Tag: Congress

Has Barack Obama over-stepped his constitutional authority by continuing to participate in the Libya NATO action without congressional consent? Like George W. Bush ignoring the law banning water boarding as torture, Obama has decided to ignore the War Powers Resolution and the advice of two top lawyers from the Pentagon and his own DOJ. In the New York Times, Charlie Savage writes a scathing analysis of the president’s actions:

   President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

   Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

   But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team – including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh – who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.

The question is could this open an investigation by the House to consider impeachment. Several other lawyers have their own views, none of them very pretty.

This stinging comparison from Jack Balkin at Balkinization of Obama’s decision to not consult with his own Office of Legal Council (OLC): George W. Obama and the OLC

It is instructive to compare President Obama’s actions with those of his predecessor, George W. Bush, who sought legal justification for his decision to engage in waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which constituted torture. Bush wanted above all to be able to deny that he was violating the anti-torture statute and other laws and treaties. So he found a small group of lawyers in the OLC, headed by John Yoo, and asked for their opinions. This short-circuited the usual process through which the OLC collected views from various agencies and then used them to develop legal opinions for the executive branch. That is, Bush (assisted by his Vice-President, Dick Cheney) arranged matters so that decisions about waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques would be in the hands of lawyers he knew would tell him yes; the normal process of collating opinions was short-circuited and other lawyers were effectively frozen out.

Obama’s practice is different, but it has disturbing similarities. Normally, Obama would have asked the OLC for its opinion, and as noted above, the OLC would have polled legal expertise in various agencies, consulted its precedents, had long discussions, and then come up with a scholarly opinion that is normally binding on the executive branch. Instead, Obama routed around the OLC, asking for opinions from various lawyers, including the White House Counsel and the Attorney-Advisor for the State Department. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that from the outset Obama was prospecting for opinions that would tell him that his actions were legal, and once he found them, he felt comfortable in rejecting the opinion of the OLC.

Obama’s strategy, like Bush’s, also short circuits the normal process of seeking opinions from the OLC; it simply does so in a different way.

At Lawfare, Jack Goldsmith has a similar view but adds:

This episode makes me wonder how all of this is being taken by the U.S. military.  It must be strange to many involved in Operation Odyssey Dawn to be told that not only are they not involved in “war,” they are not even involved in “hostilities.”  A midshipman at the Naval Academy wrote to cto say, in light of the original unilateral resort to force in Libya, that he wondered whether the soldiers fighting in Libya “are breaking their oath to obey only legal orders.”  I think this is a large overreaction to the initial use of force.  And despite my views of the WPR here, I do not think that disobedience would be a proper reaction to the President’s decision under the WPR.  The President gets to make the call and his decision is not so far out of bounds to warrant disobedience.  But it cannot be pleasant for the men and women involved in this “kinetic military action” to know that the Defense Department General Counsel and the head of OLC think the intervention in Libya as currently executed is unlawful.

Glenn Greenwald believes that Obama’s end run around the WPR may be even worse than the Bush/Cheney regime:

   All that aside, what is undeniable is that Obama could have easily obtained Congressional approval for this war – just as Bush could have for his warrantless eavesdropping program – but consciously chose not to, even to the point of acting contrary to his own lawyers’ conclusions about what is illegal.

   Other than the same hubris – and a desire to establish his power to act without constraints – it’s very hard to see what motivated this behavior. Whatever the motives are, it’s clear that he’s waging an illegal war, as his own Attorney General, OLC Chief and DoD General Counsel have told him.

In summing all this up, bmaz at FDL states:

Without saying Obama should be impeached, failure to at least have the discussion made in those terms is dereliction of constitutional duty by people, pundits and Congress. This critical issue is not yet getting that kind of play, but it should as it is absolutely why the founders placed the provision in the Constitution to start with.

If our society and political discourse cannot seriously discuss impeachment for the type of executive perfidy demonstrated by Barack Obama in relation to Libya and the War Powers Resolution, and could not discuss it during the Bush/Cheney crimes, then the impeachment provision of the Constitution has no meaning and should be stricken.

