America Hit Its Debt Limit, Setting Up Bitter Fiscal Fight | Hacker News Reader

America Hit Its Debt Limit, Setting Up Bitter Fiscal Fight

nytimes.com

9 pointsnateb20226 comments

> Newly empowered House Republicans have vowed that they will not raise the borrowing limit again unless President Biden agrees to steep cuts in federal spending. Mr. Biden has said he will not negotiate conditions for a debt-limit increase, arguing that lawmakers should lift the cap with no strings attached to cover spending that previous Congresses authorized.

People arguing for raising the debt limit without a fight are completely missing the point. The whole point of the law is to create a point of leverage for measures to cut spending. Negotiations for future spending cuts is exactly what Congress envisioned when they created the debt limit. It’s a system that forces Congress to pump the brakes on spending.

The debt ceiling isn’t some new thing. The modern debt ceiling dates to the Public Debts Act which was passed during the FDR administration by a Congress where Democrats had a supermajority in the Senate and a majority in the House. If Democrats wanted to take that off the table, they could have done so. They controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency and could have done that from 2020-2022. Obviously they didn’t want to deal with the political consequences of being the ones to propose removing the brakes on the car.

Need a filibuster proof majority which they didn't have.

They can remove the filibuster if they wanted to, its a self imposed restriction

> People arguing for raising the debt limit without a fight are completely missing the point. The whole point of the law is to create a point of leverage for measures to cut spending. Negotiations for future spending cuts is exactly what Congress envisioned when they created the debt limit. It’s a system that forces Congress to pump the brakes on spending.

A source for this would be nice. From what I can tell it was created to make it easier to issue debt instead of having to vote on each specific package. Instead it's all lumped into 1 pile. Furthermore it's quite silly as a concept. Congress already voted to spend the money, they are just arguing on if they should pay for what they already agreed to. It's a stupid concept only used to score political points/favors.

> If Democrats wanted to take that off the table, they could have done so. They controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency and could have done that from 2020-2022

I'm not sure how you can say that with a straight face. They technically controlled both houses but passing anything in the senate would have required 10 Republicans to join in with them.

> Obviously they didn’t want to deal with the political consequences of being the ones to propose removing the brakes on the car.

I don't see any basis for this comment at all. Not only would it not be possible without Republican support but using your analogy it's not about removing the brakes from the car but rather using the brakes to not go off the cliff (defaulting) because of speed they already built up (passing spending bills). If you want to "slow down the car" then pass less spending, don't have a silly "debt ceiling" that you act surprised about.

The debate isn’t about money Congress has already spent. The debate is about cuts to future spending. The debt ceiling is just the vehicle for having that debate. That sort of horse trading is actually a fundamental part of how politics is supposed to work.

Hopefully the last second save doesn't wreck people's paychecks or the stock market. They're never gonna remove the limit but I wish they'd cut congresspeople's paychecks and any access to lobbyists with perks the moment the debt ceiling is breached.

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