Debt limit: Today is the day Secretary Tim Geithner said the world would end. Today is the day that the U.S. government is expected to hit the $14.294 trillion debt ceiling. But instead of Armageddon, the sun rose in the east and Asian markets did not disintegrate. Life in the United States, and everywhere, is proceeding normally. Most Americans will never attach any significance to the fact that this day came and went without the predicted event, but conservatives in Congress will.
Now that the White House’s apocalyptic rhetoric on the debt ceiling has been exposed as a fraud, their hand at the negotiating table has been significantly weakened. There will be a deal to raise the debt limit before the fall. It will be short term (lasting no longer than through the 2012 election), it will not contain tax hikes, and it will not fix our long-term deficit problem. The next president will have to tackle that.