Seriously, those are the stakes. A discussion, even an investigation, does not mean there has to be an impeachment conviction, or even that articles of impeachment should even be filed. But the discussion must be had if there is to continue to be integrity to the most fundamental terms and conditions of the United States Constitution.

Since 1962 the debt ceiling has been raised 74 times. Under George W. Bush, it was raised ten times without amendment. The current fiscal problems were caused by the Bush tax cuts, the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and the economic downturn that both Republicans and Democrats refuse to realistically address by investing in this country, raising revenue, yes taxes, and closing the tax loop holes for corporations. The deficit will not be reduced by ending Medicare and decimating Medicaid and forcing seniors to pay 68% of the costs. That Medicare is even on the table without the tax increases for the top 1% should be a non-starter for negotiations on limiting the debt or raising the debt ceiling. The only reason that I can see this is even a discussion is that the President and the Democrats are beholding to the health care industry and pharmaceutical companies that would benefit in the trillions of dollars if Medicare and Medicaid are ended.

Every Democrat in the House who voted “nay” on the clean bill to raise the debt ceiling should be primaried with a real Democrat who will vote for the best interests of the middle class and the poor and not negotiate away their safety nets to make the rich wealthier.

The GOP staged a debt ceiling “stunt” vote by presenting a clean bill to the floor of the House under suspension of the rules. Suspension of the rules requires a 2/3 vote, allows only 40 minutes of debate and prohibits amendments. Chris Hayes, an editor at the Nation sitting in for Lawrence O’Donnell, discusses the House vote on this not so funny “joke” with Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).

Jon Walker at FDL observes

This move is the ultimate expression of political kabuki, and goes beyond just a show vote. Even if there were a majority of the House that supported voting for a clean debt ceiling increase, due to suspended rules, they now have no incentive to actually vote for the bill. After all, voting to raise the debt ceiling isn’t very popular, so knowing this bill can’t get a two-thirds vote, individual members have no reason to take an unpopular vote that will end up doing nothing.

Boehner isn’t having a vote on a clean bill to prove it can’t pass without major concessions, he has preordained the bill’s failure, taking away members’ reasons to actually vote for the bill, therefore assuring the final roll call will look very bad. Boehner will then point to this big failure he himself guaranteed as somehow justifying his making even more demands.

The hostages takers are demanding even more ransom and they won’t be satisfied until all the hostages are dead.

Back in October, I wrote this article, Separation of Powers Game of Chicken, which discussed the use of pro forma sessions to block the president from making recess appointments. The reason I’m resurrecting this discussion is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled these pro forma sessions over the holiday weekend to prevent President Obama from appointing Elizabeth Warren as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Board over the objections of Republicans. As with the blocking of Richard Diamond, an eminently qualified Nobel economist, to the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve, it is Sen. Richard “no” Shelby (R-AL) who has said he will put a hold on Dr. Warren’s appointment if the president nominates her.

Republicans used the threat of a procedural blockade to make sure President Barack Obama wouldn’t be able to make recess appointments while the U.S. Senate is on a break next week, including naming Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Instead of allowing all senators and their staffs to leave Washington, Majority Leader Harry Reid scheduled “pro forma” sessions, in which the chamber officially opens for the day, then gavels to a close right away. That can be handled by two lawmakers and aides.

Any time the Senate breaks for four days or more, the president has the power to officially appoint a nominee for a limited period without having to wait for a confirmation vote.

snip

Reid, a Nevada Democrat, kept the Senate in pro forma sessions during the final months of Republican President George W. Bush’s administration to block him from appointing nominees that Democrats had refused to confirm.

If Reid hadn’t decided to quietly schedule pro forma sessions, another procedure could have publicly forced him to do so. The House is required to agree to Senate recesses, and concurs as a matter of routine.

Confused? Is Reid a Democrat? Or has he secretly gone over to the dark side? It is time for the president and the Democrats to put on their “man pants” and call out these faux sessions that are constitutionally not legal sessions. I will repeat the arguments of why these pro forma sessions are not constitutional and do not stop the president from making recess appoints.

