Are half of House Republicans really willing to let the U.S. default?

[House Speaker John] Boehner's own staff has warned conservative lawmakers that deficits will soar, as interest rates rise, the markets will tumble and the economy will face catastrophe if they truly follow through on default. They will walk members through a presentation on this scenario this week, and the hope is conservatives will conclude it would be economic and political suicide to go all in. But GOP leaders have made similar pitches before, and most House Republicans didn't buy it. They are willing to take that risk because they believe the future consequences of more spending are more severe. [Politico]

[A] world without a debt limit increase is a world where the government has to stop paying 40 percent of its bills overnight. Everything from food stamps to defense spending to maybe even Social Security benefits would go unpaid. Now, Congress would presumably relent after a few weeks of this, but if it didn't, the economic damage would be mind-blowing. Here's the depressing math. The government spends about $3.6 trillion a year, which means going past the debt ceiling will suck about $1.4 trillion out of the economy over a year. Yet it gets worse. With the Fed already doing about as much as it will, the multiplier on government spending is almost certainty quite high — say 1.5 — so that $1.4 trillion less is more like $2.16 trillion less. To put that in perspective, that's -14.4 percent GDP growth on an annualized basis. Yes, that's a negative sign there. And this probably understates things, since we haven't even tried to account for the negative wealth effect from the inevitable market meltdown. [The Atlantic]

[C]utting government spending by 44 percent right now would cause severe economic pain — pain for which the country would rightly blame Republicans…

[T]here is only so much spending that can be cut right now. House Republicans need to come up with a more realistic price for raising the debt limit, otherwise they are setting themselves up for certain failure. [The Washington Examiner]