The Audacity of Framing the Discussion

Obama infuriates me; this is probably not a surprise to regular readers here. However, in this case it's not his policies, his socialist ideology, or his dictatorial approach which is currently most aggravating. The thing which is currently bugging me is his approach to the debt ceiling debate, and the complacency of the main stream media not calling him out on it.

Now granted, it's a good strategy, and as a shrewd political move I can find no particular fault. Essentially, what he has done is frame the discussion as one where raising the debt ceiling is an inevitability, a fundamental job of Congress, and everything else is partisan politics. From the beginning of his involvement, there was no mention of the "right" or "wrong" of spending without limit, or any mention of deficit reduction, or taxes, or anything else; it was just "this obviously must be done", and nothing else. Only later did he introduce the other issues into the rhetoric, but being careful to label them as "distractions" from the "basic responsibility" of Congress.

Take a moment, and consider the audacity of the position. If you were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and you started a conversation with your credit cards companies by telling them that it was their "obvious, basic, fundamental job" to extended you more credit without hesitation, and any other concerns they had were simply distractions from their responsibility, how do you think they would respond? Yeah... they probably wouldn't share your opinion, and might even laugh at the absurdity. Yet, this is exactly what Obama is doing, and the media, by and large, just goes along.

There was a very informative article from a small publication about what would happen if Congress didn't act. The Treasury (and by extension, the president, since it's in his branch) would need to decide what bills to pay, and which to not pay, based on the actual revenue coming in. Now, there's only a few hundred billion annually in interest on Treasury bonds, which is the "real" national debt service, the part which puts us in actual default if we don't pay. Everything else (social security, medicare, military, government bureaucrat salaries, etc.) is a voluntary obligation, per the laws passed by Congress. If the government doesn't pay those, it's not in default, it just doesn't have the money to pay all its obligations. Sure that's bad, but is it really that bad?

I'm not sure that I want Obama deciding which programs get funding and which don't, but... I really do want the government to not bankrupt itself with the Democrats' reckless spending, and there doesn't seem to be any other way to force reductions in expenditures. If forcing the Treasury to make the hard choices is the only way to actually reduce spending, because Congress is too childish to suck it up, and the president is too irresponsible to sign off on real spending controls... well, there are worse options for the country. It's not chicken, Mr President... it's the last best hope we the people have against you.