The Government Shutdown Countdown Lowdown MEGATHREAD

[derspiess]

I'm holding out for my Obamaguns.

"The one with the rifle shoots.  The one with the ammo follows him.  When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots."

Enjoy, comrade.

[Razgovory]

I'm holding out for my Obamaguns.

"The one with the rifle shoots.  The one with the ammo follows him.  When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots."

Enjoy, comrade.

They still did better then the Germans in that battle if I recall correctly.

[Ideologue]

I'm holding out for my Obamaguns.

"The one with the rifle shoots.  The one with the ammo follows him.  When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots."

Enjoy, comrade.

We did this routine already!

[Ideologue]

All kidding aside, I live within walking distance of Fort Jackson.  I'm fine.

[Caliga]

Cal had a supply of Ammo but he left his in a bucket of water.

MAH SHOOTY THINGYS

Wrong.  It's in my nightstand.  Hundreds and hundreds of rounds of it.

[Ed Anger]

Cal had a supply of Ammo but he left his in a bucket of water.

MAH SHOOTY THINGYS

Wrong.  It's in my nightstand.  Hundreds and hundreds of rounds of it.

MAH LUBRICANT

[DGuller]

I'm holding out for my Obamaguns.

"The one with the rifle shoots.  The one with the ammo follows him.  When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots."

Enjoy, comrade.

They still did better then the Germans in that battle if I recall correctly, as were the human wave attacks.

Partly because that part of the movie was utter falsehood by that time.

[Ideologue]

What about the part where Joseph Fiennes drops some Marxist critique on us and says that there will always be those rich... in love.

[CountDeMoney]

Politico.com

Debt breach could rock DOD, industry
By: Austin Wright
October 15, 2013 11:01 AM EDT

For the Pentagon and the sprawling defense industry, the worst may be yet to come.

The grim reality is that if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, default could prove more damaging than sequestration and the government shutdown. Payments to the military, defense contractors and veterans would be delayed, among other drastic actions.

"Default will only compound the disastrous impacts of sequestration, shutdown and furloughs," said Chip Sheller, a spokesman for the Aerospace Industries Association.

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders are scrambling to reach a deal to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling before Thursday, when the Treasury Department has warned it will exhaust its borrowing authority.

At that point, the government could be forced to pay its bills using cash on hand and incoming tax revenues.

The problem is that over the next few months, the government is expected to bring in less than 70 percent of the amount it's slated to spend. In addition, tax revenues can be volatile, varying greatly from one month to the next.

"It's not a pretty picture," said Gordon Adams, a fellow at the Stimson Center and a former defense budget official in the Clinton administration.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have expressed optimism about the prospects for avoiding such a scenario, with some senators predicting on Monday a deal was at hand between Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), two veterans of the trenches of tough deals.

Still, lawmakers pledged — and failed — to avoid sequestration and the current government shutdown, both derided as unthinkable until they became realities.

So what would it mean for the Pentagon and defense contractors if Congress fails once again to stave off a looming crisis?

The Treasury Department would have at least two options, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, and one appears more likely than the other.

First, Treasury could prioritize its obligations, paying down the interest on the public debt while putting other bills on hold.

"For the Department of Defense, its bills would stand with others in front of the Treasury secretary and his advisers, and they would choose which bills to pay and which ones not to pay," said Shai Akabas, a senior policy analyst with the center.

Fiscal conservatives have urged the Obama administration to adopt this approach as a way to avoid a default on the debt — an action economists say could spark a global recession.

But Treasury officials have "determined that there is no fair or sensible way to pick and choose" from its more than 80 million scheduled payments per month, according to a report last year by the department's inspector general.

So the second option is more likely.

Under that scenario, according to the center, the department would pay its bills in the order they come due — once it has enough cash on hand. This would essentially mean delaying payments until the government receives enough in tax revenues to cover them.

The Treasury inspector general addressed such a situation last year, citing the department's contingency plans after a fight in Congress in 2011 over raising the debt limit.

"Payment delays under such a regime would have quickly worsened each day the debt limit remained at its limit, potentially causing great hardships to millions of Americans and harm to the economy," the inspector general said.

The Defense Department and its contractors could feel such a hardship before the end of the month since payments to contractors are scheduled to go out on Oct. 25.

But without an increase in the debt limit, the government wouldn't have enough money to make those payments until Oct. 30, according to projections by the center under the assumption the government will run out of cash on Friday and then be entirely dependent on incoming tax revenues.

Benefit payments for veterans and pay for service members are scheduled to go out Nov. 1, which would have to be delayed until Nov. 13, according to the center.

"For the defense industry itself, I think it would be a more extreme version of first the sequester and then the government shutdown," Akabas said. "From a broader perspective, it could be much worse and much more catastrophic."

