Alternative Explanations

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WaPo’s Dana Milbank could be more generous:

Jen Kiggans had the haunted look of a woman about to walk the plank.

The first-term Republican from Virginia barely took her eyes off her text Wednesday as she read it aloud on the House floor. She tripped over words and used her fingers to keep her place on the page.

The anxiety was understandable. Like about 30 other House Republicans from vulnerable districts, she was about to vote in favor of the GOP’s plan to force spending cuts of about $4.8 trillion as the ransom to be paid for avoiding a default on the federal debt.

Poetic, yes. But it’s worth noting that, at age 51, it could easily be that her eyesight is beginning to betray her.

But I do appreciate the balance of Milbank’s opinion piece, especially this:

At the start of this manufactured debt-limit crisis, I worried that ideological extremism might drive the nation to a first-ever default. But an equal threat to America’s full faith and credit may be incompetence. Those in the House majority don’t know what they don’t know.

The Treasury is forecast to go into default in June. But Rep. Tim Burchett (Tenn.), emerging from the GOP caucus meeting Wednesday morning, told a group of us that “we’re not going to default.” Why? “I think September’s the actual drop-dead date, so we’re good.”

Coming out of the same meeting, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) still seemed confused about what happens when the government defaults. (Hint: It has nothing to do with a government shutdown.) “Let the Senate shut the government down,” he proclaimed. “Let them take the heat for shutting it down.”

At the Rules Committee hearing, Rep. Tom Massie (R-Ky.) offered his view that the Federal Reserve is “not an independent agency.” (It is.)

And, as The Post’s Paul Kane reported, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.), Burchett and others have been erroneously claiming that they drafted the debt-limit bill using a process known as the “committee of the whole.” That is an actual procedure on the House floor — but it has absolutely nothing to do with the backroom shenanigans Republicans used to write their bill.

Fourth raters.

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About Hue White

Former BBS operator; software engineer; cat lackey.

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