To be clear, they could simply mint the coin. All blame for this should be placed on Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. This is a Democratic Party backed plan, as they could stop it and aren’t doing so.
Okay so there’s a part of me that wants them to do that because at my core I am a constitutional law nerd and I find it really interesting to watch the completely absurd battles based on weird technicalities. And 100% the constitution does require that they pay their debts and he should say exactly that.
But on the other hand, that will get caught up in courts and shit and I just don’t see it succeeding with Biden in charge of it. The coin is so explicitly allowed there is really nothing that could be done to stop it.
On the other other hand, default :party-sicko: I know it’ll probably mean my life and the lives of people I care about get even harder, but it’ll be such a huge blow to US hegemony it’s probably good for the world
I would love to see the SCOTUS take on this. OK, you must respect the debt ceiling, but we also already said that you aren’t allowed to cut any spending that Congress has authorized. So Biden will be forced to cut something in order to respect the debt limit, he will get sued and the courts will affirm that he has to spend that money since Congress has approved it. Then Biden would move on and cut something else, again getting sued etc etc.
After the cuts have been signed into law - I’m going to go postal from all the hot takes stating that Biden had to make some cuts.
Looking forward to 2045, when the US budget will be something like 2.3 trillion for defense and 200 billion for everything else combined
I was looking at a related tweet by somebody else.
ichthys (@kyrieeleison60) has some stupendous unironic takes.
Kinda forgetting that the “defense budget” isn’t wasted money either. The defense budget goes to pay the salaries and benefits of soldiers, paying the salaries of people manufacturing weapons and equipment, and pays the salaries of people designing that equipment.
Why is the US budget so much higher than the rest of the world?
Have to maintain our global hegemony. But also we have a large GDP. Despite having the largest military budget, we are only the 14th highest country in terms of military spending as % of GDP.
Its easy to forget that funding the Torment Engine provides jobs to the Torment Engineers.
“Look, if we didn’t build the Torment Nexus - we’d have no Torment Engine plus all those Torment Engineering jobs wouldn’t exist. And once they get a portal open - we’ll have access to plentiful Cenobite jobs. They’ll be low paying and not so nice. But it’s better than being a couch potato who wants government handouts.”
keynesianism is only ok if you’re paying soldier salaries, which is why we need to fire ten thousand teachers
we are only the 14th highest country in terms of military spending as % of GDP.
I had a lib pull this on me and I was just like ??? Why on earth would you measure it as a percentage? That doesn’t make any sense.
If you’re arguing with somebody about military spending - it’s good to them some infographics. I always use two…
-
Yearly US military spending is always more than 50% of the federal budget
-
Military spending by country. To be pedantic - most of the countries in the infographic are US allies.
At that point if they keep talking in favor of military spending - I stop talking. It’s pointless. They’ve convinced themselves that insane levels of military spending are necessary for… I dunno… reasons.
I’m not being facile when I say they use that percentage because it’s a way to make $850,000,000,000 seem smaller. It’s a simple trick but it works on many (most?) Americans.
:yea: it was always going to be like this, the poor and people on programs are going to feel the pain of paying for empire’s debt.
The only middle-ground on this shit was some kind of Sequestration gambit, where we put a gun to the head of the Pentagon and HHS for six years while pretending to pull the trigger.
McCarthy getting rid of the most performative aspects of this deal suggests that he’s either extremely confident in getting White House concessions (very probable) or he’s committed to doing a default and seeing how things shake out (less probable, but we’ve seen Republicans try dumber shit).
This feels like the “Crash the Economy and Blame the Democrats” gambit from 2012. As I am fully committed to the Death To America program, I guess I’m fine with this.
