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Comment by fauxpause_ | Hacker News Reader

Strange article. The first few paragraphs are written as if we haven’t raised the debt ceiling repeatedly. The latter graphs show debt as a % of GDP as a negative number… so the chart shows lines going down to mean debt will comprise a larger portion of GDP.

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Yes, it's a little strange - it's basically two articles smooshed together. The first third is a pretty disinterested (perfunctory??) overview of the debt ceiling situation. The last two thirds (which is the actual 'nightmare') is about growing fiscal deficit.

Not just "as if we haven't raised the debt ceiling repeatedly". It's also "as if we haven't had a republican congress pull these shenanigans every few years for as long as I've been alive".

Anyone who is pretending this entire story is new and different or anything other than the R crowd posturing for their base (as always) is trying to sell you beachfront property in Arizona. It may get as far as a short term government shutdown (austerity measures, furloughs) before enough donors make big enough threats for it to pass.

Learn your history and remember the events of your life - this is an established pattern and if it surprises you, it's your fault. (Not that it should be the pattern, but "what is" and "what should" don't often intersect).

As if Democrats aren't postering here?

This isn't a dem/repub issue. If you can't see that, you are falling for it just as much as anyone else. Its that kind of thinking that is forestalling reasonable measures that could be taken now instead of fear-mongering that the other side is going to leave old people eating catfood.

I'm not saying they aren't posturing. Im saying that an R congress did this twice during Obama, at least once during clinton, and they are doing it now.

I never seen a D congress try to stop the debt ceiling being raised.

Both sides will go dirty over budgets, but this specific detb ceiling thing has a pattern. Show me how I'm wrong, don't just throw nonsequiturs at me that aren't about the thing I actually said.

No one cares about any of that political posturing. We can argue back and forth about who is going to get the blame, but eventually its got to be addressed or its going to bite us even harder than it already is.

Like it or not, the debt limit is the only time where we end up talking about it. As soon as its over, they are back to planning another infrastructure spending package. I'm still waiting to see what we got from the one in 2008 that was supposed to change everything.

If that was remotely true, if it was anything other than a lie, why does it only come up when there is an R congress and D president? There are plenty of times in the last 30 years where there's an R congress and an R president, but it never was an issue.

If it was actually a concern, it would come up then too.

Maybe because the congress is the place the budget gets written? The president has little to do with it. Democrat congresses tend to initiate larger spending packages.

Regardless, that still doesn't address the debt problem.

Democratic congresses also raise revenues. Republicans congresses are all about driving wealth inequality and cratering social benefits through taxes, and starving agencies and programs of funding.

> This isn't a dem/repub issue.

Then why has every single debt ceiling crisis, starting with the 1995 abandonment of the Gephardt Rule raising the ceiling with the budget. been instigated by a Republican Congress during a Democratic Administration?

It would be hard to find a more definitively Republican/Democratic issue.

Maybe because that's the only way we end up talking about it? Would you prefer they keep the Gephardt Rule and keep lifting it and go on to start planning another massive infrastructure package?

People are sick of the finger pointing. No one cares. Something has to be done about the debt or its going to end up biting us even harder than it already is.

The Debt Ceiling is likely unconstitutional and irrelevant. Republicans use it to cut benefits to the poor or middle classes. Getting a hand on debt is what Democrats do. Year after year we get more evidence of this through reductions in our deficits under Democratic administrations. You know what we get under Republican administrations? Massive debt and growing deficits.

This is a Republican issue full stop. The debt ceiling isn't about debt. It never was and it never will be.

Congresses set budgets. Presidents have little to do with it. The last time the budget came into balance was in the late '90s (Dem president, Republican congress). Due to gridlock and some real spending restraints that were put in place.

It's only a Republican issue, because the only time they can make it an issue is when they have control of the Congress. You basically just admitted that Democrats don't care about the debt. You think it can just keep going up forever? You don't think eventually this thing is going to pop? The sooner we deal with it, the lesser the repercussions.

The Debt and The Debt Limit are vastly different things. Republicans can bring up the Debt Limit at any time. They only do it when a Democratic Administration is present. They have no problem massively bloating budgets. The Debt Limit is an unconstitutional artificial crisis to approve borrowing of debt already accrued. If you want to solve debt you do it when you set the budget not when the credit card bill is due.

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