As I have observed, I cannot tell whether Biden is playing three-dimensional chess or has made the fundamental mistake of bringing a knife to a gunfight. As I wait to see which it is, here is my fantasy of how things ought to play out.
Step one: in tthe next 24 hours or so Biden and McCarthy reach a tentative deal in which Biden gives a bit around the edges in response to McCarthy's promise to raise the debt ceiling.
Step two: McCarthy takes this deal back to his caucus and Biden says that he will only sign off on it if McCarthy can pass it with nothing but Republican votes. Hakeem Jeffries holds his caucus in line and McCarthy cannot deliver the necessary votes.
Step three: more in sorrow than in anger, Biden reluctantly invokes the 14th amendment and/or mints the coin.
Step four: Republicans in fury vote to impeach Biden and that farce goes down to a disastrous defeat in the Senate.
We shall see.
Is Jack Reacher involved in your scenario?
ReplyDeleteBiden realizes he has little leverage and he is one not for theatrics but for compromise and 'bipartisanship'
"Step three: more in sorrow than in anger, Biden reluctantly invokes the 14th amendment and/or mints the coin."
ReplyDeleteHe could also invoke the 14th Amendment, mint a coin to cover any potential gaps, and announce all this on a televised address in which he also lets folks know that consols which will go at a premium will be available on Treasury Direct. Given institutional realities, the offering will be fully subscribed so whatever the Supremes do with the 14th claim, the debt limit will become a de facto dead letter. It's likely the coin won't be needed if folks act in a timely manner.
As a final offer to McCarthy, Biden should offer some sweeteners along with a demand that any bill raising the debt limit also include a repeal of the enabling legislation going forward.
If Biden and McCarthy cut a deal, the House will have 72 hours to consider it, as the rules now stipulate. During that time, one member of the House could bring a motion to vacate, which would force a vote to remove McCarthy as Speaker. Would all Democrats vote to remove McCarthy as Speaker? If so, would they be joined by enough House Republicans to pass the motion with a simple majority? Or would enough Democrats vote against the motion so that McCarthy would keep his job for time being? How embarrassing that would be.
ReplyDeleteOff Topic.
ReplyDeleteCan the William Shatner/Twilight Zone open up the airplane to the surrounding atmosphere be a metaphor for current events?
I remember only sitting once at an emergency door seat on an airplane flight, but it spooked the heck out of me the entire flight. And my fears were now shown to be well grounded.
Some stupid person might quote the chance of the probability of that happening again is slim & yet we all know the cliche refutation to that argument. It only needs to happen one more time!
Tonight my wife and I watched an amazing movie, titled “First Reformed.” Ethan Hawke portrays a Protestant minister going through a personal crisis of faith. One of his parishioners, played by Amanda Seyfried (Collette in Les Miserables), seeks his counsel. She is pregnant, and her husband wants to abort the fetus in order to save it from a future of environmental depredations and climate change. Hawke’s church is preparing to celebrate its 250th reconsecration celebration, which is being financed by a wealthy businessman whose company is a major polluter. One review of the movie states:
ReplyDelete“First Reformed quickly introduces surrealist concepts that make the film more open to interpretation. Schrader explores the challenges that people of faith face when justifying their belief amidst modern issues, such as terrorism and environmental collapse.”
I recommend the movie, if you can find it, regardless whether you are religious, non-religious, or anti-religious. The minister, who lost a son in the Iraq war, finds redemption in the end in a moving conclusion. A trailer link is below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCF5Y8dQpR4
Post-script:
ReplyDeleteYou can stream the movie "First Reformed" on Apple TV for $3.99.
In honor of Memorial Day:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnFzCmAyOp8
"But if you wait until they approach, the medicine is no longer in time because the malady has become incurable; for it happens in this, as the physicians say it happens in hectic fever, that in the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time, not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure. This it happens in affairs of state, for when the evils that arise have been foreseen (which it is only given to a wise man to see), they can be quickly redressed, but when, through not having been foreseen, they have been permitted to grow in a way that every one can see them, there is no longer a remedy." --The Prince Chapter 3
ReplyDeleteThe above text is analogous to Trump's designs to usurp the government and to establish a one-world monarchy.
One of the comments about the song I linked to above.
ReplyDeleteLaw Abiding Citizen
I enlisted in the Marines in 1966. Deployed to Vietnam in April of 1967. Spent 13 months on the DMZ from Con Thien to Khe Sanh. War is Hell. We accomplished nothing only to hopefully make it back home. This song really hits hard to the futility of war...there are no winners. I cry for friends who took their last breath 10,000 miles from home. And for a childhood friend who took his life from the scars of that damn war. RIP Danny
I think your fantasy has a good chance of coming true except for the part where Biden mints the coin or obeys the 14th. I think Biden would love nothing more than being forced to cut programs that serve the less fortunate. Throughout his career he has repeatedly presented himself as the tough Democrat willing to stick it to the Democratic base.
ReplyDeleteAs I wrote in the previous thread, defining how words are to be used, and getting it right, is particularly important in philosophy, and other disciplines, and particularly in law. The Supreme Court issued a decision last Thursday which did not get much notice, but it limited the scope of the Clean Water Act.
