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Comment by dahfizz | Hacker News Reader

Don't we go through this like once a year? Everyone freaks out about hitting the debt ceiling and the economy imploding, and then congress just raises the ceiling.

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Historically Congress hasn’t been being led around by its most extreme elements, but that’s no longer the case in the HoR. So we might be in for some all new degrees of “let it burn” posturing that we haven’t experienced before.

This is what has me on edge a bit. The reps of party in charge is seemingly run by people intent on scoring social media points, and the more they get, the more they double down on crazy.

Much like Trump, many of the reps in place seem to lack basic shame, which makes them dangerous. Most of the processes and norms we have in place assume some level of shame to act as a breaker. If you have just one person acting out, the system might survive. When you have dozens, all acting without shame, we get in to new uncharted territory.

> Historically Congress hasn’t been being led around by its most extreme elements

The Republican Party in Congress has been since at least 1994, which is why they have engineered debt ceiling crises at least once in every Democratic Administration since the Congress elected in 1994.

Right. My point is that before it was score political points against political opposition. However, that Republican opposition back then was still catering to regular rich people who don’t want the US to actually default just for the lulz and to pwn the libs.

The current lot in charge is more of the “burn it all down” sort which isn’t catering to regular rich people, but rather is catering to QAnon’ers. So, it’s less clear that it’s all just posturing and how far they’ll go with such posturing.

Once or twice a decade really. And when the Republicans (it's always them) tie raising this artificial construct to their political goals, it causes panic. At some point, the madman putting a gun to your head may pull the trigger.

The debt limit has nothing to do with budgeting or spending limits. It is a foolish hack in US law that lets the Treasury borrow money to pay for our spending already authorized.

Ideally it would go away entirely.

> Don't we go through this like once a year?

No, debt ceiling crises are engineered by the GOP less frequently than that (2011 and 2013 were the closest in sequence, IIRC.)

There’s sometimes media speculation about whether one will be engineered, and that’s more frequent than it actually happening. Maybe you are thinking about that?

The worry is that one day congress won't have that luxury for one reason or another. The uncertainty is when and what means. It is the uncertainty that causes economic panic.

Interest rates weren't this high when we ran up a $33 trillion bill. My fear about this is that as long-term bonds expire, they will need to be re-issued at much higher rates. A significant chunk of US tax revenue goes towards servicing the debt, and that chunk will only get bigger.

The "debt ceiling" is a distraction from the real problem. It's a dumb political football.

> and then congress just raises the ceiling.

Sure, why worry about debt.

If the debt is held internally, we'll just tell the citizens to get over it.

If it's held externally, we'll send in the killer robots (via some loser proxy country, of course) until the debt is pardoned.

Why worry indeed?

More likely we negotiate the terms of debt forgiveness, such as tariff reductions etc.

Domestic debt could be traded in for a permanent tax credit.

> More likely we negotiate the terms of debt forgiveness, such as tariff reductions etc.

So instead of controlling our own destiny, we have to hope for good terms from negotiations with the holders of that debt - who can apply increasingly more leverage as the amount of debt they hold increases?

Foreign countries hold less than a quarter of US debt. We are a long way from being in some weak negotiating position.

Borrower is slave to the lender.

you think it can just keep going up forever?

The issue is not whether we reach a sovereign debt crisis, it is when we reach it. Sure, we've been able to avoid it up to now. But eventually something's going to give.

The United States is the only country in the world where the conservatives vote for a budget, but then when fall rolls around, refuse to pay for it.

It's just a political lever that they discovered, where pulling it damages the country, but somehow scores political points, so they are pulling it over and over and over again.

Stop rewarding them for it.

If they actually gave two craps about the debt, they wouldn't vote for a budget where expenses exceed revenue. But doing that wouldn't score them political points, so...

Both not paying your bills, and passing your debts to your children, are now apparently conservative values.

That's because the ceiling is a nonsensical concept. They money has already been spent.

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