From a game theoretic perspective, waiting until the last moment is the most optimal.
Therefore, it will continue to happen until the voters find it so unpopular they begin voting out politicians that behave like this.
The incentive is showing up here. Lose a little rating, it's harder to rotate national debt, and suddenly the ~10% of the budget used to service the debt balloons to 50% as borrowing rates increase. This would be a catastrophe.
That is the "game" being played.
The reason the public isn't outraged is because they don't understand these connections
> the economic health of the entire country and likely the rest of the world
Our political system in the US is set up in such a way that those who acquire political power are going to spend as much time and effort as possible keeping it or acquiring more power. Any improvement that comes is secondary compared to getting re-elected
The more specific problem is that the incentives aren’t aligned, because voters aren’t capable of seeing the relevant causes and effects. When the only thing voters react to is immediate economic conditions, of course politicians fight tooth and nail for more spending when they are in power and cuts when they are not.
I wish politicians weren't so short-sided.
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/23/democrats-debt-ceiling-regr...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/07/joe-manch...
But then, that's because moderate/conservative democrats have decided it's to scary to eliminate the debt ceiling (there's not enough votes for that). So maybe still a conservative problem but not entirely a republican problem.
We are right to consider why we are a primarily export-based economy with a dollar tied so tenuously to oil. Blaming Republicans, when in fact it's a problem of crony-capitalism, is somewhat shortsighted. Some of the richest, filthiest, congresspeople are Democrats. To assert it's one-sided is very sound-bite politics of you. I would go to open secrets and see just how equal congresspeople are in exploiting the national debt for political and financial gain.
This line of reasoning makes no sense... Holding the debt ceiling hostage is just posturing, and from your comment and some others it really seems to work even in seemingly intelligent people, imagine with the rest of the voters?
But there are actually people deluded enough to say Biden was responsible for the most recent hostage-taking, so hell if know what's going on. Maybe the GOP could actually blow up the US economy without consequences.