The crazy people in the house are already rounding up the funding and regulations they intend to hold hostage before agreeing to allow the debt extension vote. I'm not worried about us not calling their bluff yet, but Black birds falling from the sky at Midnight on New Years Day are not a good portent, augury or omen for the extent of the end of days insanity we will be up against in the coming year.
Shutting Down the government and the full faith and Credit of the US is an interesting Constitutional attack on the concept of the United States and its constitution by the States Rights people.
The Full Faith and Credit Clause — Article IV, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution — provides, "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State." The statute that implements the clause, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1738, further specifies that "a state's preclusion rules should control matters originally litigated in that state."
The Full Faith and Credit Clause ensures that judicial decisions rendered by the courts in one state are recognized and honored in every other state. It also prevents parties from moving to another state to escape enforcement of a judgment or to relitigate a controversy already decided elsewhere, a practice known as forum shopping.
Think of that in terms of the constitutional attacks on "Obamacare" and the desire of the insurance companies to be able to do as credit card companies do, locate in States whose lax regulations allow them to optimise profits at the expense of actually providing any health care.
In terms of austerity leading to a Plutocracy we are clearly well on the way toward the usual fascism. The idea is to break the unions, take away the idea of one person, one vote, human rights, civil rights, entitlements, social security, healthcare, unemployment benefits, pensions, eliminate taxes, regulations and other encumbrances on corporations and make us better able to compete with pakistan, India and China by lowering our standard of living and quality of life to a point somewhere close to that of the citizens of Haiti.
If we were in fact to be estopped from paying our bills what would happen? We are all already flirting with disaster, How would the disaster begin to unfold? Who would be the first to feel the pain? I'm presuming that things like government payrolls would be the first to feel the pinch. Tax returns, and Social Security checks would stop coming. People expecting the government to pay for their healthcare and prescriptions would be going without. People wouldn't get public assistance, help with home heating oil, food, shelter clothing, the Homeless, the migrant worker, the young, the elderly, the sick might not make it through.
Aside from that government contracts wouldn't be renewed, help to cities and towns would dry up, regulatory agencies would cease to function, the defense department and the Military Industrial Complex would go unfunded, there are 21 Government Agencies that would no longer have any money to do their job.
China would come looking for its money but there would be no courts functioning in which to sue and no police to enforce the eviction.
We have about sixty days for this all to unfold before it starts getting nasty and push to come to shove in terms of the Republicans either getting their way or sent on their way.