Ideal Framework

Ygleisas dares to dream about the “ideal negotiating framework” for the debt ceiling:

White House demands clean debt ceiling increase, House majority demands big spending cuts, Senate majority demands partial repeal of Bush tax cuts, and we all compromise on just doing the damn debt increase.

That would be nice. But it would also require non-feckless Democrats in the Senate. Which, so far as I can tell, do not exist.

But, since the plutocrats and banksters seem to realize they’ve got skin in this game, maybe we can just cut some insanely rich people’s taxes, raise the debt ceiling, start a fourth war (I’m thinking Spain is due), and call it a day.

Did We Secretly Elect McCain?

Softening the administration’s earlier insistence that Congress raise the so-called debt ceiling without conditions, officials now say they won’t rule out linking an increase of the borrowing cap with cuts aimed at reducing the deficit—even though they’d prefer to keep the issues separate.

Honestly, it’s getting hard to tell. Whoever leaked this circular firing squad horseshit should be out before lunch. That they’ll instead be promoted is why the administration fails.

Did We Secretly Elect McCain?

Never. Is never good enough for you?

Nancy Pelosi on when the Democratic plan to destroy Social Security would be introduced. This is the sort of Democrat we need a whole lot more of.
And, as Atrios notes, the Bush administration hadn’t yet even offered their plan and wouldn’t, really, until after the whole thing was effectively dead. They were, in fact, counting on that Defeatocratic impulse to get out there and co-own a truly terrible idea just because the Serious People wanted them to. For once, they didn’t do it. That’s true leadership.