What Cruz attempted to do was to place the government in a position whereby it would have been required to default on debts ALREADY INCURRED. No cut in spending at that point would have averted the debt default.
We can separately debate the idiocy of Congress passing programs that cost $X and then allocating something less than $X to pay for them, but in the case of the debt ceiling debate in the last session of Congress the question was whether the US Treasury would be able to pay debt actually owed. Most of it to US Treasury bondholders, which is why the Wall St types freaked out. Defaulting on that would be pretty exactly like driving the economy off a cliff, particularly while the economy was recovering from a severe recession.
Whether you or Senator Cruz disagree with me about spending cuts is therefore irrelevant to this particular debate. It is, of course, possible that Congress will enact spending cuts between now and hitting the debt ceiling but I rate that on a likelihood somewhere below rainbows spontaneously emitting from my arse. If somehow that does happen before a debt ceiling bill comes up we can revisit this issue.
My opinion of Cruz is pretty low, but I don't need to assume his motives are venal to assume that he would repeat behavior he exhibited in the past. In fact, i don't actually care what his motives are - it's his actions that were harmful and would be if repeated. All I'm speculating is that he now has a very personal motive for putting the next President into a bad position and doing that would reveal a potential rift in the next Cabinet.
I deny that I have misrepresented any positions, Cruz's or others.
What Cruz attempted to do was to place the government in a position whereby it would have been required to default on debts ALREADY INCURRED. No cut in spending at that point would have averted the debt default.
We can separately debate the idiocy of Congress passing programs that cost $X and then allocating something less than $X to pay for them, but in the case of the debt ceiling debate in the last session of Congress the question was whether the US Treasury would be able to pay debt actually owed. Most of it to US Treasury bondholders, which is why the Wall St types freaked out. Defaulting on that would be pretty exactly like driving the economy off a cliff, particularly while the economy was recovering from a severe recession.
Whether you or Senator Cruz disagree with me about spending cuts is therefore irrelevant to this particular debate. It is, of course, possible that Congress will enact spending cuts between now and hitting the debt ceiling but I rate that on a likelihood somewhere below rainbows spontaneously emitting from my arse. If somehow that does happen before a debt ceiling bill comes up we can revisit this issue.
My opinion of Cruz is pretty low, but I don't need to assume his motives are venal to assume that he would repeat behavior he exhibited in the past. In fact, i don't actually care what his motives are - it's his actions that were harmful and would be if repeated. All I'm speculating is that he now has a very personal motive for putting the next President into a bad position and doing that would reveal a potential rift in the next Cabinet.
I deny that I have misrepresented any positions, Cruz's or others.
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This is false.
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