The Debt Ceiling Deal

A good one from Noah Smith:  The debt ceiling deal: What was the whole point? - A manufactured crisis leads to an ineffectual "solution"

In other words, the debt ceiling deal has a little bit of positive, a little bit of negative, and a whole lot of disappointing “meh”. Normally, a bill like that would be nothing to write home about; I probably wouldn’t even bother with a blog post, even on a slow news week. But what frustrates me about this nothingburger of a result is how incredibly costly it was to produce. The House GOP went through months of dramatic, high-stakes negotiations, forced the administration to consider the Fourteenth Amendment and the trillion dollar coin, got the media talking seriously about the prospect of a U.S. sovereign default, and made America look like a dysfunctional circus in front of our allies at a time when China is looking for any excuse to declare that the West is failing…and all that for a little bit of discretionary spending restraint, a few added work requirements for food stamps, and a little defunding of the IRS? Seriously?? It’s like if a guy walked into a restaurant with a ticking bomb demanding to blow everyone up if he didn’t get a free peppermint!