Was recalling for a colleague a couple of local government projects I’ve worked on the past few years: in two consolidation cases, three of the four municipalities involved had hand-written budgets. Not even a spreadsheet.
Gotta say, their arithmetic was meticulous though.
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Lawrence O’Donnell just said the solution would be for Boehner to get the Democrats and about 50 “not-crazy” Republicans to pass the debt ceiling increase. Same strategy as I mentioned here.
But then he pointed out that Boehner has never done anything to draw Democratic votes.
Oh well.
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At this point, the House Republicans has postponed the vote on Boehner’s bill extending the debt ceiling and cutting the budget. Right now, the Republicans don’t have the votes to even pass their own bill.
Reminds me of an incident years ago in the NYS Assembly. The parties and positions were the inverse of what we’re looking at now, but the mechanics were the same.
At the time, in the midst of a fiscal crisis, then Governor Hugh Carey (D) sent a very tough budget to the Legislature. The Democrats had a narrow majority in the Assembly (81-69). Among the Democrats were at least seven from relatively conservative upstate districts who had been elected in the aftermath of Watergate affair. Their wins had been close.
As staff of the Committee on Ways & Means, I sat in on a meeting between Speaker’s the senior political and budget staff and a key set of legislators and legislative staff on their priorities to fight in the Governor’s budget. Unrealistically, they wanted virtually everything restored. Told to come back with a less ambitious list, they came back with an even more expensive list.
The leadership reaction was attuned it to the concerns of their members and their constituencies and they strongly supported the programs in which cuts had been proposed. But they were also aware of and took seriously the State’s financial distress. So their reaction to a more expensive list was quite different from what’s going on in the House.
The reaction was immediate, fierce, and profane. The threat was to match the Democrats from the competitive districts with the Republicans and pass an even more draconian budget. It made a difference and the rebellion was short-lived.
More important than partisan advantage, ideological or program preference, the Democratic leadership was more concerned about the entire State and it acted accordingly.
Too bad we’re not seeing similar behavior in DC these days.
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Here’s another analysis of what happens to states, this one with an interactive map and two scenarios if the Federal government can’t get its act together.
We might get some state and local defaults after all.
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Mathew Yglesias does a nice summary of how the pain (and whatever) will roll downhill if the Federal Government decides not to pay its bills. Actually, Yglesias says “can’t pay its bills.” I think it’s a matter of Congressional choice.
Note which states are most likely to suffer the most.
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