Ditto Senior Think Tankers

As we were strolling through some posts in Business Insider we came across this gem from the Fiscal Times. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Before we got to the bottom or without seeing the story's byline we had a clue who wrote it. A guy named Rob Garver. Sure enough our intuition, what can we say, it just never fails when it comes to these entrenched Washington hacks. Garver is all upset about the proposal of Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King. Now nobody as far as we know ever accused King of being a mental giant. But as far as we know nobody ever accused Washington  D.C. and its inhabitants as a land of mental giants either.

King wants to do what Garver thinks is the unthinkable which means it's highly thinkable and most likely extremely necessary, put the reins once and for all on government waste. That's another way of saying make these lazy do-nothing elected officials in both parties finally make some difficult decisions. When you have a $13 trillion or so economy, to assume that there's no waste--and lots of it--you probably fall to sleep every night hoping once she retires Nancy Pelosi will become a lobbyist for the cosmetic surgery industry.

So what is this dastardly deed that King wants. Here in Garver's words it is:

In the space of just 36 words, King proposes a restriction on the Treasury Department that would not just hogtie the U.S. government's ability to manage its existing debt, but would at the same time create a global financial crisis.

The amendment, meant to be tacked on to the end of the "Financial Services and General Government" appropriations bill, is short and clear. It reads, "None of the funds made available by this Act can be used to issue bonds, or any other form of debt, on the credit of the United States Government or to in any way borrow money." If anything King should receive kudos for something extremely rare in Washington, brevity.

Garver then does what these people do, rolls out the requisite so-called expert, a senior think tanker, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Now we don't know Bernstein and we're glad of it. We would suggest, however, that he needs to reacquaint himself with the definition of stiffing.

Here's Garver quoting Bernstein:

"This is up there with Trump's idea to default on the debt," Bernstein wrote in an email exchange. "Though it's way crazier (and would also be a default, as we couldn't borrow to pay holders of existing Treasury debt).

"Before we even think about how disruptive this would be to global debt markets, consider that because you can't even roll over existing debt under this amendment, it would mean stiffing veterans, Social Security and Medicare recipients, defense, and probably every other spending category in the budget."

That's interesting,  Mr.Bernstein. But here's the truth. With their ZIRP and NIRP they've been stiffing the veterans, the COLA crowd, Medicare and Social Security recipients for nearly a decade. If they get any stiffer you won't have worry about embalming them. Maybe that's their plan, one of the ways they'll cut government waste, save on embalming fluids. Maybe Hilary or Bernie can wheedle that into the party platform? And don't miss the neocon reference in there, defense.

As we said earlier, no one ever accused Washington D.C. as the land of mental giants. Ditto senior think tankers.