I love this idea from Matt Yglesias:
It’s a two pronged strategy. The first one is a credible, repeated commitment not to surrender anything in exchange for getting congress to agree to the debt ceiling being increased. [. . .] The second prong, important for credibility, is to move to thinking about what happens as we reach the ceiling.
This isn’t a sudden “shutdown.” [. . . T]he people administering the federal government [. . .] will be able to selectively stiff people. So the right strategy is to start stiffing people Republicans care about. When bills to defense contractors come due, don’t pay them. [. . .]
I would not wait until the debt ceiling is reached. Start giving defense contractors and other corporations doing business with the government haircuts before the ceiling is hit. Pay them 50 cents on the dollar or something along those lines. Hell, cancel some contracts while you're at it.
Can we afford them now? I dunno, but I bet the President will improve his bargaining position if he did something like this.
NOTE: Pardon the straying from the legal, but I really like this idea.