Hold the Regime Hostage

on the Debt Ceiling

As of January 19, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has stated publicly that the United States has reached its debt ceiling. Already the government is using what are termed “extraordinary measures” to keep itself funded & afloat. This week, she sent a letter informing congress that she suspended re-investment of federal bonds into a government workers’ savings plan. This comes on the back of the GOP taking control of the House of Representatives, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy receiving the speaker’s gavel after an unusually lengthy and contested nomination for the speaker’s chair. The major risk is that if there is no agreement on raising the debt ceiling within the next few months, the United States will default on its loans, which has not happened since a technical error occurred in the late seventies. The regime has until around June to figure out a solution to keeping the government funded. This comes at a moment of extreme political division in the country, and a Biden incumbency whose legitimacy is broadly questioned on the right, as well as being embroiled in a scandal regarding secret document handling.

               What does this mean? It means that should the GOP house refuse to raise the debt ceiling, the government cannot fund even its most basic obligations. Extraordinary (read emergency) measures run out eventually, so this gives us time to coordinate a response. What should be our goal here? Well, our basic goal is to obtain concessions from the regime that it would not otherwise give. Which concessions? And why? What benefit does this fight have to us even if we fail to extract concessions?

               In essence, if the regime cannot fund itself because it defaults, it cannot reward supporters by paying them, and it cannot extract wealth from its enemies. Remember, the underlying economic conditions for the regime post-Covid are not bright. Despite mixed signaling on the issue, inflation still remains a problem, which the Federal Reserve is struggling to tackle after the glut of spending during the Covid response. Furthermore, economic uncertainty prevails. Are we in a technical recession, or aren’t we? The regime’s hands are tied. If it defaults, the credit rating of the United States will suffer, thus preventing the regime from accessing more foreign loans to finance itself. This also likely will cause global recession, since all other countries are in a similar situation in regards to inflation. They won’t be able to quantitatively ease their way out of the problem either, since the Fed will have to increase rates ever higher the more money they print. The Fed, as of now, has just gotten inflation to where the regime is comfortable; therefore, the regime is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

               What do we want? Simple. We want the overthrow of the current regime, or close enough anyway for our purposes. This is when we can ask to overturn many progressive shibboleths enshrined in law. We can’t expect too much, but victory by acquiring policies which allow further victories is in our interest. Here’s what we should ask for as a start:

·        Full funding and construction of the border wall

·        Re-implementation of the remain-in-Mexico policy

·        Reduction of legal immigration to zero per year

·        Legal language requiring the expedited removal of the millions of illegal aliens already (I’m not a lawyer, but this needs to be phrased so as to require even enemy legalists to do your bidding)

·        Codification in law that illegal aliens do not count for the purposes of electoral college votes or congressional representation. No do they count for purposes of federal funds distributed to the individual states.

·        Codification in law that birthright citizenship no longer exists. (no more anchor babies)

·        Immigration moratorium for no less than 50 years

·        Repeal of Affirmative Action laws

·        Repeal of any hate-speech laws on the books

You get the picture. We have the regime over a barrel here. We can ask for basically anything we want, since we are under no obligation to save the regime from itself. But for this plan to work, you have to be willing to take the risk that the powers that be will refuse and double down, since this is a direct attack on many things they consider as sacrosanct. However, that will mean economic hardship for millions of Americans and people across the globe. But it is a risk that we must take. As a system, you can make the regime choose between going out of power sooner by falling through economic collapse, or you can force them to grant very steep concessions and allow them to maintain their economic patronage network. That patronage network may not survive in the long term, so it allows for a more gradual and less violent process. We should expect that they will choose to maintain their power even with loss of control of certain areas of life. They will rationally want to keep control over as many areas as they can for as long as they can.

Even if this gambit does not work, this still is something that the regime will have to contend with prior to the lead up to the 2024 election. It keeps the narrative within our framing, on our preferred issues, and not the framing of our enemies. Furthermore, it would mean that Democrats would likely be forced to rally around Biden. What we want in terms of Trump here is to keep the enemy from coalescing around another, stronger and younger figure, such as Governor Gavin Newsom of California. We want them to not be able to get rid of Biden prior to the 2024 primaries. If they do, then Kamala Harris will be president before 2024, and the left will close ranks around her despite her flaws. We want those primaries to be as ugly as possible, and for Gavin to be ousted from the primaries, because he is a straight white male who has no place in the intersectional coalition. We want the left to have to pick the incompetent diversity candidate because she checks all the right diversity boxes. Remember, one of the keys to the White House is not having a brutal and drawn out primary. We can prevent an easy process for Gavin by preventing the Democrats from ousting Biden using the recent classified document scandal. Sans Covid, Biden is the obviously weaker candidate than Trump. So, in terms of benefit for the legal acquisition of power, these second order consequences do matter. The mechanism we should utilize among the GOP controlled House of Representatives is the Rand Paul and Matt Gaetz wing of the party. We should have them pressure Speaker McCarthy and remind him of how tenuous his position as speaker is. He owes that wing of the party his position, so let’s twist his arm and get him to do our bidding.

This is a battle that the regime does not really appear to be expecting to fight. Even if we fail to extract concessions, there is still something beneficial to be gained here. It is in our interest to fight on this issue.