Gephardt rising?
by digby
Yesterday I mentioned that when I was on his show Sam Seder had pondered the idea that Obama might be willing to make a big deal in exchange for a “process” that could end the debt ceiling showdown (and showdowns to come.)
Well …
O makes his offer: “They can attach some process to that” re future negotiations, in measure to un-shut govt; raise debt ceiling.
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) October 8, 2013
Obama keeps giving Boehner big hint: way to get out of this is to pass clean bills with provision that O will negotiate big budget issues.
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) October 8, 2013
I’m not sure that’s exactly what Sam had in mind — the process here is likely to be some kind of superduper-human-sacrifice-committee. But if the president really wants to end these stand-offs for the sake of the future (and the stability of the world economy) he’s going to need them to agree to a different kind of “procedure”. You’ll recall that Sam thought it would be along the lines of this old rule:
Back in 1979, the Democratic House Speaker, Tip O’Neill, handed the unhappy job of lining up votes for a debt-ceiling raise to Representative Richard Gephardt, then a young Democratic congressman from Missouri. Gephardt hated this, and, realizing he’d probably get stuck with it again, consulted the parliamentarian about whether the two votes could be combined. The parliamentarian said they could. Thereafter, whenever the House passed a budget resolution, the debt ceiling was “deemed” raised.
The “Gephardt Rule,” as it became known, lasted until 1995, when the new House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, fresh from the Republican triumph of the 1994 midterms, recognized the same thing that Tea Party Republicans recognize today: The threat of default could be used to extort Democratic concessions. Gingrich abolished the Gephardt Rule, and within the year the government had shut down.
I think the president wants to put this default genie back in the bottle as much as he wants anything so I’d certainly look for something like this in the mix of any deal. If it isn’t we might as well resign ourselves to living in the Tea Party’s dystopian hellscape — the rest of the world is not going to see the US as a reliable economic steward going forward unless they put an end to this. But dear God, I shudder to think what the Republicans would extract in exchange for such an agreement…
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