The Kroog Versus Humble Pie

Given the complete surrender on the debt ceiling by the House GOP this weekend (via Greg Sargent)...

Big news. Eric Cantor has just made it official: The GOP leadership is prepared to agree to a three month debt ceiling hike. This is a major de-escalation of the crazy and effectively means Republicans have all but taken the threat of default off the table completely.

First, the key bit from Cantor’s statement:

We must pay our bills and responsibly budget for our future. Next week, we will authorize a three month temporary debt limit increase to give the Senate and House time to pass a budget. Furthermore, if the Senate or House fails to pass a budget in that time, Members of Congress will not be paid by the American people for failing to do their job. No budget, no pay.

Here’s why this matters: This increases the debt ceiling to authorize borrowing to pay the country’s bills well into April. That punts the debt limit deadline until after the deadline for funding for the government to run out, which is on March 27th. In other words, Republicans will now use the threat of a government shutdown along with the coming expiration of the sequester to extract the spending cuts it wants. Presuming this all gets resolved by then, or soon after, it means the threat of default is no longer a factor. This will all but certainly get resolved in advance of this three month deadline, and a long term debt limit hike will get attached to that agreement.

It's good to know that Paul Krugman will admit when he was wrong about the President.

When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. I thought that by ruling out any way to bypass the debt limit, the White House was setting itself up, at least potentially, for an ignominious cave-in. But it appears that the strategy has worked, and it’s the Republicans giving up. I’m happy to concede that the president and team called this one right.

Yeah, well, us amateur pundits kinda knew this was going to happen.

The key point to remember here is that Obama achieves his main goals simply by surviving. Above all, health reform gets implemented, and probably becomes irreversible.

That's been the case for two years now, Kroog.  Pay attention.