Republicans Holding America Hostage with the Debt Ceiling

Today the United States expects to hit the debt ceiling currently set at $14.3 trillion as mandated by the US Congress.  While there have been a lot of attempts to fully explain what the debt ceiling actually is, the simplest answer is that the amount of debt that the US Treasury can legally accumulate through borrowing is fixed by Congress through legislation.  After hitting the ceiling the Treasury can get a hit of extra leeway through finessing a few hundred billion dollars extra, but Congress must pass a bill expanded upwards the debt limit for the American federal government.  If they fail to do so, the United States will default on its debt and all kinds of economic nastiness will occur.

With that in mind, the Obama Administration is now facing a game of Russian Roulette with the Republicans and some Democrats in Congress, who apparently are going to use the crisis-like urgency of the current situation as a  means of forcing through significant spending cuts in exchange for their votes.  The debt ceiling has been the subject of a lot of posturing in the past, but as Matthew Yglesias notes here, those episodes never involved the holding of the country's financial health hostage as a means to extract policy on the part of politicians in Congress.

What I'd add is that this constitutes a classic episode of Kleinian shock doctrine.  Use a crisis of some sort, in this case the reaching of the debt ceiling, as a means of passing radical market reforms to the economy over the heads of the mass of the American people.  After all, the urgency in which decisions have to be made naturally precludes much involvement from the citizenry, direct or indirect; hence this is the perfect moment to undertake a market fundamentalist's wildest dreams.

Conceding to the Republicans in this case could potentially create a precedent for the usage of the debt ceiling in the future as a political weapon.  President Obama and his Democratic allies on Capital Hill have to hold firm against the desires of the Republicans and the moral weakness of some Democrats to implement structural changes to the fiscal policy of the US Government.

Serious People having a Serious Debate

Paul Krugman, who has been on a serious tear as of late, wrote a post on a speech by Alan Simpson; the co-chair of American President Obama's debt commission,

Actually, the rude gesture (more detail, please?) was the least of it. If you follow the link, you’ll find Simpson repeating a whole series of zombie lies about Social Security. He repeats the idea that nobody collected benefits in the beginning because life expectancy at birth was only 63 (life expectancy at age 65, which is what matters, was almost 80 for women and 78 for men). He claims that nobody saw the future burden of the baby boomers, when the Greenspan commission reforms in the 1980s were all about precisely that. And on and on.

And when confronted with contrary numbers taken straight from the Social Security Administration, he claims that they’re left-wing fabrications.

He goes on to ask whether we should take the advice of people who apparently understand nothing about the subject in which they speak seriously.

There's two ways you can interpret Simpson's comments.  Either he actually doesn't understand anything about Social Security in the United States, or that he's simply lying to his audience on purpose.  Given that Simpson used to be a Senator from Wyoming I expect that he's simply lying about the subject, but you never know.  Regardless, this kind of strategy is classic strategy for attacks on the welfare state.  Parts of the American welfare state are in trouble, but it isn't Social Security, it's Medicare, which was the target of last year's land mark expansion of health care access.  In fact, if nothing is done about the Social Security 'crisis' in the United States, the program will be able to pay out all of its benefits until 2037; when it'll be forced to cut pay outs to 78% declining to 75% of pay outs after 2084.

Since there is no actual crisis in the American Social Security system, people like Simpson and other individuals/groups interested in destroying the welfare state have worked at inventing a crisis instead.  The manufacturing of the 'crisis' of Social Security is enabled by another manufactured 'crisis' with the spiraling of American public debt, which structurally is more a result of elite-driven tax cuts, rather than an actual problem with expenditures of the American government, even while waging two wars overseas.

Heads on Pikes

On June 21st, 1621, 27 Czech Protestants were led to the gallows in Prague's Old Town Square; convicted of having rebelled against Bohemian King Ferdinand II.  After their deaths, the Habsburgs had their heads impaled on pikes to adorn the sides of Charles Bridge, an old 14th century bridge decorated with statues of Roman Catholics saints which spans across the Moldau River.  The message conveyed by the Habsburg crown to the mass of Czech Protestants was clear, this was how justice would be done for committing treason against the King.

This sort of bloody threat of violence that would occur if anyone dared threaten the United States is apparently on the mind of Sarah Palin.

Yep, apparently you have to show the bullet ridden corpse of Bin Laden because you can't be 'pussy-footing around' when it comes to a 'mission' as important as the drifting morass that is Afghanistan.  Regardless, this effort to force the Obama Administration to release photos of Bin Laden's corpse has no intrinsic value.  There is nothing to be gained by showing the photos other than to glee at the already evident demise of the infamous terrorist.  Republican Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty's assertion that conspiracy theories regarding the belief that Bin Laden is actually still alive could be nipped in the bud with the release of the photos is ridiculous.  Look at the re-release by the American Government of President Obama's birth certificate.  Did it end all of the birther conspiracies? No, of course it didn't.

Which comes back to the story of the Protestant Czechs.  This isn't about the 'death deniers' as far as Sarah Palin's concerned, it's about demonstrating the greatness of America's ability to marshal overwhelming power to inflict pain and death on its enemies abroad, and finding pleasure and reward in observing the gruesome aftermath.  The Habsburgs' decision to mount the heads of the Czech rebels on Charles Bridge was not about finding pleasure in killing Protestants, for Ferdinand II and advocates of royal power it was about justice and punishment for treason against the crown.  For Sarah Palin and many other Americans who argue her case, this is a demonstration of American power.  Their conception of 'justice' in this case is more akin to self-satisfaction in instilling pain in others, similar to the distressing tendency of Americans to believe in the value of torture in interrogating detainees.  Torture has never been an effective means of exacting intelligence, and always has been a psychological means of demonstrating power over others, in particular the power to inflict pain.

For many Americans 9/11 was a wound that refused to close, partially because many did not want it to close.  It was too useful to have an electorate with the memories of pain and death inflicted on fellow Americans.  In return they wanted an 'eye for an eye' and 'justice' that ended up channeled through irrational displays of violence.  Americans for the most part celebrated news of Bin Laden's death, just as they often try as hard as they can to find reasons, any reasons, no matter how small, to rationalize the use of torture.  The instinct of Americans is driven by a sudden feeling of vulnerability because of a crack in the invulnerability of American power.  The response is predictable and Sarah Palin's demand for display of the consequences of challenging American power is the exemplar of this reaction.  The heads that adorned Charles Bridge after June of 1621 were about justice for challenging the 'divine order of the universe' Ferdinand II's supporters argued; Palin's 'heads' are about revenge and satisfaction.