Default: The GOP’s Well-Played Threat

When House Majority Leader Eric Cantor walked out on the bipartisan debt ceiling talks in late June, all of Washington professed shock. For some cable news addicts, it rivaled the Casey Anthony trial in its titillation factor. Opinion writers and Democrats warned that Cantor was sacrificing the global economy for the sake of politics. The Republicans seemed to be playing brinkmanship with the debt ceiling, which the Obama Administration says must be raised by Aug. 2 to avoid a U.S. default.

It’s time to take a deep breath and stop the fretting. The likelihood of the U.S. defaulting on its debt obligations is slim. Very, very slim. Republican leaders may engage in some theatrics, but in the end they will almost certainly take their bows and allow the curtain to close without incident. Want proof? Look no further than the very public statements of the Republican leadership, which has professed loudly, often, and in unwavering terms that there will ultimately be a happy ending. “Nobody believes the United States is going to walk away from its obligations,” House Speaker John Boehner told Fox News on June 28. A month earlier, he reassured worried financiers at the Economic Club of New York that he believed letting the debt talks fail would be “irresponsible.”