Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Now things are starting to get interesting. The business organizations who are the allies of the Tea-Publican Party are telling the Tea-Publican economic terrorists not to take the federal debt ceiling hostage. Business leaders to GOP: No more debt limit hostage taking!
On MSNBC this morning, the head of the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce
called on Republicans to stop using the threat of default to get the
spending cuts they want.
Chamber president Tom Donohue didn’t do this quite as directly as he
might have, but the plain meaning was clear. This is significant,
because in doing this, he went further than other business leaders, who
have merely issued a general call for a hike in the debt ceiling without
pointing a finger at Republican debt ceiling hostage taking. Donohue,
by contrast, said he wants to see a stop to the tactic of using the debt ceiling as leverage.
“When you get down to defaulting on the debt, you have a very, very
serious question: What will happen to interest rates, what will happen
to our relationships around the world?” Donohue said in an interview
with Chuck Todd. “It could really hurt the economy.”
* * *
[H]e added: “I think we have to let the folks up on the Hill use
the assets they have while at the same time trying to tell them that
using the debt is the least desirable of those.”
This is a key quote. The head of the Chamber, one of the most
powerful GOP-aligned interest groups in the country, is essentially
saying that using the debt ceiling as leverage to force spending cuts
has to stop. This comes after the Financial Services Roundtable, the Business Roundtable, and other business groups all are insisting more generally on a debt ceiling hike.
Donohue’s quote is also a reminder of something that gets lost in the
debate: Default itself isn’t the only thing that would damage our
economy; the mere threat of default is also potentially
damaging. Remember, in 2011, Standard and Poors downgraded U.S. debt
partly because of GOP debt ceiling brinksmanship well in advance of any default. Small wonder Donohue wants an end to the nonsense.
* * *
Donohue’s subtle warning to Republicans is the latest sign not only that
the GOP’s threat of default is untenable in practical terms, but that
Republicans can no longer be perceived to be willing to default — which only further undermines whatever leverage they supposedly had in the first place.