Congress Continues Debate Over Whether or Not Nation Should Be Economically Ruined

I've been trying to avoid following the debt ceiling crisis. I believe that it will keep going with political posturing until the deadline Aug 2nd and it will just upset me. I have been reading about it but commenting would make me crazy. Well now that Boehner has walked out here are a few articles I've saved.

The Onion put it well, Congress Continues Debate Over Whether Or Not Nation Should Be Economically Ruined. "Members of the U.S. Congress reported Wednesday they were continuing to carefully debate the issue of whether or not they should allow the country to descend into a roiling economic meltdown of historically dire proportions. "It is a question that, I think, is worthy of serious consideration: Should we take steps to avoid a crippling, decades-long depression that would lead to disastrous consequences on a worldwide scale? Or should we not do that?" asked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), adding that arguments could be made for both sides, and that the debate over ensuring America’s financial solvency versus allowing the nation to default on its debt—which would torpedo stock markets, cause mortgage and interests rates to skyrocket, and decimate the value of the U.S. dollar—is “certainly a conversation worth having.” "Obviously, we don't want to rush to consensus on whether it is or isn't a good idea to save the American economy and all our respective livelihoods from certain peril until we've examined this thorny dilemma from every angle. And if we’re still discussing this matter on Aug. 2, well, then, so be it.” At press time, President Obama said he personally believed the country should not be economically ruined."

Ezra Klein's post, 11 days until disaster, three options to prevent it, isn't that much different.

An Economist blog says Worst Congress ever? "Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute quite literally wrote the book on congressional dysfunction. So it is profoundly depressing to see that he has now labelled the 112th Congress the worst one ever. More discouraging still, this is not a temporary problem brought about by transient phenomena such as the recent recession and the advent of the tea-party movement. It is the culmination of a long period of realignment in American politics, encompassing sharper ideological conflict between the parties, the extinction of the Boll Weevils and the Gypsy Moths, the simultaneous balkanisation of the mass media, the advent of the permanent campaign and a new way of thinking and operating on Capitol Hill. Moreover, it is going to become even worse"

Kevin Drum posted this chart, which I think has to be taken more as correlation than causation, but maybe not:



And if you thought the debt ceiling was the only thing the House was breaking, there's also this, FAA faces partial shutdown. "The Federal Aviation Administration faced a partial shutdown Saturday morning as Congress adjourned Friday without approving a routine stop-gap funding measure amid partisan acrimony. More than 4,000 FAA workers, 1,000 of them in the Washington region, and tens of thousands of airport construction workers under FAA contract faced immediate furlough. The nation’s air travel system will not be affected, with air traffic controllers remaining on the job and airline operations continuing as normal."