Debt Ceiling/Fiscal Cliff Remix is going platinum

Stop me when this sounds familiar will you?

According to Republican Pat Toomey in order to stop the debt ceiling "we Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown"

Stop you say? you heard that exact same thing from republicans last year? And the attempt at avoiding it lead to the Super Committee which lead to the sequester which lead to the fiscal cliff which lead to kicking the sequester down the road two months right into the debt ceiling again.

Yes seriously, we are back here again. And the republican party hasnt learned that this isnt a good idea for their parties image and the democratic party still hasnt learned to negotiate (IE giving away all their leverage by separating taxes from spending in the fiscal cliff and kicking the spending into the debt ceiling talks).

Although their is one minor minor minor change. See last year they were talking about a full government shut down unless their demands were met, this year they are only saying they might go for a partial shut down.

And for the record its not just Toomey, this is the coordinated GOP message. Here's Senator John Cornyn the new Number 2 ranked republican in the senate "It may be necessary to partially shut down the government in order to secure the long-term fiscal well being of our country, rather than plod along the path of Greece, Italy and Spain."

Again note the use of "partial shut down" this is the new republican position. But heres the thing despite what it sounds like its not really a more moderate position. In fact its just an even more dickish one, they are just counting on you to be too stupid to know that.

See in a full government shut down, everyone goes home and no one gets paid. In a partial government shutdown "essential" personal are still required to come to work, and of course they get paid. And by the way Congress counts as essential personal.

So see last time they basically said "fuck you" this time, they are trying their hand at reverse prostitution, they not only want to fuck you, they want you to pay them for the privilege of letting them fuck you. And actually to be fair they want to do a whole bunch of other unmentionable things your usually only willing to tolerant on special occasions.

You see, like referenced before, we still need to figure out all the cuts we are supposed to make from the last time we went through this, and those decisions just got meshed into this time around.

Say for example we decide to cut Social Security by 150 billion from last time, well before we can settle on that we now have to decide how much to cut from this go around as well (say another 150 billion) so both sets of cuts will go into place at the same time.

Basically its the Fiscal Cliff on steroids, except this time there is no democratic leverage (so yea hopefully you werent planning on using student loans, or medicare/medicaid or social security, or child tax credits, or home mortgage deductions ect ect, since the Dems have nothing to bargain with this time).

And of course if it plays out like last time, we will have yet another Fiscal Cliff in the future, further compounding the cuts (which are in practice such a bad idea that everyone is trying to avoid making them, which is how we got into this mess in the first place. The GOP demanded cuts, got the cuts, realized putting the cuts in place would be a disaster so kicked the cuts down the road, so that they could demand more cuts.....)      

And of course like last time the credit agencys have warned the Republicans (specifically them this time) that if this happens we will have our credit rating down graded AGAIN.

Which as you remember is one of the reasons the GOP brand name is now in the toilet, they got blamed (correctly in my opinion) for the downgrade. So of course they want to try it again.

Now of course there is a very simple solution to all of this: Decide that the idea that Congress can force the president NOT to pay the bill Congress ran up is an insane one.

Because thats basically all the debt ceiling is. It's the president going to congress to ask for permisson to get money to pay the bills on things congress has spent money on.

And saying its an insane idea that should be fixed is actually shockingly easy.

Heres part of the 14th amendment to the US Constitution:

"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

In short what that means is "we as a country pay our bills and are legally barred from not doing so"

So yea just point to that and tell the GOP to fuck off, your not allowed to tell the president he cant pay the bills as he has a Constitution obligation to ignore you and pay them anyways. 

Or it SHOULD be a simple fix. You see President Obama has already announced that that solution makes too much sense and is much too easy and might actually result in him getting a clean win and not having to compromise, so he's not gonna do.

So whats the next solution?

Well that would be the Platinum plan.

See by law only the Federal Reserve can mint any coin made with  copper gold silver or paper, and such money is controlled by congress. But the exactness of the wording IS the issue here, the law specifically states gold and silver copper and paper. Any other coin made out of any other precious metal is given over to the president.

So in theory the president can as Democrat Jerrold Nadler (and others) suggests, mint a trillion dollar coin made from platinum and pay off the deficit that way. And of course to prove the minting is legal, they would reference the section of the 14th amendment I quoted before.

Because why take the simple road when you can do something a whole lot more complicated that people really arnt going to like and that will have all kinds of inflationary issues as well?

So yea there you have it: On the one hand the GOP wants to take the debt ceiling hostage again, because doing so the last time basically destroyed their brand since it turned out even they realized their demands were a horrible idea, so we should do it again.

On the other you have the Democrats who somehow think some complex end run and printing a whole new kind of money is an easier thing to explain to the american people then the sentences "The debt ceiling is like a credit card bill and the GOP doesnt want to pay for what they bought. And we are legally required to pay the bill and we will"

No wonder politics is broken......