Republican Rep. Calls For Default On The Debt: ‘It Could Benefit Us To Go Through A Period Of Crisis’

By Pat Garofalo






Several Congressional Republicans, including Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), have posited that failing to raise the debt ceiling — and thus forcing the U.S. to default on some of its obligations — would not be bad for the economy. “I don’t think it’s going to have an adverse impact on the economy for the days or weeks or perhaps even months that this would continue,” Toomey said.

These “default deniers” don’t believe that failing to raise the debt ceiling would have the negative consequences that most economic analysts say it will. Radio shock-jock Rush Limbaugh even said yesterday that failing to raise the debt ceiling will improve the nation’s creditworthiness.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), though, believes that default would cause a “crisis.” But, as he told Politico, he actively wants it to happen anyway:

Nunes says the debt cap must be raised at some point but not necessarily before the point of default.
“By defaulting on the debt, in the short and long term, it could benefit us to go through a period of crisis that forces politicians to make decisions” on major policies that affect the budget, he told POLITICO.

The GOP has been playing chicken with the debt ceiling for months, but Nunes is now advocating outright default and all of the consequences such a default would bring. As Princeton Professor Alan Blinder noted in the Wall Street Journal this morning, the U.S. defaulting on its obligations could eventually “reignite the world financial crisis”:

Should it occur, the consequences could be severe. It might, for example, reignite the world financial crisis. Remember how rattled financial markets became last year when it looked like Greece might default? And that was just little Greece and the possibility of default. An actual default by the mightiest nation on Earth would be immeasurably more unsettling. Where, in such a case, would frightened investors run to hide? The U.S. dollar would be among the first casualties. If hot money were to flee what was once its safest haven, the dollar would sink and U.S. interest rates would rise. The latter could lead us back into recession.
There would also be lasting costs to the U.S. government in the form of higher interest rates…How much? Again, no one can know. But even if it’s as little as 10-20 basis points on the U.S. government’s average borrowing cost, that’s an additional $10 billion to $20 billion in interest expenses every year. Seems like an expensive way to score a political point

Bank of America analysts agreed, noting that not raising the debt ceiling “would likely push the U.S. into recession and drag down the stock market.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said earlier this month that “no one is advocating defaulting.” But it seems, for the House Republicans at least, that is no longer the case.

GOP Rep. Nunes Excuses Racist, Homophobic Tea Partier Slurs As A Response To ‘Totalitarian Tactics’

By Andrea Nill

This morning on C-Span’s Washington Journal, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) justified the disturbing racist and homophobic epitaphs that angry tea baggers hurled yesterday at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), and other House Democrats. Nunes insisted that everyone has a right to “smear” whoever they want and that the tea baggers’ behavior was understandable given the “crazy totalitarian tactics” that he alleges Democrats are engaged in:

SCULLY: A lot of angry comments aimed at a couple of your colleagues, including Barney Frank and Congressman John Lewis, using the “n” word as some of the protesters jeered at him as he walked through the halls of the Capitol.

NUNES: Yeah, well I think that when you use totalitarian tactics, people, you know, begin to act crazy. I think, you know, there’s people that have every right to say what they want. If they want to smear someone, they can do it. It’s not appropriate. And I think I would stop short of characterizing the 20,000 people protesting, that all of them were doing that –

SCULLY: — those are just some of the stories.

NUNES: Of course. I think the left loves to play a couple of incidents here or there.

Later in the show, a caller said he “took exception” to what Nunes said because he “sort of justified” the racial slurs. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), who followed Nunes’ appearance on C-Span this morning, repudiated his remarks. Becerra acknowledged that “it’s a free country, we get to say what we wish,” but added, “I don’t think there’s any excuse that can be given and there never should be.” Watch it:

While Nunes justified the ugly rhetoric and actions of yesterday’s event, most other Republican lawmakers spent today distancing themselves from the outbursts.

“Nobody condones that at all. There were 30,000 people here in Washington yesterday. And, yes, there were some very awful things said,” stated Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) on ABC. On Meet the Press, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) insisted that these “few isolated incidents” shouldn’t obscure the fact that “millions of Americans fear the impact of the Democrats’ healthcare reform.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele dismissed the incidents as consisting of “a handful of people who just got stupid.” Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) took a somewhat harsher tone when he stated that he decried the behavior of the protesters “in the strongest terms.”