Show me a favorable debt ceiling a deal that would pass both houses.

[LLStarks]

I certainly can't think of one and that's always my smell test for legislation. I'll stop supporting the President on the deal if you can.

I don't even believe McConnell-Reid can pass the House.

As far as I'm concerned, seigniorage and the 14th were the only weapons that were decidedly 'ours'.

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. You won't get one...

..you will get a dozen posts about the December lame duck session, and what should have been done then.

Send them to read this: WOULDA-COULDA-SHOULDA PREVENTED THOSE MONOMANIACAL PSYCHOPATHS FROM BEING MONOMANIACALLY PSYCHOPATHIC

[originalpckelly]

8. Because, as we all know, those tax cuts could not have been changed...

in all the years Bush was in office, right?

[Warpy]

2. You'e correct, anything that comes out of this Congress is going to be disastrous

Fortunately, they're going to be too bogged down in partisan bickering to do much future damage.

This was their last hurrah, IMO, manufacturing a massive crisis over a routine bill that should have been passed with little debate and no drama.

From what I've been reading, the military lost a hell of a lot more than we did. The main thing that makes it unacceptable to most of the people in this country is that the rich didn't have to pay an extra dime.

[MadHound]

3. You do like they did in times past,

Take the debate down to the eleventh hour, and then somebody introduces a clean bill. Sane heads in both the Republicans and Democrats will take over, and the clean bill will pass with bipartisan support. However it does mean that the game of chicken continues to the eleventh hour, and apparently nobody had the appetite for that.

[LLStarks]

5. We didn't have that luxury with our AAA bond rating on the line. nt

[gratuitous]

6. That's one way

The other way is to start from the get-go, when it became apparent that the Nitwit Brigade in the Republican party was thinking about screwing around with the country's credit rating. It wasn't until last Tuesday that the fellow with the biggest microphone finally said "Call your representative in Washington." Apparently, he couldn't do that in June, May, April, or earlier, when this whole thing could have been headed off.

Instead, as we're plunging off the cliff, we finally get the "sensible" folks to say, "Well, what's your plan?" Gee, it involved not zooming toward that precipice at breakneck speed, but you weren't listening then.

[MineralMan]

4. There isn't one, and that's the problem.

[joeybee12]

7. A clean bill simply to raise the debt ceiling...Obama could have insisted

on it when he agreed to the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

[LLStarks]

9. A clean bill is meaningless unless Congress promises to tackle deficit reduction soon after. nt