Good grief, didn't anyone go to negotiating school? Feckless Mitch McConnell: "Nobody is talking about not raising the debt ceiling"

Hey, Mitch: if you're not prepared to walk away from the table, it's not negotiating, it's begging.

McConnell discussed the debt ceiling negotiations with Bret Baier on Fox News Sunday. McConnell was in agreement with Speaker John Boehner’s decision not to support a large deficit deal, yet also made a curious assertion that none of his Republican colleagues have ever claimed they will not be in support of raising the debt ceiling.

Baier, filling in for Chris Wallace, pressed McConnell on what would happen if no deal could be worked out and whether he was concerned with the consequences of what might happen if the debt ceiling is not raised. McConnell confidently responded, “nobody is talking about not raising the debt ceiling. I haven’t heard that discussed by anybody.” Yet Baier informed him that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, among others, have explicitly said just that. Baier even quoted Bachmann saying “don’t let them fool you that the economy is going to collapse” if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.

McConnell however apparently didn’t want to address such comments and preferred to stay focused on his opinion of how serious it is to actually raising the debt ceiling...

Really? Why not?

The federal government takes in more than enough money each month to pay its obligations, pensions, military, Social Security recipients, etc. It's the rest of the bloated, useless federal bureaucracy (like the EPA and the NLRB) that would have to be furloughed.

And that's a bad thing?

Also, please consider our TurboTax-challenged Treasury Secretary's track record of predictions:

Geithner first began warning in January of "catastrophic" consequences if the debt limit is not raised by Congress, saying then that the borrowing cap could be hit as early as March 31.

That prediction soon changed to April 5, but it was not until Monday -- May 16 -- that the ceiling was officially reached as the latest government bond sales were settled.

In early April, Geithner also said the drop-dead date for a debt limit rise, when the U.S. would begin to default on its obligations, was July 8. This month he changed that to Aug. 2...

..."There is no certain day," said congressman James Lankford, a member of the fiscally conservative Republican Study Committee. "It's a moving target. Even if Aug. 2 is passed, Treasury has the tools in its back pocket to keep us from defaulting."

Lankford added: "Treasury has done a good job of trying to increase the panic, rather than giving us solutions."

Obama and Geithner are fomenting panic in order to keep spending like drunken liberals. If Boehner and McConnell had one-tenth of Michele Bachmann's guts, they'd walk away from the table now. The minimum annual cuts they must demand should start with the failed "Stimulus package", which is now built into the baseline budget.

In April, Andy McCarthy recapped the reasons not to raise the debt ceiling.

It's Negotiating 101, which our feckless GOP leadership appears to have either skipped or flunked.


Update: Bipartisan Policy Center: U.S. Won't Default on Debt If Congress Fails to Raise Debt Ceiling