According to what Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky told Fox viewers on Wednesday morning, it's up to the president to decide whether or the United States defaults on its debt:
We've got plenty of money to keep paying our interest. The president should cut it out, quit trying to scare the markets, and scare investors, and come forward, if he's a leader, and say "We will not default, we have never defaulted. America is proud compan— country, we will not default."
Starting to call America a company was a lovely Freudian slip, but the point Paul was trying to make is ridiculous. First, payments to bond holders are only part of what's at stake here—Rand Paul might not care whether things like Social Security checks get sent out, but the people who depend on them probably do. Second, even if debt holders were the only issue, and the government were willing to prioritize them over its other obligations, there's
no guarantee that it would actually be able to carry out such a prioritization scheme.
Rand Paul, however, ignores these facts to support his conclusion that raising it would be a terrible idea:
I think [Republicans] are actually very, very united on this. The idea that we have to do something, we can't keep piling on this debt, and that raising the debt ceiling is bad.
Nonetheless, Paul says Republicans would be willing to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for a ransom:
The only way we'll support raising the debt ceiling is if there's significant reforms to spending, significant reform to the budget.
So in Rand Paul's world, raising the debt ceiling is bad policy that has nothing to do with avoiding a default ... but:
The only way you get concessions out of [President Obama] is unfortunately you have to negotiate around this deadline. [...] The only way they'll negotiate is if they're forced to negotiate, so we can't give in.
To recap Rand Paul's logic:
- Raising the debt limit is a bad idea.
- It doesn't matter whether Congress raises the debt limit because it's entirely up to President Obama whether or not we default on our obligations.
- Therefore, Republicans should use the debt limit as leverage to force President Obama to make concessions to them.
Obviously, that doesn't compute. If President Obama doesn't need Congress to raise the debt limit, and if raising the debt limit would be a bad idea, how can Rand Paul say with a straight face that he believes threatening to not raise it will force the president to make concessions?
The answer is obvious: Rand Paul is a pretty good liar.