers.

McCarthy was around for all that and he knows killing Medicaid is a loser outside the party, though it is an Article of Faith among Republicans.

In the “negotiations” he wants with Biden, one way to get the appearance of urgent action on the deficit without touching Medicare and Social Security would be go back to cutting Medicaid.

Cutting poor people off from their health insurance would demonstrate a morally outrageous set of priorities, but a desire to do this is an explanation of why Republicans want to risk national bankruptcy. They think agreeing to cut Medicaid as an alternative to debt default and all the terrors that brings would make them look “responsible.”

But they can’t say that in public, because they know without a crisis at hand, they’re back to where they were when McCain turned his thumb down on them in 2017.

When Joe Manchin tried to defuse the crisis by proposing another run at the bipartisan commission exercise that didn’t work back in 2011, his attempt to find an alternative was rejected out of hand by the Freedom Caucus. Even if it was proposed by Manchin, the idea of a bipartisan commission charged with formulating some balanced deficit reduction measures is a good idea, if it includes both spending cuts and revenue increases. However, that equation is politically futile. But proposing such a thing could create a way for a “sane faction” of House Republicans to jettison the Freedom Caucus and deal responsibly with the debt ceiling, with the ability to go back to their districts and tell their voters they are working seriously the the problem of “gub’mint spendin.”

The fact that the Freedom Caucus was so quick to kill the idea when Manchin proposed it is a demonstration that they know this is how they can be sidetracked back to being the noisy minority with no power they should be.

If Biden were to propose such a commission, it would likely get enough public support to give the “sane ones” enough backbone to agree. Yes, it’s “negotiation,” but it is not negotiation on the debt crisis.

At least some faction of House Republicans need to keep in mind that the most recent polls show that they have a national rating of 32% approval to 67% disapproval, and that Quiverin’ Qevin has a national approval of 19%. While the Fweedumb Kawkuss members come from districts that would elect Caligula’s horse before electing a Democrat, the actual “governing majority” of the House Republicans are the 18 members who can look at those numbers and see political extinction next year.

Give them something they can take back home and show they’re serious, something that allows them to do what they know is the responsible thing regarding the debt ceiling, and they might just discover that they do have a backbone hanging there in the office locker.

Who knows? Let those 18 “Biden District Republicans” find out that doing this leads to their own personal political success, and they might find they actually want to create a governing coalition with Democrats that provides them an opportunity to start overturning Trumpism.

And if it doesn’t happen, even the DC Press Corpse might finally see who is and who isn’t serious about governing. (Hope springs infernal)

[TCinLA]