No Dealing On The Debt Ceiling, Part 14

And this is why I said Democrats had to stand firm on the idea of demanding a clean debt ceiling vote:  Republicans want to have another debt ceiling fight this time next year when they can do a lot more political damage.

A Republican demand that an increase in the U.S. debt limit be matched by spending reductions may do more than force painful cuts. It could mean another vote on the borrowing cap at the height of the 2012 election campaign.

With hopes fading for a grand bargain to rein in the debt, Vice President Joe Biden said he thinks a bipartisan group of lawmakers he’s leading in talks can agree on a $1 trillion deficit-reduction package to win enough votes to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by August. Yet unless he can get Republicans to agree to raise the debt ceiling beyond that, it won’t be enough to get past the election, budget experts say.

“Nobody has put enough savings on the table to justify lifting the debt limit by $2-or-$3 trillion, which is what we have to do,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan Washington group that examines fiscal policy.

“I don’t know whether they have thought through the consequences of making this dollar-for-dollar deal,” Joe Minarik, senior vice president at the nonpartisan Committee for Economic Development and a former chief economist in the White House budget office, said of the Republicans. “They’ll have to make multiple, politically difficult votes, and the financial markets could be in a continued unsettled state.” 

That's exactly what Republicans want, to keep the debt ceiling circus in the news as often as possible for as long as possible, each time demanding more and more concessions from President Obama and the Democrats.  This is why you don't negotiate with terrorists, because they will use the same tactics again and again, upping the stakes each time and knowing they will get what they want.

If the Dems are dense enough to fall for this, 2012 is going to be a nightmare.  As long as they let the Republicans control the narrative, we'll never deal with issues of import, just an endless series of manufactured crises that the Dems always lose.  The only way to win is to no play their game, fellas.  You think Dems would have learned this by now.