Victor Williams, Assistant Professor at the Catholic University of America School of Law and an attorney, writing for the The National Law Journal makes the argument that the pro forma sessions every three days during recess are little more “than a game of separation-of-powers chicken”. There is nothing in the Constitution and Appellate courts have ruled that “there is no minimum recess time required for a valid recess appointment”.

But there is no minimum recess required under any law. The three-day minimum recess is fiction – as fake as are the Senate faux sessions. Better to begin with nonfiction – the Constitution.

In 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled: “The Constitution, on its face, does not establish a minimum time that an authorized break in the Senate must last to give legal force to the President’s appointment power under the Recess Appointments Clause.” In Evans v. Stephens, the 11th Circuit, following prior 9th and 2d circuit rulings, broadly affirmed the executive’s unilateral recess commissioning authority during short intersession and intrasession breaks.

Even the Senate’s own Congressional Research Service reports: “The Constitu­tion does not specify the length of time that the Senate must be in recess before the President may make a recess appointment.” . . .

The president’s constitutional appointment authority cannot be trumped, or even limited, by Senate scheduling shenanigans. In fact and law, the 111th Senate is now dispersed to the four corners for six campaign weeks. Gaveling open, and then gaveling closed, a half-minute meeting of an empty chamber is not a legitimate break in the recess. A Senate quorum could not be gathered; neither legislative nor executive business could be conducted. Constitutional law demands substance over form.

The faux sessions only further expose the broken institution and its failed, dysfunctional confirmation processes.

At bottom, recess appointments are a matter of presidential will. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt set the standard when he recess-appointed 160 officials during a recess of less than one day.

Mr. Williams points out that George W Bush’s failure to call this should not be Barack Obama’s.

Perhaps it is George W. Bush’s fault that the media erroneously reported that Obama’s recess appointment authority is lost. When majority leader Harry Reid first used the pro forma tactic against Bush over Thanksgiving, 2007, the 43rd president failed to push back.

Bush did not recess appoint for the remainder of his term despite calls for him to call Harry Reid’s bluff. A commissioning of even one noncontroversial nominee to a low level position would have asserted the executive’s prerogative. His failure to do so may be mistakenly interpreted as setting a precedent. It does not.

As I have noted on this site, Harry Reid appears to have gotten the better of George Bush; bluffing is a basic gambling skill for separation of powers and Texas Hold ’em.

This government is in need of a major shake up. It’s time that the President and the Democrats stood up for the people who put them in office. End the game, call the bluff.

This country stands on the edge of no longer existing as the Founding Father’s envisioned in the Constitution. Congress is about to infer on the Executive branch unprecedented power to wage war anywhere, detain or assassinate anyone, anywhere without due process and continue the expansion of the national security and surveillance state. The renewal of the reviled Patriot Act, is slated to be passed by congress with bipartisan approval today. As Jon Walker so astutely observes:

The often praised “bipartisanship” is rarely ever the product of both parties coming together around what the people want, and almost always about using each other as cover to avoid electoral consequences for voting in opposition to the will of the electorate.

The controversial Patriot Act, a bill once despised by almost every Democrat, passed cloture in the Senate on Monday night by 74 to 8. As Glen Greenwald noted only bills in support of Israel get this kind of near unanimous support. Eight Senators voting against cloture were Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democrats Jeff Merkley, Mark Begich, Max Baucus, and John Tester, and GOP Senators Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, and Dean Heller. Tester and Paul spoke out specifically, objecting to the most egregious parts of the bill and the need for reform.

I have to give Rand Paul credit here, demonstrating more integrity than Obama, since he is insisting on these reforms and will use delaying tactics to prevent the bill’s re-authorization without them despite threats from Sen Diane Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

 Sen. Paul announced that he was considering using delaying tactics to hold up passage of the bill in order to extract some reforms (including ones he is co-sponsoring with the Democrats’ Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Leahy, who — despite voicing “concerns” about the bill — voted for cloture).  Paul’s announcement of his delaying intentions provoked this fear-mongering, Terrorism-exploiting, bullying threat from the Democrats’ Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, Dianne Feinstein:

   “I think it would be a huge mistake,” Feinstein told reporters. “If somebody wants to take on their shoulders not having provisions in place which are necessary to protect the United States at this time, that’s a big, big weight to bear.”

