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EXACTLY.
The Republican "we don't want to raise the debt ceiling" is nothing but political posturing and strategy.
Simiarly, Barack Obama's "DO YOUR JOB" is the exact same thing.
Its not leadership, its not honest dialog, its not caring...its pure partisan politics and strategy in trying to paint the enemy as the ones causing issues to try and force pressure for your side to get more. Nothing more, nothing different, nothing new.
This will come down, similar to the budget debate, to the last moments and something rather unsatisfying to both sides will be passed. Nothing signiifcant either way is going to get done on this issue till 2012.
I agree. Ultimately, my guess is that the deal will be something less than the $2.4 trillion figure initially sought to lift the debt ceiling, probably between $1 trillion-$2 trillion. There will be no tax hikes/tax policy changes (Republicans will claim that they honored their commitment not to raise taxes). There will be no significant changes to the mandatory spending programs (Democrats will argue that they protected those programs). There may be some "savings" from eliminating waste/increasing efficiency/utilizing technology (Republicans would argue that the process for reforming mandatory spending programs had started), however if the past is representative, those "savings" would likely be overestimated. A majority of actual cuts may involve discretionary spending programs. The more difficult changes will be expressed in terms of goals/targets for which policy details would need to be developed in the future (not a certainty, of course). In effect, a self-inflicted crisis would be averted, but the really big decisions would again have been postponed. As a result, at least IMO, the actual fiscal consolidation component would be short in credibility.
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