Closer To the Edge

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner finally got a debt ceiling bill over the finish line in the House of Representatives Friday evening with two more votes than he needed. The bill passed included $917 billion in spending cuts over ten years and increase the debt limit enough to cover about six months. But it didn't go nearly as far as most Tea Partiers want, even without tax increases included, and Boehner had to include a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution - which has no chance of making it out of Congress without a two-thirds majority in either house, which it cannot receive - to get it to pass.

Boehner comes out of all this severely diminished as a leader, because he had to keep delaying the vote on this bill on account of not getting enough votes to pass it. This victory was a Pyrrhic one; as soon as the bill reached the Senate, the upper house killed it, as Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said it would. However, the Democratic Senate plan offered by Reid has fared no better. It would cut $2 trillion in spending over ten years (again, no tax increases) and extend the nation's borrowing authority through 2012, sparing incumbent politicians the task of having to deal with it in an election campaign that's already guaranteed to be contentious. That plan has been shelved, and the Republican House has already rejected it. So Reid doesn't exactly look like a hero either.

Reid and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell have been trying to formulate a compromise that the House might have to swallow, but they haven't apparently made and meaningful progress on that front either.

The best thing that could happen if the United States defaults is if the Tea Party is discredited (like the nation's finances) once and for all. As for progressives who thought we were on the cusp of a new golden age in January 2009, they'd better find themselves another candidate. They know what I'm talking about.