ReplyDeleteThe case, Sackett v. Environmental Prot. Agency, focused on the meaning of the word “adjacent.” The plaintiffs/petitioners were Michael and Chantell Sackett, who owned property in Idaho. They backfilled their lot with dirt from wetlands adjacent to their property. The EPA charged them with thereby violating the Clean Water Act, fined them, and ordered them to restore the wetlands. The issue was whether the EPA had jurisdiction over the matter based on the language of the Act, which applies to “the waters of the United States.” In order for the Act to be constitutional, the Act defined such waters as any body of water which affects interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause, Article I, Sec. 8: Congress shall have Power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes[.]” The EPA had issued regulations which, under the Commerce Clause, applied the term “waters of the United States” to “traditional navigable waters, interstate waters, and the territorial seas, as well as tributaries and adjacent wetlands” which included “[i]ntrastate lakes and ponds, streams or wetlands” that “either have a continuous surface connection to waters or have a significant nexus to interstate or traditional navigable waters.” Under this definition, both “waters of the United States” applied to waters which extended among the states, and to waters which were wholly within a state, as long as it was deemed to affect interstate commerce, e.g., the Great Salt Lake in Utah. It also maintained that it applied wetlands “adjacent” to such waterways. The question was whether the wetlands adjacent to the Sackett’s property came within the scope of “waters of the United States,” such as the EPA had jurisdiction over them. The Court, in a decision written by Justice Alito (who else), joined by Justices Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch and Barrett, ruled that it did not, and reversed the EPA fine against the Sacketts, and vacated the requirement that they restore the wetlands to their prior condition. They ruled that the word “adjacent” only applied to wetlands where “it was difficult to determine where the ‘water’ ends and the ‘wetland’ begins,” and since the wetlands in question were not connected to any other water which qualified as “waters of the United States,” the Act did not give the EPA jurisdiction over the wetlands at issue.
What I find particularly curious about the decision is that Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson and Kavanaugh (!) issued opinions “concurring in the judgment,” but they disagreed with the majority’s definition of “adjacent.” As J. Kagan wrote: “[I]n ordinary language, one thing is adjacent to another not only when it is touching, but also when it is nearby. … So, for example, one house is adjacent to another even when a stretch of grass and a picket fence separate the two.” What I do not understand is why they issues their opinions as concurrences in the judgment, rather than as dissents?
You can read the decision at the following link, if you have the stomach:
https://casetext.com/case/sackett-v-envtl-prot-agency-5?jxs=us&p=1&q=Sackett&sort=relevance&type=case&ssr=false&scrollTo=true
Post-script:
ReplyDeleteGiven J. Kagan’s point regarding the meaning of the word “adjacent,” the question is, “What water were the wetlands in question adjacent to?” Obviously, in order to be wetlands, the water in the wetlands have to come from somewhere. “According to the EPA, the ‘wetlands’ on the Sacketts’ lot are ‘adjacent to’ (in the sense that they are in the same neighborhood as) what it described as an ‘unnamed tributary’ on the other side of a 30-foot road. … That tributary feeds into a non-navigable creek, which, in turn, feeds into Priest Lake, an intrastate body of water that the EPA designated as traditionally navigable.” The majority essentially held that this relationship was too attenuated to be “adjacent.”
According to the NYT:
ReplyDelete“First, the deal would raise the debt limit for two years. This moves any future debt limit fight to after the 2024 election.
“The spending caps at the center of the agreement target federal programs besides Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the military — such as education, scientific research and border security. The caps would not actually reduce spending, but aim to make it grow more slowly than inflation and the economy. This arrangement lets both sides claim a win of sorts: Republicans can call it a spending cut, since spending will grow more slowly than it might have otherwise. And Democrats can say they prevented actual cuts.
“The deal would also claw back some of the funds previously allocated to the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on rich tax cheats. Under the deal, some of the I.R.S. funds could be used to mitigate other spending cuts. That reflects the bipartisan nature of the talks, with both sides getting wins: Republicans get to claim they successfully cut I.R.S. funding, and Democrats get to use the money to soften other cuts they never wanted.
“Similarly, the permitting reforms in the deal could enable more clean energy projects, a Democratic priority, but also more oil and gas projects, which Republicans favor.”
So, it appears that Biden did not cave on the Republicans’ demand for work permit requirements for Food Stamp, and welfare programs. (?)
Note of historical significance (courtesy of CBS Sunday Morning):
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. Army is in the process of renaming all military forts and camps named after Confederate officers. Fort Pickett in Virginia, named after the Confederate general who led the disastrous Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, is being renamed “Fort Barfoot,” for Colonel Van Barfoot, a Choctaw Indian, who participated in the Anzoi amphibious landing during the Italian campaign in WWII, and for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. It will be the first and only U.S. Army installation named after a Native American.
Query:
ReplyDeleteThe valid reason given for renaming U.S. military installations named after Confederate officers is that they were traitors to the U.S. government, and therefore are not entitled to recognition. Does that mean that Fort Barfoot cannot be joined by military installations named Fort Geronimo, Fort Sitting Bull, or Fort Red Cloud?
Geronimo et al. weren't traitors to the U.S. govt. They were opponents of it (until, in the case of Geronimo, he changed course eventually). Big difference between secession/rebellion and opposition to a govt that broke treaty promises and that you never took an oath to support anyway.
ReplyDeleteLFC,
ReplyDeleteI agree, but I am not sure the U.s, Department of Defense would agree.
Huachuca in Fort Huachuca is a Sobaipuri word. That may be the closest we get (Fort Apache was closed long ago).
ReplyDelete