There You Go Again – Republicans Threatening, Uh What, Over Raising the Debt Ceiling

Republicans Demanding Uh, What, Over Raising the Debt Ceiling

With the two year budget deal in place one would think that Congressional Republicans will now go about their business of cementing their alliance with the national media in an unrelenting attack on health care reform.  Republicans see this is a winning issue (more about that in a few days) and in fact in their minds they have already won the 2014 Congressional and Senate elections and the Presidency in 2016.

But there is still the debt ceiling to be dealt with, and lo and behold the Republicans openly plan to try to extort something in return for voting to pay the bills that they themselves approved. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that he “can’t imagine” that the debt ceiling increase will be a “clean” one — meaning that it will have no conditions attached to it. McConnell, a key negotiator on deals ending the debt ceiling standoff in 2011 and this year during the government shutdown, noted that past significant legislative agreements have been attached to such increases. He was skeptical that the House or the Senate would have an appetite to hand President Barack Obama a clean debt limit hike.

The President just needs to do what he has done in the past.

“Nothing, you get nothing for doing your job, nothing absolutely nothing” 

is all he needs to say.  Of course, with this President, even though he has been successful with the strategy in the past don’t count him out this time.  He can still mess this up.