Tuesday's Deadline
LJ seems to have survived yet another bombardment from the Russian internet death lasers.
The US hits the debt ceiling on Tuesday, if a deal isn't reached. I did some writing on that here. Basically, the most likely case if a deal isn't reached is that some government spending doesn't happen. What spending does happen is based in part on constitutional requirements, Treasury Bonds get paid off (so it's not technically a "default") and judicial salaries also continue uninterrupted. It's a pretty steep cut, though, about a third of ongoing bills would not get paid. (This visualization is pretty good, but I wish that constitutionally-protected payments were separated out better, the aforementioned judicial salaries are lumped in with the salaries of a lot of clerks who really would be out of work during a budget crunch.)
I'm going to do that thing I do where I paste in a link and say "no, seriously, read the whole thing". It's very astute analysis on an important political issue (if no compromised is reached, the most important political issue of the year... I hope). Except this time it's four links, to this series by solarbird: One, two, three, three, four. (If you liked those, bonus one and two.)
The US hits the debt ceiling on Tuesday, if a deal isn't reached. I did some writing on that here. Basically, the most likely case if a deal isn't reached is that some government spending doesn't happen. What spending does happen is based in part on constitutional requirements, Treasury Bonds get paid off (so it's not technically a "default") and judicial salaries also continue uninterrupted. It's a pretty steep cut, though, about a third of ongoing bills would not get paid. (This visualization is pretty good, but I wish that constitutionally-protected payments were separated out better, the aforementioned judicial salaries are lumped in with the salaries of a lot of clerks who really would be out of work during a budget crunch.)
I'm going to do that thing I do where I paste in a link and say "no, seriously, read the whole thing". It's very astute analysis on an important political issue (if no compromised is reached, the most important political issue of the year... I hope). Except this time it's four links, to this series by solarbird: One, two, three, three, four. (If you liked those, bonus one and two.)