Congress, dump debt ceiling before GOP takes House
By Jonathan Bernstein / Bloomberg Opinion
It’s time: Congressional Democrats need to get the ball rolling on ending the risk of defaulting on the nation’s debt. If they don’t tackle this before the current term ends, we run the risk that a Republican House majority will be irresponsible enough to allow a default to happen. That’s why the Democrats should seize the opportunity during the lame-duck period after the Nov. 8 midterms to eliminate the borrowing cap entirely.
The reason this is so pressing is that the United States has a law limiting the amount of debt the government can borrow. Since the federal government almost always runs a deficit, the total amount of debt is almost always increasing, which means that periodically the limit must be raised as well. But because the government sets the limit, and the government also decides how much to borrow, the law is entirely superfluous; it’s as if credit card limits were set by the cardholder and not the card issuer.
The problem is that raising the limit takes an act of Congress, and many in Congress fear that voters will punish them based on a mistaken belief that it’s a vote to increase the deficit (even though there’s no evidence that voters would do such a thing). But if Congress fails to increase the limit, the U.S. would default, leaving the government unable to pay its bills or fund crucial programs.
Which brings us to the threat: the possibility of a Republican House majority driven by the most extreme members of the party. We don’t know exactly what would happen if Republicans win a majority in November. But it does seem clear that the percentage of radicals — those who oppose compromise on principle and increasingly reject democratic norms and values — keeps growing within the House Republican conference and that those who are radicals are becoming more extreme.
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