Raise high the debt ceiling, Congresscritters

So Treasury and the Fed shut down the platinum coin frivolity last night by announcing Treasury won't mint it and the Fed wouldn't recognize it as legit if they did. Still don't think this means the coin is actually gone. As I said before, it's already been virtually minted on the interwebz. Everybody knows what is created on the interwebz lives forever. But it was always a last resort defense weapon, not a solution. And it was a smart move, now that it's been created, to take it out of play and put the focus back on the real issue -- the GOP's insane threat to commit economic terrorism over what has been, and should continue to be, a routine bookkeeping matter.

James Fallows distills it down to The Two Sentences That Should Be Part of All Discussion of the Debt Ceiling

Here they are:

1) Raising the debt ceiling does not authorize one single penny in additional public spending.

2) For Congress to "decide whether" to raise the debt ceiling, for programs and tax rates it has already voted into law, makes exactly as much sense as it would for a family to "decide whether" to pay a credit-card bill for goods it has already bought.

Simple. Any news organization that uncritically "reports" the GOP's false blathering about "handing President Obama a trillion dollar credit card" without adding these two indisputable facts is commiting journalistic malpractice. Furthermore, if it all goes to shit because they failed to inform the public, then the media is just as much to blame for the aftermath as the GOP.

As PressSec Jay Carney said, "There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or they can...put the nation into default."

[graphic via]