It's a brand new week in debt ceiling negotiations, as America teeters towards the brink of insane, self-inflicted collapse. Hooray!

Speaker John Boehner has stopped talking to everybody and is writing his own plan. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has stopped talking to everybody and is writing his own plan, too. The idealist grad students in the White House want a "grand bargain" still. So, where's your debt ceiling plan?

Harry Reid is ginning up a lil' $2.7 trillion deficit reduction plan on his own that would be all cuts, no revenue. Back in the day we would've called that a "total capitulation," but things change and tend to work against the grain of Democratic party priorities. But this plan does have some redeeming elements for Democrats: $1 trillion would come from the expected savings of winding down The Wars over the next decade, it wouldn't touch entitlements, and it would get us through the next election. On the other hand, we don't know what the other trillions of dollars in cuts would be.

John Boehner, meanwhile, wants a two-tiered plan that would make a significant number of cuts upfront as part of a sixish-month debt ceiling hike. And then in sixish months, we'd redo this entire hellish debate again and finish off what's left of America's reputation for adding any value to anything.

Each side is expected to reject the other's plan and then we'll continue to be fucked.

But since it's "write your own debt ceiling escape hatch" day, here are some fresh alternatives, hot out of the Gawker Political Science Lab:

  • Take half a second to pass, by voice vote, a one-line clean debt ceiling hike.
  • Take half a second to pass, by voice vote, a one-line law eliminating the debt ceiling.

The cool thing about both of these proposals is that they fix the problem.

[Image via AP]