The looming budget battles in Congress – one over continued funding for the federal government, the other over the debt ceiling – are totally unnecessary and threaten to wreak havoc on an already fragile economy.
If you think the Republicans in the House of Representatives care, think again.
They are totally under the sway of radical right-wing Tea Partiers and don’t care a whit about potential damage to the country
We called their intransigence “insane” in
GOP digs in over budget – for no rational reason
The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on his blog Wednesday used the same terminology. In Things Come to a Head Krugman wrote: “GOP leaders are weak, apparently helpless in the face of dingbat Jacobins who imagine that sabotage governing can get Obama to undermine his one major achievement.
“But the key point is that we are now in insane political terrain.”
It’s all about posturing and catering to the radial right wing of the party, which is holding the entire country hostage. Damn the torpedoes!
Gridlock in Washington – when the federal government could run out of money on two different occasions within the next month – is not only bad for the country, it’s bad for the world.
It is likely to rattle financial markets everywhere over the coming weeks, adding to the instability caused by the crisis in Syria and the continuing threat of a wider war in the Middle East.
It’s enough to make your head explode.