Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew warned Congress on Wednesday that the government would most likely exhaust its ability to borrow in late February, setting up yet another fiscal showdown with Republicans, and this time earlier than congressional leaders had anticipated.
In a letter to Speaker John A. Boehner and the other top three congressional leaders, Mr. Lew said a surge of February spending, mainly tax refunds for 2013, would leave the Treasury with little room to maneuver after the official debt limit is reached on Feb. 7.
The letter amounts to an early alarm bell, coming just weeks after Congress passed its first bipartisan budget and comprehensive spending bill in years. Those bills were supposed to serve as a cease-fire in the budget wars that have rattled the country and the economy since Republicans took control of the House in 2011.
Why is everything in the Obama Adminstration a crisis? Even the people who ought to know what they are doing just manage from crisis to crisis. They never lead; just manage.
Because, as we have all learned, a ginned-up crisis is the best way to get your own way.
The Obama administration shows a steely resolve when it comes to telling untruths with unblinking eyes; I suspect if it was hooked up to an FBI lie detector machine, there would be no physiological response to signify a lie in process.
Combine that learned skill with a sycophantic media tied at the hip [literally] with this administration and you have a smooth running engine capable of spewing out a full length documentary of deception at the drop of a hat.
So, Jack Lew says we are “in danger of reaching out debt limit”? A common sense voice might suggest, quit spending. That voice would be immediately tarred and feathered for being cruel, insensitive, racist, bigoted, homophobic, anti-women, uncaring for children, and every other vile rant the engine can conjure up.
And right on cue, Harry Reid will have a presser to say “there is just nothing in the budget that can be cut.”
So, Jack Lew makes his statement, arranging the chess pieces so Congress can get in line to give-up in defeat again.
#2–I concur–my question was more rhetorical, combined with a scream of desperation.
[i]combined with a scream of desperation. [/i]
Don’t hear many screams like that do we? Five years ago when everyone’s stock portfolios were in the tank that was all you heard. But now that the Fed has watered the stunted growth with profusions of life-giving money and the garden is all green again, everyone is back asleep in the assurance that nothing can go wrong.
Why Jack Lew is a vertiable hero, warning Congress to get its act together for the good “of the children.”
When its for “the good of the children”, you will for sure know they are in full-massage mode. And the media laps it up hungrily.
Interesting point. Income at the highest level has risen at a fairly constant rate since the 80s until 2009. Since then the top 1-2% have had income rise at the highest level in history.
[blockquote] Why is everything in the Obama Adminstration a crisis?[/blockquote]
That’s a very good question. I would also ask why wasn’t this a crisis under George W. Bush’s administration when Congress routinely rubber stamped requests for increases in the debt limit, as it had for every administration before that, Republican and Democratic, since forever?
I wonder what has changed. Hmmmm…