Wall Street, Not White House, Will Stop GOP

Wink, wink. John Boehner, Paul Ryan and their gang that can’t shoot straight are holding the debt-ceiling hostage to tax cuts but telling financial markets the guns aren’t loaded.

“Just ignore Tuesday’s vote against raising the debt ceiling, House Republican leaders whispered to Wall Street,” says a New York Times editorial. “We didn’t really vote against it, members suggested; we just sent another of our endless symbolic messages, pretending to take the nation’s credit to the brink of collapse in order to extract the maximum concessions from President Obama.”

What we have here is the classic Mad Magazine cover of a cute canine with a gun to his head and the caption, “Buy this magazine or we’ll shoot this dog.”

Republicans go to the White House, dance around with the President and then stand outside smirking their talking points for the TV cameras, but everyone, with the possible exception of a few Tea Party diehards, knows they are playing Russian roulette without legislative bullets.

One of the House freshmen issues a statement refusing to attend. “Until the president produces a responsible deficit reduction plan,” he huffs, ”I’m not going to the White House to negotiate with myself.” Such delusions of grandeur reflect the pressure on Boehner to keep up the pointless charade.

The bottom line is that, as the August default deadline nears, the crumbling of U.S. credit on world markets will force a vote on what should have been routine raising of the debt limit without Republican histrionics.

The House drama queens will keep playing their game of holding the debt ceiling hostage to budget cuts until their gods of the free markets get nervous enough to tell them it’s time to stop.

Then, they can fold that show and open the next one—-pretending to negotiate with Democrats on budget cuts that will preserve tax cuts for the richest Americans on Wall Street and elsewhere by gutting Medicare for the elderly poor.

Paul Ryan is still trying to explain to the President how his plan to raise premiums by $6400 a year is good for seniors as well as the deficit. He would do better trying to persuade voters before November 2012.

Update: Moody’s fires the opening Wall Street shot by warning it might downgrade the government’s credit rating if Congress does not increase the nation’s debt limit “in coming weeks.” Can the House GOP read a "Stop" sign when they see one?