Oh, No! Republicans Won’t Raise the Debt Ceiling!

The hysteria about the debt ceiling is fake. But nothing this stupid can go on forever. 

By Christopher Roach February 18, 2023

Much noise surrounds an impending national debt default, which is being blamed preemptively in the press and among Democrats on Republican “intransigence” and “partisanship.” Of course, an actual default will never happen. We have seen this brinkmanship before, and the Republicans always do the “right thing” under the peculiar notions of right and wrong that prevail in Washington, D.C. 

For D.C., the right thing is obviously mortgaging our future, avoiding a serious debate, and devaluing our currency to keep the party going a little longer.  

These discussions are fundamentally dishonest—crude propaganda, at best. They omit that hitting the debt ceiling can be avoided with one simple trick: cutting government spending. I realize this is unfashionable, even among Republicans. The government spends with abandon and has for a long time, and most of us have become numb to the enormity of the problem. Just a few years ago the total debt was $20 trillion. After COVID and the first few years of the Biden Administration, it’s now $30 trillion. Thirty years ago, when I was in high school, it was $4 trillion, and we thought that was a lot.  

Imagine if the government cut its spending to 1990s levels. The overwrought rhetoric about deep cuts makes one think we would be returning to Mad Max conditions. But, in spite of much lower government spending—about half of today’s in real terms—things were pretty good. There were fewer government workers, and almost everything was cheaper, but we somehow survived without Obamacare, Biden’s grotesquely mislabeled Inflation Reduction Act, and about $2 trillion in extra spending..........To Read More....