On the Debt Ceiling, the White House Is Doing What It Said It Wouldn't Do
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In 2011, then-Vice President Biden had a front row seat to a bruising debt ceiling standoff between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner. That fight arguably derailed the Obama presidency and the nascent economic recovery. After that experience, Biden and his team had insisted that this time they would not negotiate over a debt ceiling increase. Yet here we are, and the current administration is doing exactly that. According to the Treasury Department, we're just days away from the so called "X-date" (when a US default would occur) and both the White House and new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have been debating what conditions a hike in the debt ceiling should come with. So how did they get into this situation? And what were the other options? On this episode we speak with Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America, and Arnab Datta, senior counsel of Employ America, about the current state of play and how it might have been avoided.
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Biden had two good options to avoid this humiliating subservience to the GQP. He could have taken the advice of Lawrence Tribe, Harvard Law professor and expert on Constitutional law, and invoked the 4th clause of the 14th Amendment which states that the US will pay its debts no matter what. Or he could have followed the advice of Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in Economics, and asked Sec. Yellen to mint the Trillion Dollar Coin and deposit it in the US Treasury. Instead, he went with the timid Obama game plan and gave in to the despicable bullies who represent the billionaire thugs who run the country. He is too old, too weak, too unimaginative, and too dimwitted to be POTUS. Bernie would never have caved like this. If he runs again, he will lose to the moronic MAGA grifter. It makes me feel so hopeless to see this shill who allowed CT to get onto the Supreme Court of Injustice make a mockery of the rule of law and the Democrats who voted for him in 2020.