Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post reports that she asked Ryan about the debt ceiling:

Really, I ask, the debt ceiling, again? I thought Republicans were determined to avoid replaying that losing hand. “Not this time,” Ryan said, before the words were even out of my mouth.

“The debt problem is getting worse,” he said. “We’re not leaving this session of Congress until we have a down payment on the problem.”

Early in February, President Obama signed a deal to temporarily raise the debt ceiling, delaying the real fight until later this year. This version of the agreement included a provision from House Republicans to halt lawmakers' pay in either chamber that doesn't come up with a deal.

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Then last week he kvetched that Obama was “moving the goalposts” by demanding that a deal to avert the $85 billion in budget cuts include some revenue. That’s baloney: The horrific sequester deal was always intended to force a more balanced approach to deficit-cutting.

Now he’s claiming the president alone has the power to avert disaster by ignoring the sequester, particularly its steep defense cuts, and doing … I don’t know what. But here’s what he said on Wednesday’s "Morning Joe":

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First off, “stabilizing the debt” means to stop the debt ratio—debt/GDP—from rising (where “debt” means debt held by the public—that’s what matters for all that follows).  For our debt to grow more slowly than our GDP, our deficits don’t have to be zero, but they do have to be below 3% of GDP.*  Why is that a good thing?

Well, in fact, it’s not always a good thing.  In times of crisis—recessions, depressions, war—the ratio goes up for good reasons.   Our borrowing temporarily outpaces our growth in order to offset some disaster.

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Ben Franklin, however, was wary on the subject. “Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt” was his warning, and even now his cautionary words carry great moral weight.  We worry about debt, yet we can’t live without it.

Debt remains, as it long has been, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of capitalism.  For a small minority, it’s a blessing; for others a curse.  For some the moral burden of carrying debt is a heavy one, and no one lets them forget it.  For privileged others, debt bears no moral baggage at all, presents itself as an opportunity to prosper, and if things go wrong can be dumped without a qualm.

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The idea is both a recognition of the untenability of using the looming debt ceiling expiration as a bargaining chip to extract spending cut concessions from the White House and the fear of most House Republicans of going on record voting “yes” to a debt limit hike. Hence Boehner’s solution, which would “suspend” the debt ceiling through the middle of May and, apparently, make it possible for the government to keep paying its bills for several months after that even if no subsequent agreement is reached.

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The vote marks a change in strategy for House Republicans who run the chamber and who remain adamant about reducing government spending but decided not to use the debt limit to trigger a confrontation with President Barack Obama.

Instead, they have said the debt increase measure will require the House and Senate to approve budgets that call for spending cuts, with pay withheld for lawmakers in either house that failed to do so.

The current debt limit is $16.4 trillion. Aides said they didn't know how big an increase would be contained in the legislation, but it is expected to accommodate borrowing for three months.

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We’re just two weeks into 2013, but it’s already clear that the “effectiveness, stability, and predictability” of our institutions is in question. First, we came uncomfortably close to implementing a round of ruinous austerity that no one—even the deficit hawks—wanted, and now, we’re again fighting the GOP over raising the debt ceiling, and fulfilling our financial obligations to the world.

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Congress has to increase the country's debt limit, which effectively rules how much debt the U.S. can have, by March 1 or face a potential default. There are fears that the debate will descend into the sort of squabbling and political brinkmanship that marked the last effort to raise the ceiling in the summer of 2011. The U.S. Treasury Department warned then that it had nearly reached a point where it would be unable "to meet our commitments securely."

Standard & Poor's was so concerned by the dysfunctional nature of the 2011 debate that it stripped the U.S. of its triple A rating for the first time in the country's history.

"The pressure on the U.S. rating, if anything, is increasing," said David Riley, managing director of Fitch Ratings' global sovereigns division. "We thought the 2011 crisis was a one-off event .... if we have a repeat we will place the U.S. rating under review."

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At an unexpected news conference on Monday he said he won’t trade cuts in government spending in exchange for raising the borrowing limit.

“If the goal is to make sure that we are being responsible about our debt and our deficit -- if that’s the conversation we’re having, I’m happy to have that conversation,” Obama said. “What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people.”

Well and good. But what, exactly, is the president’s strategy when the debt ceiling has to be raised, if the GOP hasn’t relented?

He’s ruled out an end-run around the GOP.

The White House said over the weekend that the president won’t rely on the 14th Amendment, which arguably gives him authority to raise the debt ceiling on his own.

And his Treasury Department has nixed the idea of issuing a $1 trillion platinum coin that could be deposited with the Fed, instantly creating more money to pay the nation’s bills.

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From the Palm Beach Post:

The South Florida Tea Party — the group that helped Marco Rubio launch his Senate bid and that hosted Donald Trump during his last flirtation with a presidential run — is shedding the words “tea party” as it undergoes a name change.

“We felt for branding reasons that we wanted to differentiate ourselves from certain organizations that have the name ‘tea party’ and we can’t control,” said Everett Wilkinson, leader of the organization that will now be called the National Liberty Federation.

Other local Tea Party groups, like the Palm Beach County Tea Party, are keeping their name but attempting to overhaul their image. “They won. We lost. They have a message that appeals to the masses. We don’t. That must change,” the group's leader, Michael Riordan, said at a recent meeting.