In other words:  Paul and the other dissenting Senators better give up their objections and submit to quick Patriot Act passage or else they’ll have blood on their hands from the Terrorist attack they will cause.  That, of course, was the classic Bush/Cheney tactic for years to pressure Democrats into supporting every civil-liberties-destroying measure the Bush White House demanded (including, of course, the original Patriot Act itself), and now we have the Democrats — ensconced in power — using it just as brazenly and shamelessly (recall how Bush’s DNI, Michael McConnell, warned Congressional Democrats in 2007 that unless they quickly passed without changes the new FISA bill the Bush White House was demanding, a Terrorist attack would likely occur at the Congress in a matter of “days, not weeks”; McConnell then told The New Yorker: “If we don’t update FISA, the nation is significantly at risk”). Feinstein learned well.

Paul and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) are preparing  to introduce an amendment to the PATRIOT Act that would phase out some of the most controversial components of the national security law but that may not happen. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is preparing to do an end run around Senate procedures by including the Patriot Act in another bill from the House that has already passed in the Senate but was amended in the House. David Waldman explains this better:

Harry Reid turned the Senate around in it consideration of the PATRIOT Act renewal. Instead of fighting it out on cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill, and then having to fight another cloture battle on the bill itself, he’s pulling a nifty parliamentary trick that allows him to skip on of the cloture fights. The House just got done passing S. 990, a small business bill, and has sent it back to the Senate, apparently amended in some way (although they passed it under suspension of the rules, which doesn’t permit amendments, so I missed whatever process they might have used to change it between receiving it on Monday and passing it on Tuesday).

At any rate, the bill having been amended, it now returns to the Senate for their approval of its new form. And here’s where the trick comes in: Reid will move to agree to the House amendment, but add just one more. That additional amendment will be… to remove the entire existing text and replace it with the text of S. 1038, the PATRIOT Act renewal bill they were just trying to get to the floor.

Why do that? Because although you can filibuster the amendment (or technically, the motion to concur in the House amendment with a further amendment), if you manage to get cloture on that and vote it through, it has the effect of sending a completed PATRIOT Act bill over to the House, with no second cloture vote needed.

It’s a nifty trick and I always admire it, but I wish it wasn’t happening with the damn PATRIOT Act.

It seems that Congress and the President are determined to continue shredding the Constitution by extending the Patriot Act another 4 years. I cry for this country.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), he of the Sen. Ensign “put your pants on” club, has departed in a huff from the latest government attempt to come to a budget agreement on the backs of those who can least afford it. Coburn walked out when Dick Durbin refused to accept Coburn’s demand for $130 billion in Medicare benefit cuts for current beneficiaries on top of the $400 billion in savings already on the table. That half a billion is on top of the cuts already passed in the Obamacare bill. If enacted, these cuts would dismantle Medicare.

From Greg Sargent at the Washington Post:

The “Gang of Six” talks on deficit reduction broke down after Senators Dick Durbin and Tom Coburn got locked in a heated yelling match over Coburn’s demand for extremely deep cuts in Medicare that Durbin thought would “destroy” the popular program, a Senate aide familiar with the talks tells me.

The episode could prove at least somewhat reassuring to liberals who have worried that Durbin is open to a “grand bargain” that would include serious cuts in the popular program, which would undercut Dem efforts to draw a sharp contrast with Republicans on the issue. Durbin has insisted he’s at the “Gang of Six” table mainly to protect liberal priorities.

The episode also is a reminder of how much Republicans will insist on in Dem concessions as conditions for any deal.

Coburn apparently has been bringing up new issues at every meeting, or demanding to reconsider old ones and asking for sharper cuts to Social Security than had been previously agreed to even as the group appeared to be reaching a consensus. On Monday he threw the gauntlet down, like the loyal corporate puppet that he is, and when he couldn’t get his way, took his ball and went home to C Street. I give Durban some small iota of credit for not caving but considering the recommendations that will come from this right wing/blue dog packed “gang”, that is damning praise.

