I know this letter must take a good bit of your time but I really appreciate you giving us the latest news as you see it from Washington. I look forward to seeing your newsletter in my inbox
No mention about revenue? Reducing subsidies to businesses like oil? This is all GOP framing, and we have got to stop letting them set the bar for the argument. Stop talking about cutting services to our neediest
This is embarrassing & aggravating & a huge sign of our very broken political systems. We need massive overhauls of procedures, so we don’t keep ending up in these precarious situations due to desire for power, control & greed.
The whole non-rich part of the country (92%)- no matter the party - will be in dire fiscal situations very quickly & globally, we’ll be a joke. Every misstep leaves the door open for other global powers to sweep in.
The Repubs who cheer this vengeance from McCarthy think they won’t be impacted but they will if we default & they will if McCarthy gets his way.
The Repubs may be betting they can blow up the economy and by 2024 a majority of the country will simply blame the incumbent.
After all, how long did it take them to convince a lot of Americans that it was Washington DC and not Wall Street that caused the 2008 financial collapse?
I am sure that is part of the endgame; a consequence they would not mind.
We do not have to have budget talks at the same time we’re talking about raising the debt ceiling. The bottom budget plan came out in March. Par for the course, GOP didn’t like it. He said @ok, present yours and let’s talk.” But they never did - until we get to this time to pay our bills. That was a purposeful strategy.
They are also doing this is because they did it successfully under Obama and he made concessions because we were trying to pull out of the Bush recession. So they think it’ll work again. During Trumps Administration, they raised the debt ceiling three times & Dems agreed. No questions asked on spending, or budget or anything. During one of his helicopter sessions outside the White House, Trump was asked about the spending he had done which is historic, prior to Covid, and his response was that is the next president problem. He was right. But all of this sudden GOP interest in budget & spending now, further exposes this as an insincere effort & game-playing.
We can pay our bills AND we can have our budget talks afterwards, separately. Trying to leverage the debt ceiling for the budget is literally blackmail & extortion.
Jeff Jackson has such a gift of being able to communicate in a way that laymen can comprehend. He presents information based on facts, not opinions. I feel his emails are a real gift to me and they certainly help better understand issues and the positives and negatives of this issues. Jeff is a man to watch.
I am 74 and have been an independent my whole voting "career." At this point, I live in the northwest corner of CT, frankly a more serene corner of the country than most. My husband and I have traveled extensively around the country, staying in places and hiking which is our passion. (29 state highpoints and continuing!) I will not go into my background, which is extensive. but I will say that we both have been and continue to be intensely analytic and policy-oriented, which is frankly a non-starter in this day and age. In any case, we were talking at lunch about how we wished more representatives talk as you do - calm and sensible explanations of what is going on. Our representative has a weekly laundry list of what she is doing in terms of committee meetings and potential legislation, and that is fine. But, you know, front and center on everyone's mind is the debt ceiling crisis, and I do appreciate your balanced and forthright way you discussed it. More should do so. I wish there were more representatives like you because the whole situation is surreal and absurd, and we should not go through this.
Just ignore and pay the bills that congress already approved based on the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment is clear. Congress cannot approve spending and then later say wait, we're not going to allow you to pay for what we already instructed you to do. That's nonsense. And... there's no reason why they can't continue to try to negotiate a debt ceiling while paying the due bills. Pay all due bills AND continue negotiations. Ignore the deadline based on the 14th amendment.
Thanks for the update. Are there any calls to action for us, the American people? Obviously we are all on the phones already, begging our Reps to sign on to the discharge petition, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the way you think this is going to be resolved.
On the topic of the use of the 14th Amendment. I agree that some judge like Katzenjammer would issue a "nationwide injunction." But wouldn't there have to be, well, a lawsuit first? By someone with standing? (Not that standing bothers Judge K).
It doesn't look like the supremes would have original jurisdiction here. So the whole thing would take at least the 60 days it takes to allow an answer in a suit to even get started. Until then, not much a court can do to stop Biden from using it. And it generally would take longer just to litigate. One question I don't know the answer to is whether a court can issue a nationwide TRO. But even for THAT to happen, there has to be a case filed.
