‘Hostage-Takers,’ ‘Terrorists’: A Sampler of Progressive Hyperventilation on the Debt Ceiling

Dan writes:

You know who owes an apology, though? All the progressive commentators and Democratic operatives who ran around for months saying that Republicans just wanted to default and crash the economy just to hurt Biden’s reelection chances. In the end, Republicans unified behind a proposal to raise the debt limit, and while many of them dissented from the final deal, their leadership and two-thirds of the caucus voted for the final compromise. Those people were lying to you, they know it, they’ll never acknowledge error or apologize, and they’ll say it again next time as if none of this ever happened.

That’s correct, and it’s worth sampling some of the recent progressive commentary.

“The prospect that the U.S. government will default on its payments because Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling is now real and imminent,” Paul Krugman warned six days ago. “As disaster looms, it’s important to keep in mind that Republicans are the villains here: They’re the ones engaged in extortion.” On May 16, Krugman wrote that Republicans were using “blackmail” and that “it was obvious that they would try to take the economy hostage by refusing to raise the federal debt limit.” Those words were written about three weeks after House Republicans passed a bill to raise the federal debt limit.

Jonathan Chait wrote for New York on May 15 that Republicans were engaged in “extortion,” not negotiation. “The parties are not engaged in ‘horse-trading,’ because all the horses are being handed by one party to the other. They are only negotiating over the size and contours of the ransom payment.” The deal that actually happened has massive bipartisan support and doesn’t include most of the provisions that Republicans initially wanted.

Ed Kilgore, writing for New York on May 9, speculated that Republicans wanted a default as a plot to defeat Joe Biden in 2024. “Republicans may calculate that an actual debt default, likely followed by a recession, would doom any incumbent president, particularly if voters are inclined to blame that president at least partly for a debt default triggered by the other party,” he wrote. (He also referred to Republicans’ “buddies on Wall Street” — a peculiar comment considering that Wall Street donated overwhelmingly to Democrats in 2020.)

“Republicans seem to believe this hostage-taking stunt of theirs — which could hurl the U.S. economy into a recession — will help them politically,” wrote Ja’han Jones seven days ago for MSNBC. “Conservatives largely haven’t reckoned with the fact they lost majorly in 2020. By holding the nation’s economy hostage, Republicans appear to think they’ve found a way to erase the legislative achievements of the past two years.” The 2022 House elections, in which Republicans won about 3 million more votes than Democrats, are not mentioned.

“Who wants to see a plunge in the value of the dollar and a rise in borrowing costs for the government, to erase millions of jobs, trigger a recession, freeze retirement accounts, and nullify veterans’ benefits? Only the Republicans in Congress,” wrote James Zirin on May 17 for the Nation. Those words were written about two weeks after Representative Jen Kiggans (R., Va.), herself a veteran, sent a letter to the VA secretary along with other House members debunking the idea that Republicans supported cuts to veterans’ benefits.

“The shamelessness and recklessness of today’s Republican party seems to know no bounds,” wrote Jill Filipovic on May 18 for the Guardian. “Democrats in Congress are doing their best to get their Republican colleagues to behave rationally, but it’s notoriously difficult to negotiate with terrorists.”

On May 16, progressive economist Dean Baker told the Washington Post, “The issue here is principle: If you accept the idea that you can, in essence, be held to blackmail with the debt ceiling, it will be done again and again. Not to be crass, but it’s essentially negotiating with terrorists who have taken hostages.” Now that a deal has been reached, without many of the provisions Republicans initially wanted, he told Inc., “I will be very surprised if the deal is not approved.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) tweeted on May 19, “Republicans in Congress are threatening to push our nation off an economic cliff, throw millions of Americans out of work, and destroy our good name around the world if they don’t get their way on the budget. That isn’t negotiating—that’s hostage-taking, pure and simple.”

Representative Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) called Republicans “economic terrorists” two days before McCarthy and Biden reached a deal. At 3:22 p.m. on May 27, Representative Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) tweeted, “Today, the United States is closer to default than we have ever been for one reason only: Republicans’ economic hostage taking.” At 9:10 p.m. that same day, McCarthy gave a statement announcing the deal.

“Terrorists,” “hostage-takers,” “extortion,” “blackmail” — all of that hyperventilating only to have a rather milquetoast deal in place ahead of schedule and with bipartisan support.