What does this mean? If you are saying “there will be no default”, yes I’d lean that way. The markets are certainly leaning that way. Not that markets are always correct, just that default would be unfathomable and therefore cannot be “priced in”. But if they expected a default, it would at least be reacting with some volatility rather than ignoring “the show” McCarthy is putting on. If you are suggesting the govt can “default” on paying bills and somehow have that NOT represent a govt shutdown. I’m pretty sure that would be incorrect. The govt would be forced to shutdown just as it previously has, except in addition to stiffing employees it would *also* stop making payments to bondholders.
The government has never defaulted. I don’t know that there are explicit rules that upon default first the government shuts down. I doubt there are rules and laws surrounding something that isn’t supposed to happen. It is like saying, if I break the law, the law says I should then do this.
White House and House Republicans strike agreement in principle to raise debt ceiling, sources say | CNN Politics now to get it past the zealots on both sides.
Huh? The U.S. government has never “defaulted” on its obligations. A default would be like a higher level of shutdown. Basically, you can shut down the govt without a default. You really can’t default without ALSO shutting the govt.
I would take it that when the govt shuts down, it is because the govt is not authorized to spend additional funds per the last budget (so it shuts down over a budget impasse). However the govt can still continue to issue debt and pay its accrued bills. There is no doubt as to being made whole. When there is “default” it is a worse scenario. The govt does not have the funds to operate (not because the budget doesn’t authorize them, but because they literally cannot raise the funds, in this case by artificial mechanism). And then you add that additional layer of not being able to pay bondholders (the default condition) or issue debt. Basically, you can have a shutdown without a default. I don’t see how you can have a default without also having a shutdown. Of course I’m not speaking to any legalese as to how it would work, just that it wouldn’t make practical sense otherwise.
Since it is very likely that idiots like Boebert and Taylor-Greene and Santos are basically too stupid to be able to read a bill anyway, McCarthy need only tell them that there is money in this bill to round up gay and trans people and confine them to concentration camps, they will vote for it without a second of hesitation. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/27/whi...ach-a-tentative-deal-to-avoid-us-default.html
I understand what you are saying and there is a logic to it, but at the same time you are applying logic to a situation that just isn’t supposed to happen in the first place and I doubt that it has been specifically articulated anywhere. I may be wrong. Everybody has been assuming that if we default we can pick and choose what we pay and what we don’t. But it isn’t clear to me that the ability to do that even exists. You have vast automated payment systems that probably weren’t set up to selectively pay vendors on a different schedule. If you have a company they can make decisions based on what they want to pay (which could be unwound in future bankruptcy proceedings). With the government there has to be laws and procedures and processes. Is there a legal basis on which to choose to pay this and not that? Is there even a capability within these government systems that are probably decades old to even choose what to pay and not? Everybody makes a lot of assumptions on things that may see easily doable but in fact may not be.
If McCarthy loses the speakership, he will hang himself on the Capitol gallows that was meant for Pence. It's all the Trump "ring"-kissing coward lives for.
So, in reading through the "fact sheet", this whole Republican temper tantrum was over the IRS auditing their rich donors. There is literally nothing else on that entire fact sheet that would amount to anything of substance.