'Unload your Treasury bonds': GOP incompetence could plunge economy into chaos, analysis warns

U.S. Treasury bonds are typically touted as a safe haven for investors, “issued and backed by the full faith and credit of the US government,” according to the Fidelity Investments.

But as Republicans ready for a debt limit crisis of their own creation that threatens to imperil the global economy, that assurance is starting to seem less assuring by the day, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank writes.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday celebrated the passage of a debt limit bill that by the narrowest of margins.

But that bill is going nowhere with Democrats in control of the Senate and the White House.

“It was quite a bit of exuberance for a bill that, as many Republicans said aloud, was intended only to force Biden to the negotiating table. And even that came at extraordinary cost,” Milbank writes, noting that 217 House Republicans are now “on record in favor of demolishing popular government services enjoyed by their constituents.”

Milbank is concerned that it’s not just extremist views within the GOP that could plunge the economy into chaos.

“At the start of this manufactured debt-limit crisis, I worried that ideological extremism might drive the nation to a first-ever default,” Milbank writes.

“But an equal threat to America’s full faith and credit may be incompetence. Those in the House majority don’t know what they don’t know.”

Milbank cites several concerning examples of GOP cluelessness.

Unless a debt ceiling limit is passed, the Treasury is expected to go into default in June.

But Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) on Wednesday after a GOP caucus meeting told reporters “we’re not going to default.”

Why?

“I think September’s the actual drop-dead date, so we’re good.”

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) didn’t seem to have a much better grasp of the magnitude of a crisis economy is on the precipice of.

He appeared to confuse the debt limit crisis with a government shutdown.

“Let the Senate shut the government down,” he told reporters Wednesday.

“Let them take the heat for shutting it down.”

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), among others, have falsely claimed the debt-limit bill was drafted using a process known as the “committee of the whole,” but Milbank writes that that’s an “actual procedure on the House floor — but it has absolutely nothing to do with the backroom shenanigans Republicans used to write their bill.”

Fox News reporter Chad Pergram earlier this week asked Major Leader Steve Scalise (R) whether the debt ceiling debate was a “dress rehearsal” for the looming debt limit standoff.

“If it’s that hard to get your side in order, does that give confidence to the markets?” Pergram asked.

Scalise replied: “I wouldn’t call it hard as much as thoughtful.”

Milbank found Scalise’s reply to be problematic.

“If the week’s chaos is the House GOP leadership’s idea of thoughtful, this would be an excellent time to unload your Treasury bonds,” Milbank writes.