The Debt Crisis That Looms Larger Every Day

Headline: “Biden is running out of time to avoid calamitous debt ceiling outcomes”

Meet our demands for spending cuts, or we’ll refuse to raise the debt ceiling thereby causing an economic meltdown, humiliating and weakening the United States of America. That’s the Republicans’ ultimatum. Biden’s position is that he will negotiate, but not with a gun held to his head. Possible financial Armageddon is six to eight weeks away.

Biden giving in to this strong-arm tactic would be tantamount to ceding control of public policy to the extreme-right wing-authoritarian-seeking cabal that controls the House of Representatives even though Democrats control the presidency and the Senate.

I think it’s likely that Biden will have to resort to an unprecedented measure to prevent an unprecedented default: invoking a provision of Constitution requiring that the U. S. meet its obligations. Nihilist Republicans would challenge this, and the issue would soon come before the right-wing extremist-dominated Supreme Court. How they would decide such a case is a mystery to me and may even be a mystery to experts on the Constitution and on the Court.