Paul Krugman, on ABC's This Week, calls out the Republican's Debt-Limit hostage-taking tactics for the dangerous, illegitimate strategy, that it is.
That the R's dare to call it "governing" -- when they refuse the pay the country's Credit Card bills; spending bills that THEY themselves have already signed for ...
This Week -- Jan 13, 2012
PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: OK. The thing you have to understand is that the debt ceiling is a fundamentally stupid, but dangerous thing. We have congress that tells the president how much he must spend, tells him how much he's allowed to collect in taxes. He says OK, there's a difference there, I've got to borrow it. And they say, no, you can't borrow them.
So the whole debt ceiling thing itself is a crazy thing. It actually forces the president to do something illegal, either to defy congress on what it told him to spend or to defy congress and borrow when it told him not to. And then we have this weird loophole, which everyone agrees is crazy, but it happens to be there -- but is a loophole -- that says that the Secretary of the Treasury can mint a coin for any amount which is supposed to be for commemorative pieces, but it does avoid -- it does offer a way to bypass this.
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"fundamentally stupid, but dangerous thing, crazy"
... those are some very strong words for the Party with the very tarnished brand.
It's about time.
But Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Paul Krugman was not yet done with his analysis of Republican economics. Former U.S. Comptroller David Walker, had a few choice words for the R's as well.
This Week -- Jan 13, 2012
DAVID WALKER, FRM. U.S. COMPTROLLER: Look, the Republicans need to wake up and get real. We're the only country on earth that has a debt ceiling limit. Ultimately as part of a grand bargain we ought to get rid of it. We ought to substitute statutory budget controls and a constitutional credit card limit, debt to GDP. But in the interim, if the Republicans want to use leverage, they ought to use it on the sequester and the continuing resolution.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Which is right on the heels...
WALKER: Correct.
KRUGMAN: We should not allow this to become thought of as a legitimate or normal budget strategy. This is hostage taking. This is saying walk into a room saying I've got a bomb give me what I want or I'll blow up this room. This is not something -- this has never happened before and should not be allowed to happen.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But doesn't that mean, then, that it's very likely to happen now for the first time given the positions that each side has taken and what -- let me ask you, Paul Krugman, what are the economic consequences of that?
KRUGMAN: It's incredibly scary. This is much scarier than the fiscal cliff, much scarier than any of the other things out there because we don't know what it does. But we do know is that U.S. government debt is the global safe asset. It is what every financial transaction relies on as the ultimate. This is what value consists of and better than gold, better than anything. U.S. Treasury bills are the thing. And if they are no longer, if they're called into question, nobody knows what happens.
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fundamentally stupid, but dangerous thing, crazy, incredibly scary,
and above all, not a legitimate or normal budget strategy.
Those are some very strong words for the Republican's perennial idea of Fiscal Responsibility.
It seems Paul Krugman is not going to let the R's dare to hold the country hostage (again), just to get their ideological spending concessions -- not without calling it out for the reckless, dangerous behavior, it in reality is.
And neither should we. Let the R's use our country's Treasury Bill ratings as their annual Ransom Demand, just so they can take their ill-conceived budget axe to our earned retirement benefits. And then next, to other worthy social-safety-net programs.
It's about time, that the R's tarnished brand, become very obvious for the entire nation to plainly see. Are we a country that pays our bills on time, or what?