According to reports, House budget chairman Paul Ryan has been urging his colleagues to back off on the budget fight and focus on a debt ceiling showdown. In exchange for an increase in the legal limit on federal government borrowing, Ryan believes the GOP can demand a series of items in return; starting with a delay of Obamacare, the construction of the Keystone pipeline and other spending reforms.
It’s still doubtful Republicans will be able to extract any meaningful concessions on Obamacare, but the president’s “I will not negotiate” over the debt ceiling position is undermined by the inconvenient fact that he already did in 2011. And, at the very least, depicting the conservative opposition as crazed nihilists becomes slightly more precarious for Democrats due to public opinion.
A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last week finds that 44 percent of respondents are against raising the debt ceiling and only 22 percent believe it should be raised so the U.S. avoids “going into bankruptcy and defaulting on its obligations.” A third of those who answered are unsure.
A Reason-Rupe poll finds that 55 percent of Americans say they do not support raising the debt ceiling even if it causes the U.S. to default. With dollar-to-dollar spending cuts, 45 percent say they’d support raising it and 46 percent would still oppose.
No comments:
Post a Comment