Anyone who’s been writing long enough can look back and find old works that have aged well.
On the other hand, you seem pretty far-sighted at times. This brings me to a debt ceiling article I wrote almost two years ago when we were facing the same stupid financial catastrophe we are facing today.
If you don’t want to go back to previous columns, here’s a quick rundown. The debt ceiling is the maximum the U.S. Treasury can borrow in dollar value through bond sales. Also known as a “debt limit”. It has absolutely nothing to do with spending. Rather, raising the debt ceiling means the United States will continue to pay the debt it already owes.
If lawmakers want to increase or decrease spending itself, the debate about that should happen when Congress passes the budget. The debt ceiling was first created over 100 years ago. It made some sense then, but it certainly doesn’t now. Almost all other countries are doing well without debt ceilings at all.
Think of it this way: The household equivalent of setting a debt ceiling would meet at a family meeting every few months to see what would happen if the mother and father continued to pay the mortgage or simply stopped. In this scenario children get an equal and binding voice. So let’s hope they don’t outnumber adults.
Simply put, the debt ceiling is not only pointless, it is ridiculous. If Congress can’t lift it, it means the US will default on its debts, lose its status as the world’s most reliable economic power, and the global economy will stall.
Given how important it is to raise the debt ceiling when Congress is in danger of being broken, lawmakers have never failed to do so. was given. Yet we live in particularly stupid times.
Now, whenever the Democrats are in the White House and the debt ceiling is near, Republican lawmakers are threatening to blow up the economy unless their demands are met. not. Yet there were no racists in the mid-20th century. Debt ceiling hike pending We are all demanding that racism be accepted.
It’s really no mystery where the recent big problems with the debt ceiling come from. Do you know what happened? Conference voted with a bipartisan majority to raise it.
But now Republicans control the House and Joe Biden is president. That means the Republicans could once again put us all in economic hostage in an attempt to secure absurdly large spending cuts.
The debt ceiling is the button of financial self-destruction for the entire country. That doesn’t sound like a wise thing to put in front of people like Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boubert, and Matt Gates.
Of course, given that they no longer serve any meaningful purpose, debt limits can easily be abolished. This is legislatively possible, it won’t hurt the economy, and we’ll never have to hear about the debt ceiling showdown in Congress again.
But for such a very sensible thing to happen, one must first live in a world where laws could theoretically be enacted. We have to stop calling it a ‘debt limit’. Sorry, most voters aren’t going to delve into this beyond its name. Like a debt limit? The disingenuous Pearl Clutch campaign postcard about “Vote to End the Debt Limit” pretty much writes itself.
There is no justification for the existence of the debt ceiling. In any case, as long as the Democrats are in the White House and the modern Republican Party remains largely unreasonable, it is a thorn in the side of the US economy, another potential crisis that must be dealt with anew every few months. will continue to be
Jonathan Wolfe is a civil litigator, Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He taught legal documents, contributed to various publications, and made economic and scientific reading and writing both a business and a pleasure. The views he expresses are probably pure gold, but they still belong only to him and not to any organization he belongs to.he can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.
