US Meltdown Day -1, Time to Do or Die

Now that things have dragged on to the final few hours, it looks like a bill that can pass both houses will proceed through the House and Senate, and kick the can down the road for less than 6 months. The US rating agency Fitch was about to downgrade US Treasury debt, probably causing another spike in rates.

The news came as the Treasury Department said it had only about $35 billion in cash on hand. It expects to run out of “extraordinary measures” to keep on paying all of the government’s bills on Thursday, at which point outgoing payments might exceed that cash, plus any revenue, on any day going forward.

As the United States nears default, investors have demanded more compensation for lending to the government, with yields on short-term debt spiking to their highest levels in years.

Fitch warned that Congress has not “raised the federal debt ceiling in a timely manner.” It said that it “continues to believe that the debt ceiling will be raised soon,” but that “political brinkmanship and reduced financing flexibility could increase the risk of a U.S. default.”

US Shutdown Day 13, It Was a Fools Errand

The effort to negotiate in the House has collapsed with John Boehnor and House Republicans giving it up, and now Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell must put something together.  John McCain provided some color commentary on CBS News.

“I guess we can get lower in the polls,” McCain said. “We’re down to blood relatives and paid staffers now.   “I’m glad that negotiations are going on,” McCain said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” I’m disappointed that twice … we were close to a deal and the Democrats moved the goalposts, in light of the polling data.”
McCain said he was also “disappointed” that Obama “has not played a more active role in this, as Bill Clinton did in ‘95.”
“Maybe we need to get Joe Biden out of the witness protection program,” McCain said, noting the vice president’s lack of visibility in recent weeks and relationships with his former colleagues in the Senate.
McCain said it was time for Democrats to be “magnanimous and get things done.”
“I know what it’s like to be in the majority and in the minority, and it won’t be forgotten,” he added.
McCain called the effort to tie the shutdown to an effort to defund ObamaCare a “fool’s errand.”
“The irony of all this is the rollout is a fiasco,” he added.

Meanwhile the Shutdown grinds on, nobody is saying for how long.

US Shutdown Day 5 No End in Sight

There are no negotiations planned, no legislation in the works, no end in sight.  The Democrats say:

“Once the government reopens and we get the debt ceiling settled, we’ll be happy to talk to them about anything they want to talk about,” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Friday afternoon.

Republicans want more than that and are holding everyone else hostage to their demands, and given their history of not yielding until a crisis is actually reached, the Oct 17 date when the government will default, indicates that we have another 12 days to go.

US Shutdown Day 3 "This time's different"

President Obama had a meeting with Republican and Democrat leaders of the House and Senate which went nowhere.

Mr Boehner left the talks complaining the Democrats "will not negotiate".  Mr Obama said he would not set a precedent where "an extremist wing" of a party holds a government to ransom.  He told CNBC ahead of the meeting that he was "prepared to negotiate on anything" over the budget once Congress passes "a clean piece of legislation that reopens the government".

This theater is just Act 1 of the drama,  the Debt Limit will have to be raised in 2 weeks or the government will default of some payments and that's when the stuff really hits the fan, tarnishing the US credit rating and shutting down services to the most vulnerable in our country.

"This time's different"
So far the markets have yawned, but that will change soon.

Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Obama said that Wall Street should be worried about more serious consequences now that the government is closed for business and the debt limit deadline is just around the corner.
"This time's different," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CNBC that aired Wednesday afternoon. "I think they should be concerned."

The president told CNBC's John Harwood that he told the financial leaders "that it is not unusual for Democrats and Republicans to disagree -- that is the way our founders designed our government." However, he continued, "When you have a situation in which a faction [of Congress] is willing potentially to default on U.S. government obligations, then we are in trouble."

 More drama to come in Day 3 I'm sure.

US Senate Takes Leisurely Course to Shutdown

Maybe it's a strategic move, but after the US House worked over the weekend, you'd think the Senators would be eager to send the rejected budget bill back to the House, but maybe they're smarter than me, I dunno.  I would venture to guess it will become a joke topic on the late night shows, the Democrats left themselves open to ridicule.  Just for the record, I think they deserve ridicule for that.

Filibuster still intact

In a parody of governance that more resembled the wreck of the Titanic, the Senate leaders reached a deal that insures business as usual and will still enable government to be as dysfunctional as before.  They rearranged a couple of rules about when a filibuster can occur, but all in all nothing has changed.  All the Senate Democrats gushed over the deal, probably because Reid and McConnell finally agreed on something, which almost guarantees it will be ineffective.  Ron Wyden signaled he was sorry for Jeff, but sounded like he would vote for the change.  Sad day for reform hopes, with sadder days in the senate in coming months.