(Drew Sheneman via Gocomics.com)
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With the ‘budget’ shutdown averted (for the moment), we can start dreading gearing up for the next battle. According to Treasury Secretary Geithner, the federal government will exhaust its ability to borrow money under current law during the second week of July:
The government will hit the debt limit — the maximum amount that it can borrow — “no later than May 16,” the letter said; after that, “extraordinary measures” can create roughly eight weeks of wiggle room.
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“The longer Congress fails to act, the more we risk that investors here and around the world will lose confidence in our ability to meet our commitments and obligations,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner wrote in the letter, sent to leaders of both parties in the House and the Senate.
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The dates in the letter represent the most precise estimate the administration has offered for hitting the debt ceiling. Congress sets a maximum amount that the government can borrow, which currently stands at $14.29 trillion.
The argument over “entitlements” has been postponed, not finished. It’s too useful a weapon for the Republicans to give up. Per Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone:
Every few years or so, the Republicans trot out one of these little whippersnappers, who offer proposals to hack away at the federal budget. Each successive whippersnapper inevitably tries, rhetorically, to out-mean the previous one, and their proposals are inevitably couched as the boldest and most ambitious deficit-reduction plans ever seen. Each time, we are told that these plans mark the end of the budgetary reign of terror long ago imposed by the entitlement system begun by FDR and furthered by LBJ.
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Never mind that each time the Republicans actually come into power, federal deficit spending explodes and these whippersnappers somehow never get around to touching Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. The key is that for the many years before that moment of truth, before these buffoons actually get a chance to put their money where their lipless little mouths are, they will stomp their feet and scream about how entitlements are bringing us to the edge of apocalypse…
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The absurd thing is that Ryan’s act isn’t even politically courageous. It’s canny calculation, but courage it is not. It would be courageous if Ryan were, say, the president of the United States, and leaning on that budget with his full might. But Ryan is proposing a budget he knows would have no chance of passing in the Senate. He is simply playing out a part, a non-candidate for the presidency pushing a rhetorical flank for an out-of-power party leading into a presidential campaign year. If the budget is a hit with the public, the 2012 Republican candidate can run on it. If it isn’t, the Republican candidate can triangulate Ryan’s ass back into the obscurity from whence it came, and be done with him.
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No matter what, Ryan’s gambit, ultimately, is all about trying to get middle-class voters to swallow paying for tax cuts for rich people. It takes chutzpah to try such a thing, but having a lot of balls is not the same as having courage.
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