Republicans Ready To Default

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Despite promising talks over the weekend that ended up going nowhere, the stubborn GOP seems hell bent on threatening to burn the entire house down unless they get their way.  “We always have enough money to pay our debt service,” said GOP Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, who believes a steady stream of tax revenue flowing into the Treasury is enough to avoid a financial crisis. “You’ve had the federal government out of work for close to two weeks; that’s about $24 billion a month. Every month, you have enough saved in salaries alone that you’re covering three-fifths, four-fifths of the total debt service, about $35 billion a month. That’s manageable for some time.”

Not surprisingly, the words of Sen. Burr have set off a full scale civil war within the GOP, with the old guard fighting for relevancy and respect from the rabble-rousing Tea Party.  The old guard doesn’t want to bring the national debt into a political game of chicken, but a growing number of Republicans are falling under the belief that allowing the now closed U.S. government to go into debt is not as cataclysmic as President Obama, economists and most common sense people think.

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“Some government services might have to be curtailed, but I think the real date, candidly, the date that’s highly problematic for our nation, is Nov. 1,” said GOP Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee.

Still, others doubt there is a deadline at all and that daily tax receipts are more than enough to pay off Treasury bonds as they come due.

“It really is irresponsible of the president to try to scare the markets,” said Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. “If you don’t raise your debt ceiling, all you’re saying is, ‘We’re going to be balancing our budget.’ So if you put it in those terms, all these scary terms of, ‘Oh my goodness, the world’s going to end’ — if we balance the budget, the world’s going to end? Why don’t we spend what comes in?”

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In a display of common sense, President Obama cautioned those who doubt the repercussions of a default.

“When I hear people trying to downplay the consequences of that, I think that’s really irresponsible, and I’m happy to talk to any of them individually and walk them through exactly why it’s irresponsible,” he said. “And it’s particularly funny coming from Republicans who claim to be champions of business. There’s no business person out here who thinks this wouldn’t be a big deal, not one. You go to anywhere from Wall Street to Main Street, and you ask a C.E.O. of a company or ask a small-business person whether it’d be a big deal if the United States government isn’t paying its bills on time. They’ll tell you it’s a big deal. It would hurt.”