Vote for My Budget or I’ll Shoot Myself

"Next man makes a move, the nigger gets it!"

Film Friday

Threats by Congressional Republicans to vote against raising the debt ceiling limit—which would result in the United States defaulting on what it owes–remind me of the scene in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles where the black sheriff (Cleavon Little) threatens to shoot himself.   Before I explain how, let’s first look at the issue.

Everyone, except for a few fruitcakes like Michele Bachmann, agrees that it would be an economic disaster not to raise the debt ceiling.  This includes the very anti-Obama American Chamber of Commerce and Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner.  Policy wonk Ezra Klein of The Washington Post explains why, beginning with a quote by Treasurer Secretary Timothy Geithner:

As Geithner explains, “because Treasuries represent the benchmark borrowing rate for all other sectors, default would raise all borrowing costs. Interest rates for state and local government, corporate and consumer borrowing, including home mortgage interest, would all rise sharply. Equity prices and home values would decline, reducing retirement savings and hurting the economic security of all Americans, leading to reductions in spending and investment, which would cause job losses and business failures on a significant scale.”

And the damage done by a debt default won’t be temporary. Instead, it will permanently introduce a new variable into the market’s calculation of America’s risk: Right now, the market doesn’t believe that our political system would ever allow a debt default. The morning after a default happens, the market will have been proven wrong, and it will have been proven wrong permanently: If it can happen once, it can happen again in 20 years. In that world, the cheap debt that America enjoys and relies on is gone forever, and our economy is likely to be permanently worse off for it.

Yet even though he acknowledges this, Boehner is putting a gun to his head and threatening to shoot himself (and, unfortunately, America as well) unless Democrats cut things from the budget that Republicans don’t like.

In other words, it’s a game of chicken.

Will it work?  Well, it works in Blazing Saddles.

A railway company wants to run everyone out of town so that it can run a railway through it.  Thugs are sent in to make the place unlivable, and when the people demand a sheriff, the governor sends in Bart, an urbane black man totally out of his depth. (Wedge politics, in other words–distract the public from economic issues by stirring up social ones.)  When he is about to get killed (see this as a metaphor for the Republicans’ own budget, which will get killed if it comes up for a vote in the Senate and which is threatening to kill Republicans in the next election so that even they have begun backing away from it), Bart turns his gun on himself and threatens to “blow this nigger’s head all over this town” unless everyone backs off.  Here’s the dialogue:

[the Johnsons load their guns and point them at Bart. Bart then points his own pistol at his head]

Bart: [speaking in a low voice] Hold it! Next man makes a move, the nigger gets it!

Olson Johnson: Hold it, men. He’s not bluffing.

Dr. Sam Johnson: Listen to him, men, he’s just crazy enough to do it!

Bart: [low voice] Drop it! Or I swear I’ll blow this nigger’s head all over this town!

Bart: [now speaking in a higher voice] Oh, lo’dy, lo’d, he’s desp’it! Do what he sayyyy, do what he sayyyy…

[the Johnsons drop their guns. Bart jams the gun into his neck and drags himself through the crowd and towards the station]

Harriett Van Johnson: Isn’t anybody going to help that poor man?

Dr. Sam Johnson: Hush, Harriet, that’s a sure way to get him killed!

Bart: [higher voice] Oooh! He’p me, he’p me! Somebody he’p me! He’p me! He’p me! He’p me!

Bart: [lower voice] Shut up!

[Bart places his hand over his own mouth, drags himself through the door into his office]

So will Boehner make his version of the ploy work?  Having no leverage other than self-destruction, will he get others to accede to his demands.  If he does, he may well end up congratulating himself as Bart does once he is safe inside his office:

“Ooh, baby, you are so talented! And they are so DUMB!”

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