Politically bankrupt: Senate GOP are happy for the U.S. to default on its debt

It is pure chutzpah for the Republicans who slashed taxes by trillions while dramatically increasing federal spending to now pitch a fit.

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Editorials

September 29, 2021 - 10:30 AM

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images/TNS

Journey with us, if you will, all the way back to August 2019. In a budget deal passed by Congress and signed by President Trump, Washington suspended the U.S. debt limit for two years — two years in which Republicans refrained from pitching a fit every time the U.S. needed to borrow more money.

And borrow we did, under an administration and Congress that slashed taxes by trillions while dramatically increasing federal spending, even before the COVID crisis hit. With aid of three separate increases to the debt ceiling, the federal debt soared by nearly $7.8 trillion during Trump’s four-year tenure — the third biggest increase relative to the size of the economy of any presidency in history (after Lincoln, who fought a civil war, and George W. Bush, who launched two foreign wars).

It is therefore the purest form of chutzpah for Sen. Mitch McConnell and other Republicans who facilitated Trump’s reckless record to now lay down in the middle of the tracks and refuse to raise the government’s debt limit as a fiscal freight train barrels toward us, toying with America’s full faith and credit.

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