I’d like you to imagine for a moment that you decide you’d no longer like to pay your mortgage. To be clear, this is not a matter of means or ability — for the sake of this hypothetical, you have the financial resources to make your payments. You simply don’t want to.
And so you call your bank and share the good news. You inform them that, while you may have previously agreed to your mortgage and promised to make your payments on time, you would not be doing so moving forward.
What do you think would be their response?
When you hear talk of the United States government reaching its debt limit, the scenario described above is, in essence, what’s happening. We have passed laws agreeing to spend certain amounts of money, but now we’re calling our bank to say we will no longer pay.
Historically, raising the debt limit has been bipartisan. We’ve done so 78 times since 1960, including three times during the Trump Administration. However, when a Democratic president is paired with a Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, recent history has shown the latter eager to use the debt limit as a political tool to damage their executive branch counterpart.
Current Speaker Kevin McCarthy has kindly offered to prevent a global economic catastrophe in exchange for American-focused devastation. To lift the debt limit, he has asked Congress to pass problematic legislation that would see 13,500 Illinois kids lose access to preschool, strip food assistance for 56,000 Illinois women and children, and threaten health insurance for 1,427,000 Illinoisans.
In other words, returning to our earlier metaphor, after being told that you face eviction if you fail to make payments, you propose a counter-offer. You’ll pay your mortgage, but only if your family stops using hot water for showers and stops going to the doctor.
If we do not raise the debt limit, the United States will default, causing global financial ruin. Interest rates would skyrocket. Americans’ hard-earned retirement savings would vanish. The average cost of a 30-year mortgage would increase by $130,000. Prices will rise for everyone and on everything.
The United States and Denmark are the only countries in the world that have a debt limit set at a fixed nominal figure. The best thing we can do to avert this manufactured crisis — and to prevent the debt limit from being used as a political weapon in the future — is to get rid of it entirely. Congress already authorizes all spending and revenues. We should not have the right to choose to not pay our bills when the former exceeds the latter.
I have co-sponsored a bill, the End the Threat of Default Act, led by Rep. Bill Foster of Illinois’ 11th Congressional District, which would do just that.
Until we pass this legislation, House Republicans will continue to use the debt limit to gain policy concessions they could not achieve through democratic means. And we’re all worse off for it.
Sean Casten is the U.S. representative from Illinois’ 6th Congressional District.
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