Late with my blogging today. Sorry about that -- Ed being out of the studio has some knock-on effects inside the team. Anyway, it seems to me that today's bailout of Republican leadership from the Biden debt talks could prove to be a good thing. I'll explain.
For a while now, Ezra Klein -- who will be on with Ed tonight -- has been making the case that Congress can solve our debt problem by not doing a single thing. Simply sitting on their Capitol Hill thumbs and allowing health-care reform to kick in, and the Bush tax cuts to die...will put our fiscal house in order. But Republicans don't want that. So they're trying to use Democratic terror of defaulting on our credit to force spending cuts that will tank our economy. But if the debt talks end...Democrats can't agree to something stupid.
According to game theory, you win a game of chicken by yanking the steering wheel out of your car and showing the other guy that you've done it. That way they know you can't turn. So they have to turn. If Democrats yank out their steering wheels and say no, right now, to any compromise, House Republicans will ultimately have to pass a clean bill hiking the debt ceiling.
In other words, the way that Democrats can win the political battle and save the future of the US economy...is to lock themselves in an isolation tank for the next month.
Cross your fingers.
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