Pretty much everyone agrees that Republicans won’t do anything serious to reduce the deficit if they win control of the House next week. After all, they plainly don’t care about deficits except as a useful partisan cudgel. Bruce Bartlett agrees, but has an even more exotic fear:
As I have previously warned, I am very fearful that it will be impossible to raise the debt limit, which would bring about a default and real, honest-to-God bankruptcy — something many Tea Party-types have openly called for in an insane belief that this will somehow or other impose fiscal discipline on out-of-control government spending without forcing them to vote either for spending cuts or tax increases.
….Republicans should savor the period from Election Day to the first day of the new Congress on January 3, 2011. That will be as good as it gets for them; afterwards, it’s all downhill once they have to act, take responsibility, and can no longer blame Democrats for everything bad that happens anywhere. That goes for their allies in the business community, who naively assume that every action of the last two years that they opposed will magically disappear. And it goes double for the Tea Partiers, who have never had to take responsibility for anything. It’s a whole new ballgame in January.
At this point, I’m not sure I’d put anything past them. One thing might stop this doomsday scenario, though. The Republican base — big business and the rich, not the tea party — have made it crystal clear that they’ll fight to their last breath to keep from taking any responsibility for the mess they made over the past decade. However, that same base probably genuinely fears the possibility of a default. They’re greedy and narcissistic, not insane. So they’ll probably rein things in just short of that. A demonstration of who’s boss is one thing, but actually putting the assets of the rich at risk is quite another.
