But what's changed to make things worse is that this is no longer mere idle talk and procedural bravado -- there are people in Congress who truly see default as an ideal alternative to having to concede any points in what should be a rational process of negotiation and deal-making.
Critically, the government will need to hire and retain staff with a very specific set of skills if it is to succeed in becoming truly digital by default.
Obviously, while the value proposition is evident, for Doxo to truly become your default digital file cabinet and bill payment solution, it has to be integrated with all the providers you're using.
In his 2014 Stress Test, Tim Geithner warned about the harmful economic delusion of congressional default-deniers: "Many of them truly seemed to believe that default could cleanse the sins of the U.S. economy, which was insane.
True, but no company that is truly headed toward imminent default can borrow as cheaply as the American government.
Only by default; his truly strange line about not eating "Barack Obama's dog food" may be his best remembered of the evening.
"If Sallie Mae has confidence that its efforts at helping students avoid default are truly in the long-term interest of its distressed borrowers, it should be more transparent about the details of those efforts," Warren wrote.
If people truly understood how bad a default would be — if they understood credit markets and interest rates, and how they would be affected by the global loss of faith in Treasury bonds — the anger would be much greater, and Republican control of the House would be threatened.
Whether any of them will truly make it so the default birthday present goes beyond an exclamation-mark-filled Facebook wall posting remains to be seen, but we can all dream for a better tomorrow.
No, the Ryan Republicans who are now seeking to cut Social Security benefits or else sabotage our economy with government default, are not truly concerned with reducing our debt.
