I looked over the prior deals that were done on the debt ceiling, especially during the Bush years. This report recaps the events through 2008. There were about 5-6 debt ceiling fights. The 2002 fight went the longest and deepest, I think because the Dems were pissed that Bush had blown the Clinton surpluses and wanted to hold his feet to the fire.
In reviewing all these major and minor battles, I do not see any situations where raising the debt ceiling was tied to long term budget deals. There were a few times where the debt ceiling was tied to a fiscal year's budget resolution, but not the kind of random deep cuts the GOP is holding out for today. For that matter, no one was trying to push any other agenda, like rolling back the Bush tax cuts, say in 2005. In essence they were all clean deals. I'm asking for help here, so if anyone can read this report and discern something like a deal they're talking about now, let me know. But I dare say what's going on now looks like it's unprecedented.
Which brings me to a clean deal for 2011. I love this afternoon's pronouncement that Social Security checks "may" not go out on August 3, but I think it's too weak. Josh makes the point that if we are facing default, we should start cutting back expenditures now. I think the President shouldn't say checks may not start going out on August 3, he should say they WILL NOT go out on August 1, and in fact these other kinds of payments (pick ten) are going to stop, say on July 25. Then, while the congress people and senators are getting inundated with calls, visits and demonstrations from seniors, the president can offer a clean deal. Full stop. End of story.
Interestingly McConnell seems to be setting up something like this with this afternoon's proposal. He's basically arguing that everyone should punt a few more times till the 2012 election. It's cynical but it's basically a variation on a clean deal, albeit a GOP friendly one.
An unintended benefit to the Social Security pronouncement is that he is making the consequences of failure very real and palpable. He has not really done this till today, and I think this will start get everyone's attention. If this was part of a strategy, he's a better master of eleven dimensional chess than we ever gave him credit for. More likely, he stumbled on to something that may just save the day.
Thoughts?