As Aug. 2 draws closer, day by day, there are no signs that the “cooler heads” rational people put their faith in will prevail. Instead, the nation seems to have been taken over by know-nothing radicals who don’t believe anything bad will happen if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.
These same people apparently believe the government will go on borrowing anyway and that the checks will go out as usual. Interest will be paid to bond holders; pensions will be paid to Social Security beneficiaries; hospitals, doctors and druggists will get their money for tending to Medicare patients — all the warnings, in short, have been nothing but political scare talk.
This argument is dangerous nonsense. It is based on the unvoiced belief that the law doesn’t mean anything. If the government can ignore the debt ceiling without consequence, then there is no debt ceiling.
Now, an excellent argument can be made that there should be no debt ceiling; that setting an arbitrary limit on how much the government can borrow, regardless of circumstances, is not wise. Debt ceilings don’t control the getting and spending decisions that government makes. That’s what Congress does with its power of the purse.
To use an arbitrary debt ceiling to force Congress and the president to cut spending and increase taxes, or both, puts the cart before the horse. Those management decisions should be made every year — and should be based on the infinite number of factors involved in managing our nation rather than on a single number agreed upon by a previous Congress based on nothing at all but wishful thinking.
But in today’s Mad Hatter Washington, the debt ceiling is being treated as though it were a barrier deliberately constructed by the nation’s wisest economists which should be defended to the death.
SHOULD WE CUT spending and raise income to bring the budget into balance, as it was just 11 years ago? Of course we should. Doing so would give an enormous boost to our economy. Should Republicans and Democrats work together to get that done?
Yes . . . but the Know-Nothings rule.
Fortunately there will be an opportunity in 2012 to improve the mix; to give reason another chance to prevail.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
