The Gephardt Rule

Dick Gephardt

There are things I know I'm ignorant about right off (pretty much everything), and things I don't even know I'm ignorant of (pretty much everything else). At the risk of falling into a bottomless well, I thought I'd bring you a little clip from Rachel Maddow the other night, which explained how, once upon a time, the debt ceiling crisis was fixed. Although some say this wouldn't work now, what's most interesting to me is how so completely a simple solution has left the common discussion. 1979 isn't that long ago, people.

 

Here's a good article about the context of the Gephardt rule and an explanation of the more recently proposed McConnell Rule, which sets things up in a slightly different way, but also steps around the madness we have recently been involved. We may have cause to remember these all too soon.