The US is one of a small handful of countries that has a statutory limit on the federal debt. It used to be routine for Congress to raise the debt ceiling, but recently, House Republicans have been using the debt ceiling to extract political concessions from Democratic Administrations. While raising the debt ceiling wasn’t in […]
In an effort to slow down the severe recession as well as the persistently high unemployment rate following the 2007-08 Financial Crisis, the government increased federal spending. As a result, the federal debt reached its limit on multiple occasions from 2008 to 2011 which led to a series of increases of the debt limit. In 2011, […]
According to Politico, Trump is against cutting Social Security and Medicare: Former President Donald Trump issued a warning to Republican lawmakers on Friday: Don’t lay a finger on entitlement programs as part of the debt ceiling showdown with the White House. “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or […]
If GOP Wins Either House Of Congress, Dems Must Kill Debt Ceiling If it comes to pass and especially if the GOP takes both houses, presumably Democrats will be able to kill the debt ceiling in the lame duck session. This assumes Manchin and Sinema stick with them on it, which one of them might […]
Senate Republicans are being dispicable as usual. They manage to combine bad intent and pathetic incompetence in a display which must delight all right thinking people. The issue is the debt ceiling. For months Mitch McConnell has asserted both that the debt ceiling shall and must be raised and that he plans to blame Democrats […]
Debt Ceiling Nonsense Yet Again – A Catch 22? Of course, there should be no debt ceiling. The US is the only nation to have one for absolute amounts of money (some other nations have ones tied to percents of budgets, and so forth). Even though it is nonsensical and absurd, it has been around […]
A question has been nagging me. First, does the rest of the world not get that the republicans are playing a game with the US’ bank account? Does anyone really believe that the US won’t pay as in the renter just skipped out the back door? Or maybe I should say; as in the capital […]
In the Comments thread to my post yesterday about a comment that Brian Williams made the day before indicating that he apparently does not know what “the debt ceiling” actually means, reader SW asked: “So, is he really an idiot or does he just play one on the tv?” I answered: I hadn’t thought of […]
Oh, do tell us, Rep. Ryan, what exactly you think our spending priorities should be in order to avoid default if the debt ceiling isn’t increased. Pleeease. Might they be similar to the priorities of the National Review’s editors?
Today, in another step forward, the National Review calls on Republicans to take the threat of default off the table: Republicans should recognize that the prospect of default is the Democrats’ chief weapon in their campaign of avoidance. That prospect is not a source of Republican leverage in the debt-ceiling fight; it is the primary […]