Sheller agreed.

"Default is unchartered territory for our country and certainly the aerospace industry," he said. "We're now about to send another signal of weakness to our enemies, that America cannot pay her bills."

Adams, meanwhile, said a slowdown in payments to defense contractors could ripple throughout the industry and lead to furloughs or layoffs.

"The fundamental reality is it's a slowdown, and the bills would get paid as the money comes in," he said. "It's first come, first served."

[Ideologue]

Our patriotic defense industry will continue to deliver the weapons and technology we need to make the world safe for democracy, though, right?

[mongers]

Just watch professor Peter Morici of Maryland university, he's apparently close to some Teaparty congressman, what he said was somewhat 'extreme'. 

He also said some of the congressmen were prepared to take it past Oct 17 and implied they had the 'idea' that the US wouldn't necessarily if they started prioritising spending and I guess stopped deficit spending entirely. He criticised Boehner  for not putting this idea over. 

[Sheilbh]

Stunned Republicans React to Canceled Vote
By Jonathan Strong
October 15, 2013 7:43 PM

Referring to his plan to preemptively send the Senate a House-passed bill, Speaker John Boehner told his conference this morning that he'd "rather throw a grenade than catch a grenade." But with his right-wing troops abandoning him again, it was the speaker who was left holding the bomb.

After a day of furious negotiating with fellow Republicans over how to tweak a bill he had unveiled in the morning, it was left to stunned members of his leadership team to confirm to reporters that the vote had been canceled.

"They're trying to work it out," said Representative Greg Walden, the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman.

Pete Sessions, chairman of the Rules Committee, kept in character and put a positive spin on an obvious disaster for the GOP.

Boehner "made a decision that what we're going to do is allow us to take the night and make sure all of our members know what's going on. We're trying to make sure that what we're doing, people know about and they can prepare and study for," Sessions said, going on to pin the lack of action on the Senate. "You know what? We're waiting for the Senate to get their work done. We had no reason to necessarily have to do anything," he added, when I asked him what it says about the House GOP that Boehner couldn't bring the bill to the floor.

"It's all over. We'll take the Senate deal," says a senior GOP aide. Senator Mitch McConnell's office quickly noted to reporters that the Kentucky Republican would be taking back the lead.

A key moment in the fight came when Heritage Action announced it was "key voting" against the bill. Support was already flagging, and the decision made up the minds of many members sitting on the fence.

"People are thinking about primaries, they really are," says a GOP chief of staff.

Although leadership had been working to amend the bill throughout the day to cater to GOP critics, the final iteration Boehner landed on provoked head-scratching among much of the GOP conference.

Conservatives had pushed to eliminate the repeal of the medical-device tax, worrying that it appeared to be crony capitalism benefiting a small business constituency, and to apply the Vitter amendment's language to staffers as well as lawmakers, thinking it appeared hypocritical.

Leadership went along with both changes but added nothing new to the bill. One argument in favor of that, put forward by Representative Steve Womack of Arkansas, was simplicity. Womack said including only one additional provision would have made it far easier to beat the messaging war drum in favor of the bill.

But for many others, the smallness of the "Vitter amendment," coupled with removing what was a significant, if targeted, policy victory, provoked confusion and wrath.

"You ever think you'd see the day where Republicans would demand removing language that delays a tax?" wondered a third GOP aide. "I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone."

The canceled vote was no Twilight Zone episode, however, but something far too familiar. Republicans eagerly compared it to the fiscal cliff's famous "Plan B" episode, when Boehner brought lawmakers into a closed-door meeting in the Capitol basement, said the serenity prayer, and told them the vote was canceled.

The Christian rite accompanying legislative chaos today was Florida representative Steve Southerland's rendition of "Amazing Grace" — "all three verses," said Representative Michael Burgess (Texas) afterwards in amazement.

But Southerland is an undertaker by trade, and the song is normally sung at funerals. It's hard not to see's today's failure as the death of the House GOP's role, in at least this standoff.

Rand Paul is quietly providing conservative cover for McConnell on this. He'll go far. Cruz, on the other hand, will crash and burn.

Also the righties I follow are quite excited about a primary challenge to Thad Cochran. Anyone know what he's done to offend the right?

[11B4V]

Rand Paul is quietly providing conservative cover for McConnell on this. He'll go far. Cruz, on the other hand, will crash and burn.

We can only hope. Mealymouthed MF

[derspiess]

Our patriotic defense industry will continue to deliver the weapons and technology we need to make the world safe for democracy, though, right?

They're rightwingers, you know

[Ideologue]

Oh, so they'll use the default as an excuse to fire everybody and start arming China instead.  Bummer.