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"I want to be clear about this: The debt ceiling is not a question of authorizing more spending. Raising the debt ceiling does not authorize more spending, it simply allows the country to pay for spending that Congress has already committed to," Obama said.

He added: "We gotta pay our bills. And Republicans in Congress have two choices here. They can act responsibility and pay America's bills, or they can act irresponsibility and put America through another economic crisis."

Obama continued that "we are not a deadbeat nation," and there is a very simple solution to the debt ceiling issue: Congress has to vote to raise it. "There are no magic tricks here. There are no loopholes. There are no easy outs. This is a matter of, Congress authorizes spending." He added that if John Boehner or Mitch McConnell want to authorize Obama to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling, as McConnell once suggested, he would be open to it.

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There’s good reason to believe this reporting, since virtually no one outside the far-right echo chamber has any illusions about the consequences of failing to extend the debt ceiling. But could it really come to such a stark choice for Boehner: Stave off a default and lose his job as speaker or allow one and get to hang around?

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Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is among those urging Obama to consider options like invoking the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to find ways around the $16.4 trillion legal cap on government borrowing. The amendment states that the "validity of the public debt of the United States ... shall not be questioned," which some lawmakers believe permits a way out of the debt limit jam.

The government hit the debt limit last month and is juggling the books to buy additional time for Congress to act. But those moves only buy a few weeks of wiggle room, which requires Congress to act — likely by mid- to late-February — to avoid a market-quaking default on U.S. obligations.

The White House has said emphatically that it does not believe that the 14th Amendment permits Obama to ignore the debt cap on U.S. borrowing, though it considered the question during the 2011 debt crisis.

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Another more pressing worry for the Obama administration: impeachment. With a majority in the House, Republicans could easily start impeachment proceedings. And while conviction in the Senate is virtually impossible, as Democrats would not join to create the two-thirds majority needed, merely launching the impeachment process would be politically devastating for President Obama, as it was for President Clinton.

It’s worth paying some attention to this, because it’s unlikely to be an isolated concern. Should President Obama somehow manage to skate through the upcoming debt limit confrontation without articles of impeachment drawn up, we can fully expect impeachment to hover over future fights between the Republican House and the Democrat in the Oval Office.

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“We remain strongly opposed” to chained CPI, AFL-CIO government affairs director Bill Samuel told Salon. “It’s a very substantial benefit cut.”

“Chained CPI” is a proposed alternative method of calculating cost of living adjustments, which would reduce future increases in Social Security benefits. Samuel said that for many seniors on fixed incomes, even “the current system may not be adequate.” He called the claim that chained CPI could be implemented in a way that would be fair to such retirees “sort of ludicrous.”

Obama has repeatedly touted chained CPI as an aspect of a potential “Grand Bargain” with Republicans to reduce the deficit. In a “Meet the Press” interview aired on Dec. 30, the president highlighted it both as an example of his willingness to make concessions to the GOP and part of his “pursuit of strengthening Social Security for the long-term.”

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But the President can use certain tools that come with his office – responsibilities enshrined in the Constitution and in his capacity as the nation’s chief law-enforcer — to achieve some of his objectives.

On the debt ceiling, for example, he might pay the nation’s creditors regardless of any vote on the debt ceiling – based on the the Fourteenth Amendment’s explicit directive (in Section 4) that “the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.”

Or, rather than issue more debt, the President might use a loophole in a law (31 USC, Section 5112) allowing the Treasury to issue commemorative coins – minting a $1 trillion coin and then depositing it with the Fed.

Both gambits would almost certainly end up in the Supreme Court, but not before they’ve been used to pay the nation’s bills. (It’s doubtful any federal court, including the Supremes, would enjoin a President from protecting the full faith and credit of the United States).

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At issue is the #MintTheCoin campaign, which is urging President Obama to order to the Treasury department to produce a $1 trillion platinum coin that would then be deposited in the Federal Reserve Bank. This way, the government wouldn’t have to borrow money to pay its bills and Republican threats to allow a debt ceiling default would vanish. It sounds far-fetched, but there is actually is a loophole that seems to allow the Treasury to create platinum coins of any value, and the idea has attracted some reputable backers, including Paul Krugman and Rep. Jerry Nadler.

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Sure, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to take it off the table on the Sunday shows – but he also refused to commit to it. McConnell, who famously chuckled about how the 2011 disgrace showed the debt ceiling was "a hostage worth taking," pointed to other GOP opportunities for a budget showdown, including the upcoming sequester deadline and the continuing resolution to keep the government running.

Maybe more significant, House Speaker John Boehner told the Club for Growth's Stephen Moore that while the debt ceiling is  “one point of leverage,” he "hedges," in Moore's words, insisting it's “not the ultimate leverage.” Boehner thinks the sequester is the GOP's "stronger card," Moore wrote in the Wall Street Journal, and Moore agrees, insisting, "It now appears that the president made a severe political miscalculation when he came up with the sequester idea in 2011."

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But all jokes are funniest when taken apart and explained, so I'll give you this one blow by blow. Warning: There's not much of a punch line.

The country is soon approaching its debt limit, which in and of itself is nothing new and scary. It only became a worrying prospect when Tea Party Republicans began in 2011 to threaten to refuse to raise the debt limit, thus risking the U.S. default on its financial commitments, which is roundly considered to be a catastrophe worth avoiding. As in 2011, these Republicans are again threatening not to raise the debt ceiling unless their austerity demands are met.

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