Colbert Talks With Naftali Bendavid About Raising the Debt Ceiling (VIDEO)

To help make sense of the looming deadline for Congress to raise the national debt ceiling, Stephen Colbert invited 'Wall Street Journal' columnist Naftali Bendavid onto 'The Colbert Report' (Weeknights, 11:30PM ET on Comedy Central).

One of the big problems in getting this legislation passed, or getting anything productive done for the Republicans is what Bendavid called an inability to "control their own troops," citing all the Freshman Republican congressmen in particular.

"[Speaker John Boehner] described the other day getting this through the house is a Rubik's Cube," Bendavid said. "And to me that symbolized that he was having a great deal of trouble solving this thing and figuring out how to get it done."

Colbert had a far more simple solution. He equated the stand-off between the Democrats and Republicans as a hostage crisis, with the Republicans holding America itself as a hostage.

"Do you think it would help if the Republicans just continued the negotiations long enough until America got Stockholm Syndrome and fell in love with what the Republicans were doing," he asked. "Changed our name to Tracy and married them?"

Then what would it matter? Tracy doesn't own China or anybody anything. This idea might have some merit. We'll check with our Rubik's Cube to see what it think and get back to you well after the deadline.