A debt ceiling deal?

 Our long national nightmare is, um, is this thing still happening?  As I awaken this morning, to the glorious scent of my morning coffee, I am similarly comforted by the news that yes, my friends, we have a deal!  The debt ceiling crisis has been resol...

Wait, what?  It's over?  No.  It's not over.  Or is it?  Well, shit.  Yellen pushed back the doom date, McCarthy accepted the terms of Biden's surrender in general form, and now the question will be the process of getting the actual votes in Congress.  Yesterday, I warned that this would actually be quite difficult, and I stand by that.  Will this pass?  I do not know.

Biden gave away a lot.  In policy terms, the left will throw shit-fits about Biden's surrender.  My initial reaction is as follows.  I mostly see the policies themselves as defensible.  Work requirements?  Philosophically, it is hard to oppose work requirements, but anyone should be open to empirical analysis on the topic.  I've never read empirical analysis on the proposals, so I have no opinion, beyond the motivating philosophy.  I merely recommend that everyone maintain a position of scientific open-mindedness.  Which is a thing that nobody is allowed to say in academia anymore, if a policy conflicts with left-wing dogma.

Fuck academia.

Restarting student loan payments?  I'm actually going to say, quite confidently, that these should have restarted a while ago.  Loan, not grant.  What Biden has been doing here is legally, constitutionally, and philosophically indefensible.  The COVID-19 fund clawback?  This should be a no-brainer.  The non-defense spending cuts?  The devil will be in the details, but when inflation runs high and you aren't in a recession, Keynes says you should be cutting spending.

Which means that if you look at the policy provisions here, in a calm and detached way, it is hard to get riled up about them.  "The deal" is not particularly ideological, in either direction.

The problem with it is that it was a ransom paid for hostages.  The problem is that Biden negotiated with terrorists.  If someone kidnaps my cat-- catnaps my cat?-- and demands that I drink a couple of cups of coffee every morning to get her back, I want my damned cat back, and I drink coffee every morning anyway, so you may say, what's the big deal?  The big deal is the problem of incentivizing terrorism.

This was terrorism.

And it still may not work.  We don't know if McCarthy can get the House GOP on board with it, the work requirements will keep most Dems from supporting it, and that means nobody is happy.

Before you say that "nobody is happy" means it's a good deal, that does not logically follow.  There's no such thing as a "good deal" with terrorists.

This is Chris Whitley's daughter, Trixie.  She is amazing.  "Surrender," live.  The studio version is on Sway.


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