Like the hockey-masked villain in some cheesy horror flick, the GOP’s debt ceiling caucus just keeps coming back. Once again, the party’s more radical members are threatening to hold America’s full faith and credit hostage by refusing to raise the nation’s debt limit. The Treasury hit that $31.4 trillion limit Thursday, meaning it will have to be raised — as it routinely has been over the years, under both parties, to cover expenses incurred by both parties.
As the debate unfolds in coming weeks, Republicans will try to present their refusal as a principled stand for fiscal responsibility. It’s not. It is a deliberate threat to America’s fiscal stability in hopes of getting presidential concessions on unrelated issues. It’s political terrorism, plain and simple.
The debt ceiling is the statutory limit on what the U.S. can borrow to cover past expenditures. That last part is crucial to remember as Republicans begin sowing misinformation about what they’re doing when they refuse to approve the periodic raises necessary in the debt limit. It is not refusal to spend but rather refusal to cover spending already authorized by Congress (including, generally, the same Republicans now declining to pay what’s owed).