Yes, I can see this batch of supremes ultimately deciding to let the whole country default and start a world wide recession. But it certainly would destroy any credibility the court has left.
I found it interesting that the judge in the suit to declare the whole Debt Ceiling Act itself unconstitutional has refused to "expedite" proceedings, saying that the president has other options. So at least one judge thinks there is a case for Biden to act, whether by the 14th or by declaring a national emergency a la trump and his wall funding. If he DOES decide the Act is unconstitutional (the hearing is in early June, HE could issue a nationwide injunction against enforcing the Act. Then the supremes would face dueling injunctions. They would have to face the issue squarely: what does the 14th Amendment mean in relation to Congress's power to control spending. The shadow docket wouldn't really work.
The "Red Herring" here is the disingenuous outrage about "cut spending," because if Congress (reads: GOP) really want to cut "discretionary spending", they would cut Defense spending since that is THE biggest part of the budget. But they won't. They also put on the table they won't touch Social Security and Medicare. They also won't cut back on the 2017 Tax Cut. So, out of all of the parts of the budget, the points at the fractional spending that is the White House agenda spending.
If a Household has a debt crisis, what's the first a Household generally do? Either go and find new source of income (i.e., US Gov term, "Tax Revenue") or go borrow money from relatives and friends (i.e., Gov term, "raising Debt Ceiling"), either of which GOP also unwilling to do.
So let's not pretend this is a genuine concern about "balancing budget".
Thanks Congressman. Your weekly messages are clear and also educate those of us who are not plugged into the work of Congress but want to know about important issues like the debt default discussions going on now
Thank you for your calm sensible explanations of what goes on in the chaos that is politics/congress.
I know this letter must take a good bit of your time but I really appreciate you giving us the latest news as you see it from Washington. I look forward to seeing your newsletter in my inbox
No mention about revenue? Reducing subsidies to businesses like oil? This is all GOP framing, and we have got to stop letting them set the bar for the argument. Stop talking about cutting services to our neediest
This is embarrassing & aggravating & a huge sign of our very broken political systems. We need massive overhauls of procedures, so we don’t keep ending up in these precarious situations due to desire for power, control & greed.
The whole non-rich part of the country (92%)- no matter the party - will be in dire fiscal situations very quickly & globally, we’ll be a joke. Every misstep leaves the door open for other global powers to sweep in.
The Repubs who cheer this vengeance from McCarthy think they won’t be impacted but they will if we default & they will if McCarthy gets his way.
This country is truly hanging by a thread.
The Repubs may be betting they can blow up the economy and by 2024 a majority of the country will simply blame the incumbent.
After all, how long did it take them to convince a lot of Americans that it was Washington DC and not Wall Street that caused the 2008 financial collapse?
I am sure that is part of the endgame; a consequence they would not mind.
We do not have to have budget talks at the same time we’re talking about raising the debt ceiling. The bottom budget plan came out in March. Par for the course, GOP didn’t like it. He said @ok, present yours and let’s talk.” But they never did - until we get to this time to pay our bills. That was a purposeful strategy.
They are also doing this is because they did it successfully under Obama and he made concessions because we were trying to pull out of the Bush recession. So they think it’ll work again. During Trumps Administration, they raised the debt ceiling three times & Dems agreed. No questions asked on spending, or budget or anything. During one of his helicopter sessions outside the White House, Trump was asked about the spending he had done which is historic, prior to Covid, and his response was that is the next president problem. He was right. But all of this sudden GOP interest in budget & spending now, further exposes this as an insincere effort & game-playing.
We can pay our bills AND we can have our budget talks afterwards, separately. Trying to leverage the debt ceiling for the budget is literally blackmail & extortion.
The *Biden* budget. Sub needs a comment edit! Lol
It does on the website. Just not on the iOS app. I don't know about Android.
Jeff Jackson has such a gift of being able to communicate in a way that laymen can comprehend. He presents information based on facts, not opinions. I feel his emails are a real gift to me and they certainly help better understand issues and the positives and negatives of this issues. Jeff is a man to watch.