This video of an interview with Dean Baker, co-director for the Center for Economic Policy and Research, discussing the debt ceiling and holding the federal budget hostage is a good discussion of what could happen if the debt ceiling is not raised. Baker  clearly in the side of raising the debt ceiling but if it comes down to a choice of default and Social Security, he would choose saving Social Security.

There are those who are convinced that the GOP will not allow a default to happen and there has been a lot of pressure from Wall St and banking lobbyists to not play games with this. There is a lot of mistrust that Obama is playing some game that will end up slicing deeply into Social Security and Medicare to make it look as though he had no choice. He does have a choice to insist on a clean bill to raise the debt ceiling and take Social Security and Medicare off the bargaining table. If he doesn’t, as Paul Krugman said, “he might as well move out of the White House, and hand the keys over to the Tea Party.”

The GOP really hates women so much that they have been barely able to focus on little else at times. They managed to stop the District of Columbia from using its own money to assist poor women in obtaining the procedure by attaching a rider to the continuing resolution to fund the government throwing Democrats the bone of removing the rider that would have defunded Planned Parenthood.

Tonight Think Progress reports the House passed H.R. 3 which proposes some of the most radical and draconian restrictions on women’s rights:

– Redefinition Of Rape:

The bill sponsor Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) faced serious backlash after he tried to narrow the definition rape to “forcible rape.” By narrowing the rape and incest exception in the Hyde Amendment, Smith sought to prevent the following situations from consideration: Women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults.

Smith promised to remove the language and while it is not technically in the bill, Mother Jones reports that House Republicans used “a sly legislative maneuver” to insert a “backdoor reintroduction” of redefinition language. Essentially, if the bill is challenged in court, judges will look at the congressional committee report to determine intent. The committee report for H.R. 3 says the bill will “not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape” – thus excluding statutory rape-related abortions from Medicaid coverage.

– Tax Increase On Women And Small Businesses:

H.R. 3 prevents women from using “itemized medical deductions, certain tax-advantaged health care accounts or tax credits included in last year’s health care law to pay for abortions or for health insurance plans that cover abortion.” In doing so, the bill forces women and small businesses that provide health insurance that covers abortion to pay more in taxes than they would otherwise.

– Rape Audits:

Because H.R. 3 bans using tax credits or deductions to pay for abortions or insurance, a woman who used such a benefit would have to prove, if audited, that her abortion “fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.” Essentially, the bill turns Internal Revenue Service agents into “abortion cops” who would force women to give “contemporaneous written documentation” that it was “incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger” that compelled an abortion.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called this bill the “most comprehensive and radical assault on women’s health in our lifetime” and the president has already said that he would veto this bill if it made it to his desk which is doubtful since the Senate would never pass it. That doesn’t mean they won’t try to attach it to the Debt Limit Compromise. As David Dayen reports Rep. Trent Franks R-AZ) has already proposed just that with the blessing of House Speaker John Boehner:

   The decision to put the measure on the floor is giving new hope to some social conservatives who want their issues swept up into the debt limit debate.

   Rep. Trent Franks, an anti-abortion advocate, said that House Republicans “have some leverage” to get the Democratically controlled Senate to take up the legislation, similar to the way House Republicans forced an amendment onto the continuing resolution that would defund federal funding for Planned Parenthood. As part of a larger agreement on the final CR, Senate leaders agreed to hold a separate vote on the Planned Parenthood amendment […]

   While Franks, a two-term lawmaker from Arizona, acknowledged that a balanced budget amendment may be better suited to be part of a compromise debt limit vote, he still has hope for a Senate vote on an anti-abortion bill.

   Franks isn’t alone in hoping that H.R. 3 is part of the discussion on the debt ceiling extension.

   “What we use the debt limit to leverage is really up to the leaders, [but] I would think this would be one of the bills that we could be asking for,” said Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), an ardent anti-abortion supporter.

I really despise these people.

A balanced budget with a surplus? No way not happening. Well it seems that there is a counter proposal by the Congressional Progressive Caucus that does just that.

The CPC proposal:

• Eliminates the deficits and creates a surplus by 2021

• Puts America back to work with a “Make it in America” jobs program

• Protects the social safety net

• Ends the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

• Is FAIR (Fixing America’s Inequality Responsibly)

What the proposal accomplishes:

• Primary budget balance by 2014.

