For that matter, the Treasury has a number of tricks it can use to stave off default: draw down the $200 billion Supplementary Financing Program, issue some cash-management bills, sneak a little out of the $118 billion employee pension G-Fund, sell off more of those ridiculous TARP investments — to name just a few.
Even so, DeMint’s comments are more than a little disturbing. It’s not our fault, he insists. The Democrats did it. Most of us weren’t even here when it happened. You’ve heard that whine before: on the playground, or in a squabble after school. It is the cry of a child who thinks it’s just not fair he has to clean up someone else’s mess. And maybe it really isn’t fair. But we have a name for those who don’t whine this way — a name for those who shoulder responsibility in a world they never made. We call them grown-ups, and with their new congressional power, the time has come for the Republicans to start acting, and speaking, like adults.
Our national debts “are legal obligations,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote to Congress recently. “Responsibility for meeting the nation’s obligations must be shared by both parties.” Let’s not pretend he isn’t playing politics, too. Geithner urged Congress in his letter to raise the debt ceiling immediately, and what he’s probably hoping is that the debate doesn’t last long enough for Republicans to pry budget concessions out of the Democrats.
Nonetheless, it’s curious that Geithner sounds like a conservative in all this, while DeMint sounds like a radical.
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