He’s a twit of the highest order
The debt ceiling was raised three times during the Trump administration. McCarthy is just playing a game of chicken .
Lois Bailey
I am 74 and have been an independent my whole voting "career." At this point, I live in the northwest corner of CT, frankly a more serene corner of the country than most. My husband and I have traveled extensively around the country, staying in places and hiking which is our passion. (29 state highpoints and continuing!) I will not go into my background, which is extensive. but I will say that we both have been and continue to be intensely analytic and policy-oriented, which is frankly a non-starter in this day and age. In any case, we were talking at lunch about how we wished more representatives talk as you do - calm and sensible explanations of what is going on. Our representative has a weekly laundry list of what she is doing in terms of committee meetings and potential legislation, and that is fine. But, you know, front and center on everyone's mind is the debt ceiling crisis, and I do appreciate your balanced and forthright way you discussed it. More should do so. I wish there were more representatives like you because the whole situation is surreal and absurd, and we should not go through this.
Just ignore and pay the bills that congress already approved based on the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment is clear. Congress cannot approve spending and then later say wait, we're not going to allow you to pay for what we already instructed you to do. That's nonsense. And... there's no reason why they can't continue to try to negotiate a debt ceiling while paying the due bills. Pay all due bills AND continue negotiations. Ignore the deadline based on the 14th amendment.
Thanks for the update. Are there any calls to action for us, the American people? Obviously we are all on the phones already, begging our Reps to sign on to the discharge petition, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the way you think this is going to be resolved.
Thank you for being so transparent. With all the "noise" out there you have no way of knowing the truth.
Thank you Jeff for being so informative and transparent. I knew you would be.
On the topic of the use of the 14th Amendment. I agree that some judge like Katzenjammer would issue a "nationwide injunction." But wouldn't there have to be, well, a lawsuit first? By someone with standing? (Not that standing bothers Judge K).
It doesn't look like the supremes would have original jurisdiction here. So the whole thing would take at least the 60 days it takes to allow an answer in a suit to even get started. Until then, not much a court can do to stop Biden from using it. And it generally would take longer just to litigate. One question I don't know the answer to is whether a court can issue a nationwide TRO. But even for THAT to happen, there has to be a case filed.
Yes, I can see this batch of supremes ultimately deciding to let the whole country default and start a world wide recession. But it certainly would destroy any credibility the court has left.
I found it interesting that the judge in the suit to declare the whole Debt Ceiling Act itself unconstitutional has refused to "expedite" proceedings, saying that the president has other options. So at least one judge thinks there is a case for Biden to act, whether by the 14th or by declaring a national emergency a la trump and his wall funding. If he DOES decide the Act is unconstitutional (the hearing is in early June, HE could issue a nationwide injunction against enforcing the Act. Then the supremes would face dueling injunctions. They would have to face the issue squarely: what does the 14th Amendment mean in relation to Congress's power to control spending. The shadow docket wouldn't really work.
The "Red Herring" here is the disingenuous outrage about "cut spending," because if Congress (reads: GOP) really want to cut "discretionary spending", they would cut Defense spending since that is THE biggest part of the budget. But they won't. They also put on the table they won't touch Social Security and Medicare. They also won't cut back on the 2017 Tax Cut. So, out of all of the parts of the budget, the points at the fractional spending that is the White House agenda spending.
If a Household has a debt crisis, what's the first a Household generally do? Either go and find new source of income (i.e., US Gov term, "Tax Revenue") or go borrow money from relatives and friends (i.e., Gov term, "raising Debt Ceiling"), either of which GOP also unwilling to do.
So let's not pretend this is a genuine concern about "balancing budget".
Grateful for you. And boggled by the savage ignorance or malevolence of Republicans.
Thanks Congressman. Your weekly messages are clear and also educate those of us who are not plugged into the work of Congress but want to know about important issues like the debt default discussions going on now
You continue to be a vital source - especially on this topic. Thank you. I read your emails faster than ANYTHING ELSE in my InBox.