September 26, 2013 11:20 AM UTC

GOP Trades Shutdown Frying Pan For Debt Ceiling Fire?

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• by: Colorado Pols

That's the latest report from the Washington Post today:

With federal agencies set to close their doors in five days, House Republicans began exploring a potential detour on the path to a shutdown: shifting the fight over President Obama’s health-care law to a separate bill that would raise the nation's debt limit.

If it works, the strategy could clear the way for the House to approve a simple measure to keep the government open into the new fiscal year, which will begin Tuesday, without hotly contested provisions to defund the Affordable Care Act.

But it would set the stage for an even more nerve-racking deadline on Oct. 17, with conservatives using the threat of the nation’s first default on its debt to force the president to accept a one-year delay of the health-care law’s mandates, taxes and benefits…

Obama said he would not negotiate delays or other changes to the law as part of budget talks or the debt ceiling process, saying “the Affordable Care Act is here to stay.”

Economically, the consequences of Congress refusing to raise the so-called "debt ceiling" would be far greater than the impacts of a government shutdown. The last major impasse over raising the debt ceiling in 2011 was extremely costly to Republicans politically, helping sink already-dismal approval ratings for Congress in truly unprecedented territory. Each episode helps convince undecided voters that Republicans, as a party, are more interested in ideological fits of pique than governing–and risking the nation's credit rating is just not a responsible thing to do.

But if that's the road Republicans want to go down again, they'll have no one to blame but themselves when–and not if–it blows up on their faces as it did two years ago.