• Budget surplus by 2021.

• Reduces public debt as a share of GDP to 64.1% by 2021, down 16.5 percentage points from

a baseline fully adjusted for both the doc fix and the AMT patch.

• Reduces deficits by $5.6 trillion over 2012-21, relative to this adjusted baseline.

• Outlays equal to 22.2% of GDP and revenue equal 22.3% of GDP by 2021.

There was debate this morning in the House about the austerity budget put forward by Tea Party Rep. Paul Ryan’ (R-WI) that decimates Medicaid and Medicare. When Rep Keith Ellison asked  Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN) when the Ryan budget plan would produce a surplus, Rokita was clueless:

   ELLISON: When does the Ryan budget create a surplus?

   ROKITA: The budget proposed and voted on by the committee – […]

   ROKITA: With responsible, gradual reforms to the drivers of our debt, like Medicare and Social Security, this budget will balance –

   ELLISON: I asked the gentlemen when the Ryan budget created a surplus. He could have given me a year. He didn’t. That’s because he’s probably embarrassed about when that is. Let me tell you when the Progressive Caucus comes to surplus: 2021. That is known as a responsible budget.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Ryan’s budget will not produce a surplus until 2040 (pdf). The Economic Policy Institute looked that the Progressive Caucus budget. Their analysis said that it who produce a $30.7 billion surplus in 2021 (pdf).

h/t to Travis Waldron at Think Progress

Will there be another “cave exploration by our Spelunker-in-Chief? Despite President Obama speech on Wednesday and his demand request for a “clean bill” to raise the debt ceiling, there are those who have their doubts about Obama resolve to stand his ground considering his past capitulations in the name of bipartisanship for the last two years.

Now Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has threatened to filibuster the bill should it not contain “other fiscal reforms” like a balanced budget amendment.

A top conservative senator on Thursday indicated he is willing to go to extreme lengths to prevent a vote on raising the debt ceiling, even if it hurts the Republican Party politically.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said on the conservative Laura Ingraham Show he is considering filibustering an upcoming vote to raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt limit if it doesn’t contain other fiscal reforms.

While the Senate Minority Leader Mitch “The Human Hybrid Turtle” McConnell (R-KY) has said that the ceiling should be raised to avoid the dire consequences, he would like to see it passed with only Democratic votes.

Mr. McConnell is discouraging his colleagues from filibustering a vote to increase the federal debt limit because he knows that, if push came to shove, some of his colleagues would almost certainly have to vote yea. He’d rather it pass in a 51-vote environment, where all of the votes could come from Democrats, than in a 60-vote environment, where at least seven Republicans would have to agree to a cloture motion.

In the same New York Times article by Nate Silver the consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling would lead to another recession:

If the Congress does not vote to increase the debt ceiling – a statutory provision that governs how many of its debts the Treasury is allowed to pay back (but not how many obligations the United States is allowed to incur in the first place) – then the Treasury will first undertake a series of what it terms “extraordinary actions” to buy time. The “extraordinary actions” are not actually all that extraordinary – at least some of them were undertaken prior to six of the seven debt ceiling votes between 1996 and 2007.

But once the Treasury exhausts this authority, the United States would default on its debt for the first time in its history, which could have consequences like the ones that Mr. Boehner has imagined: a severe global financial crisis (possibly larger in magnitude than the one the world began experiencing in 2007 and 2008), and a significant long-term increase in the United States’ borrowing costs, which could cost it its leadership position in the global economy. Another severe recession would probably be about the best-case scenario if that were to occur.

The bill will not get to the Senate until sometime in May. When it does reach the “upper” chamber, it most likely will be loaded with hundreds of riders from the House Tea Party Republicans. The President and the Senate Democratic leaders have a limited choices. However, if that choose  to  stand their ground and push for that “clean bill”, there could be “savior”, Wall St., which stands to lose billions or more if the US  defaults on its debt. As David Dayen at FDL suggests this is a plausible solution. But is it possible  considering Obama’s inability to win at this “Congressional Game of Chicken”?