Michele Bachmann’s defaulty logic

By Dana Milbank,
Washpost
Wednesday, July 13, 6:02 PM

When Michele Bachmann was asked during a television interview last week whether she thought higher unemployment would increase her chances of winning the presidency, she gave an unexpectedly candid reply: “I hope so.”

Now she’s putting that theory to the test. On Wednesday, she argued that failure to raise the debt limit — a prospect that even Republican congressional leaders say could lead to economic catastrophe — might not be such a bad thing.

“This is a misnomer that I believe that the president and the Treasury secretary have been trying to pass off on the American people, and it’s this: that if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion, that somehow the United States will go into default and we will lose the full faith and credit of the United States. That is simply not true.”

To prove it, she and two Republican House colleagues — Steve King (Iowa) and Louie Gohmert (Texas) — announced legislation that would require the federal government, once the debt ceiling is reached, to prioritize payments to the troops and to U.S. creditors.

(More here.)