Is Kevin McCarthy Finally Ready to Take the Debt Ceiling Seriously?
Letting the U.S. default on our debt would be catastrophic for the global economy. This is not a partisan opinion, but a fact. Raising the debt ceiling is typically not a partisan issue. It’s been raised 78 times since 1960. It’s only when the f*cking Republicans get control of the House does it ever become an issue because they’re spiteful ghouls who don’t know how to govern, and are using a bureaucratic technicality mandated by the Constitution to hold this country hostage.
If this seems like bad news, it is! It just got worse, too, because on Monday, Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen updated the forecast of when the U.S. will run out of money and really default, and that date is as early as June 1. (Previous dates were more vague and were summer/early fall.)
This is bad. The Republicans in Congress have essentially done nothing of note to solve a problem they entirely created. The White House released its budget in early March. House Republicans did nothing until the last week of April, finally passing a completely unserious “spending” bill that has no hope of getting past the Senate or The White House, and everyone knows it. Our entire economic future rests on Kevin McCarthy, who is still blaming Joe Biden, who literally has nothing to do with raising the debt limit—Republicans are insisting on budget cuts before they’ll raise it, but this is a problem of their own design and making. This is like saying “You didn’t help me clean my room, so I decided to burn down the house, so it’s your fault we’re homeless now.” Per the BBC:
On the Republican side, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy accused President Biden of having “refused to do his job” and “threatening to bumble our nation into its first ever default”.
“The clock is ticking,” Mr McCarthy said in a statement. “After three months of the Biden administration’s inaction, the House acted, and there is a bill sitting in the Senate as we speak that would put the risk of default to rest. The Senate and the President need to get to work — and soon.”
Basically, the U.S. economy is the Titanic, and we’re sinking, and Kevin McCarthy is Billy Zane running around the ship with a gun shooting at the water when he should be headed to a life raft to help every ones. It’s an imperfect analogy, but it does show you just how absurd this entire situation is.
There is some hope, though. Biden has called Congressional leaders (and that does include McCarthy for better or worse) to the White House on May 9th to discuss raising the debt ceiling. The House Democrats are also making some moves to avoid a default. Per The New York Times:
“House Democrats are working to make sure we have all options at our disposal to avoid a default,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, wrote in a letter he sent to colleagues on Tuesday. “The filing of a debt ceiling measure to be brought up on the discharge calendar preserves an important option. It is now time for MAGA Republicans to act in a bipartisan manner to pay America’s bills without extreme conditions.”
An emergency rule Democrats introduced on Tuesday, during a pro forma session held while the House is in recess, would start the clock on a process that would allow them to begin collecting signatures as soon as May 16 on such a petition, which can force action on a bill if a majority of members sign on. The open-ended rule would provide a vehicle to bring Mr. DeSaulnier’s bill to the floor and amend it with a Democratic proposal — which has yet to be written — to resolve the debt limit crisis.
Per the article, this is a bit of a long-shot move and would require five Republicans to cross the aisle and vote with the Democrats to avoid a default, but it beats the alternative. Remember: we don’t have to go through this. This is completely unnecessary stress caused by the Republicans due to their incompetence and inability to build anything and adherence to party over country. Here’s a fun taste of what happens if the U.S. defaults on our debts: There’s a very good chance you won’t be able to predict the weather in this country because guess what? Many forecasts rely on data from the National Weather Service, and you know who pays for that? The Feds.
Life will get needlessly harder, people will lose their jobs, and our bills won’t get paid, all because the Republicans want to play at politics. How does that make sense?!
Look, there are plenty of problems with Democrats but at least they’re never the party holding us hostage for simple procedural votes that can run our economy off a cliff and make it so we have no idea if it might rain five days from now or not.
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