Democrats Can and Should Play Offense on the Debt Ceiling
by Neil H. Buchanan As of a few minutes ago, it appears that there will be no government shutdown tonight, with the Senate set to approve a stopgap measure to fund the government all the way into early December. Woo hoo!! Seriously, that is good news, mostly because it means that the American people (and especially federal employees who are deemed "nonessential") will not be forced to suffer through another pointless and damaging shutdown. Analytically, it also means that we might now be able to talk about the impending debt ceiling crisis without having to explain that shutdowns and debt defaults are very much not the same thing. The former are bad but containable and somewhat remediable. The latter would be catastrophic. Given how incompetent even the most elite news reporters are in discussing these issues, however, it is always bad when the two issues become newsworthy at the same time. I thus come to you today to talk about the debt cei...