After refusing to divulge what they’d do if they regain control of Congress, Republicans have finally revealed their economic agenda.
Unfortunately, it involves provoking a global financial crisis. GOP congressmen plan to hold debt limit hostage next year: https://t.co/ZwYIpXD7Xy— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) October 18, 2022
… The scariest part of the recently disclosed GOP economic agenda, however, has largely gone under the radar. It’s the plan to hold the debt ceiling hostage next year, which could easily precipitate a global financial catastrophe.
Republicans have withheld their support from raising the debt limit before, usually framing their hostage-taking as a commitment to fiscal restraint. But the debt ceiling has nothing to do with new spending; rather, it’s a somewhat arbitrary statutory cap on how much the government can borrow to pay off bills that it has already incurred, through tax and spending decisions that Congress has already made. Refusing to raise the debt limit is like going to a restaurant, ordering the lobster and a $500 bottle of wine, and then declaring yourself financially responsible because you skipped out on the check.
Actually, it’s worse than that.
If lawmakers dine-and-dash on behalf of Uncle Sam, they tarnish the creditworthiness of the United States and can make it more expensive for the federal government to borrow in the future because investors don’t trust us. Worse, they might accidentally blow up every other financial market on Earth, too.
That’s because U.S. debt is now viewed as the safest of safe assets. Virtually all other assets around the world are benchmarked against U.S. Treasury securities. If we default on our debt obligations — or even come close to default — that raises the question of the riskiness of everything else investors buy and can send shockwaves of panic through every other market.
Boom, financial crisis…
Recall that when Republicans held the debt limit hostage in 2011, the United States’ credit rating was downgraded for the first time in history because we came perilously close to default. Since then, the GOP has become more politically unhinged, which means brinkmanship might well go further, which makes a debt default — even by accident — more likely…
But then, they’re not big fans of freedom in general:
Important: Kevin McCarthy strongly suggests in an interview with @PunchbowlNews that a GOP House would make it far less likely that US aid to Ukraine continues.
Remember, Chris Murphy sounded this alarm to us a few weeks ago.https://t.co/w1warkrMj9 pic.twitter.com/XN762lRV4X
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) October 18, 2022
Wednesday Evening Open Thread: The GOP Death Cult Hates AmericaPost + Comments (61)