One Of The Top Senate Democrats Just Called Republicans' Bluff On The Debt Ceiling
One Of The Top Senate Democrats Just Called Republicans' Bluff On The Debt Ceiling
by Brett LoGiurato at Business Insider
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/patty-murray-debt-ceiling-bluff-republicans-deadline-2014-1
"SNIP...................................
(Patty Murray)
"Dear Colleagues,
Last fall, we released a memo that called on our Republican colleagues to end their brinkmanship and join Democrats in passing clean debt ceiling legislation to ensure the United States could continue to pay its bills including payments to millions of workers, seniors, and members of the military and avoid hurting the economic recovery with self-inflicted uncertainty.
We believed that Republicans knew they could not afford to force an unprecedented default, and that they would ultimately join us to prevent one with no strings attached. While we would have preferred to remove the threat of default well in advance of the deadline so that the uncertainty did not hurt the economy, we were glad that Republicans finally did, for the second time in a year, give up their demands and allow Congress to suspend the debt ceiling so the federal government could pay its bills and we could avoid a self-inflicted economic catastrophe.
We were then able to move away from the cycle of governing by crisis and begin the bipartisan budget conference Democrats had pursued since the spring. Despite conventional wisdom and some scepticism, the budget conference resulted in a compromise agreement to roll back some harmful cuts to education, infrastructure, medical research and national security, and to take the possibility of another government shutdown off the table.
As we approach the date when we will need to act to avoid default again, Democrats will take the same responsible approach we laid out in the memo below. We will not negotiate over whether or not the United States of America should pay its bills. And once again, before they get any further down this damaging path, we call on our Republican colleagues to not play politics with our economic recovery."
.................................SNIP"