Nonetheless, the GOP right wing keeps warning that we will leave our children and grandchildren hopelessly buried in debt.
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Meanwhile, House GOP leaders are considering scheduling a Friday vote on a debt limit bill produced by the conservative Republican Study Committee.
While delays have their own costs, there is a more dire possibility. Standard & Poor’s, one of the three big rating agencies, didn’t mince words when they downgraded United States debt.
The decision to eliminate the two-year auction on Thursday was basically a pre-emptive accounting decision, aimed at keeping the government’s debt from increasing while Congress works on a compromise, analysts said.
The US Treasury said Thursday it has to postpone an auction of two-year notes meant to help fund the deficit because Congress has not raised the government borrowing cap.
Playing with the debt limit is insane, full stop.
But House Republicans also have a math problem: The last time a clean debt-ceiling lift passed, in 2014, it did so with only the support of 28 House Republicans. They have the muscle to block such a debt-limit bill in the Senate. And with the Senate likely to take multiple days to act on legislation, that leaves a window of voting next week on a “clean” debt limit bill without preconditions.
The consequences of not letting it do so _ check that, the consequences of the mere possibility that the government wouldn’t pay its debts _ are measurable not just in political polls but in dollars.
Peters, who represents Coronado, Poway and much of San Diego, introduced the “Protect America’s Credit Act” and the “Pay Down the Debt Act” late Tuesday.
In the past, very short-term Treasury yields have increased when the US government flirted with a potential disruption by waiting until the last minute to approve a debt-limit increase.
“If it were gone, it would be fine”.
The debt limit rose to $300 billion at the end of World War II and has been adjusted 95 times since 1940, almost all of them increases. While the Treasury Department has given a deadline of November 3, this is subject to cash fluctuations, and Lew has warned the damage done by even flirting with a default could be permanent.
Most other countries don’t have a debt limit. Congress alone controls the level of our tax revenues as well, so every side of the equation – tax revenues flowing in, spending flowing out, and borrowing to cover any shortfalls – is directly the result of Congressional mandates. “In a time of interconnected and fragile markets, it is a unsafe thing”. Lew now says that on November 3 that game, too, will be up; the government will have insufficient funds to meet its obligations. “Rep. Zinke realizes that the status quo is not sustainable, and that a debt ceiling increase needs to be accompanied by a real plan to get our nation out of the fiscal hole that we are in”. Only 3 percent disagreed. So the government is not allowed to default even if it wanted to. You don’t make good decisions under those circumstances. “That changed in 2011 when a few members of Congress were willing to send us into default”. Democrats want to raise the government’s borrowing limit, while conservative Republicans want to extract spending cuts in exchange.
“The times being what they are, there will be great controversy attached to the review of policies that are driving our debt”, McClintock said.
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Putting aside the huge cut to entitlement programs, which would no doubt earn the bill a Democratic filibuster in the Senate, the idea that the Senate would suffer the House to write revisions of its operating rules was ridiculous enough to guarantee that the bill, at least as written, would never make it through that chamber.
