Option 3, sorta. Partial govt. Shutdown, but it doesn't have to be in the form of entire agencies closing down. They could tell half the workers in lower priority departments to go on furlough.
Is this true? I was under the (potentially misguided) perception that you couldn't cherry-pick parts of legislation. That's why pork gets passed and line-item vetoes aren't allowed, right?
I might be in favor of the compromise that the debt ceiling can be raised once more (to, say, 16T or so), given that it comes with a provision that there is a "yearly" debt ceiling tied to GDP and a plan to start paying down the debt. Funding issues get taken care of now, and not kicked down the road. For instance, if the President's Budget for 2013 had projected revenues of 2.5T, it would be limited to having a budget of 2.5T + a percentage (2.5% for the first 5 years, 1% after that?) of GDP. This would give an extra 350B or so in the first 5 years to wean off of the debts, and then have some wiggle room after 2018. If you wanted to start a war that had an extra 100B a year outlay, you could fit that into the excess for the budget, or make cuts/raise taxes that year. And something needs to be fixed about Medicare/Medicaid right the heck now. I don't care how many AARP members lobby to their congressmen. Having an overrun the size of the one we have now (and only getting worse) is fiscally ridiculous. Either people start paying more for it, or it goes away.
The system is so busted it really won't matter at this point. Most of us were born of people who fled their countries for issues that simply became so out of hand that the situation forced them to leave. The United States is getting really close to that point, but you know what matters most...Gay marriage.
They cherry pick from the legislation all the time. GHW instituted the so-called gag rule in title X (I think it was) and Clinton reversed it. In terms of spending bills, congress authorized a lot of money for mortgage assistance that never got spent. TARP was authorized to buy toxic assets, and the money went to buy stock in GM. &c
