The following article was written by Collin McDonough (@acomplexcollin) and Nicholas Golina (@GolinaNick). Collin is a recovering legislative staffer. He is a Policy Advisor at Data for Progress, a freelance data scientist, and is co-founder of Momentum Advocacy. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Michigan State University; has a certificate in Data Science from Johns Hopkins University; […]

Go outside and play, children. Grown-ups are trying to govern.

There was a time when a handful of legislators could cast a political protest vote against raising the debt ceiling in this country and it didn’t make a bit of difference because, at the end of the day, everybody knew that the majority of lawmakers, including Republicans, would vote to raise it. They have to. They are paying for things they have already spent money on. Barack Obama did this as a Senator in 2006 and admits now that it “was just an example of a new senator making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country”.

But what’s happening now is completely different. Republicans and conservatives are actually contemplating defaulting on the bills we owe. And that changes everything.

Much more analysis after the jump.

You might think the GOP hates the poor and the elderly and, really, all of those that rely on entitlement payments of one sort or another. But I’ll bet you didn’t know how much they hate them. They hate them enough to introduce a bill that prioritizes paying off our debt to China over their monthly checks. That’s right. Congressman […]