Six House Democrats will today introduce legislation to get rid of the debt ceiling forever.
Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), Jim Moran (D-Va.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) are behind the effort to give the federal government unlimited borrowing power.
At an 11 a.m. press conference today, they paint the 1939 debt ceiling law as “unnecessary and increasingly an impediment to Congress’s ability to further economic recovery.”
“Only a year-and-a-half after the last disastrous debt ceiling debate, House Republican leaders plan to use the same political brinksmanship again this year in order to impose their extreme and economically regressive agenda on the American people,” the sextet said in announcing the move. “A repeal of the debt ceiling would allow Congress to move forward with legislation that actually promotes jobs, economic recovery and growth.”
They blame the 2011 congressional standoff over raising the debt ceiling for Standard & Poor’s first downgrade of the U.S. in history.
“The President is right: raising the #DebtCeiling allows us to #PayTheBills, not incur new ones,” Nadler tweeted. “But GOP still refuses to pay 4 the spending they’ve already authorized. That’s why I’m intro’ing bill to repeal the #DebtCeiling tmrw.”
Nadler also led an unsuccessful effort in 2011 to abolish the debt ceiling.
Welch has started a petition on his website urging Obama to “use the 14th amendment if Republican and Tea Party leaders insist on holding America’s reputation hostage to their budget shenanigans.”
“Republican leaders in Congress have boldly declared that they are willing to plunge America into default in order to get their way on the budget. The last time they took the debt ceiling hostage, it cost taxpayers $18.9 billion, triggered the first ever credit downgrade in American history, and sent destructive economic ripples around the world,” the petition states.
Yesterday, at a University of Michigan speech, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke joined the chorus of those backing President Obama’s wish to take the power of the debt ceiling away from Congress — a caveat in the first fiscal cliff proposal delivered by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at the beginning of those negotiations.
“I think it would be a good thing if we didn’t have it,” Bernanke said.
Hank Johnson is a fool.
It is high time to cut our national credit card in two until we have a larger economy able to afford our profligate lifestyle. This ia budgetary reality faced by American family, thus I see no reason why the national government should be any different.
Perhaps the constituents of the Congressmen expect both themselves and the national government to have unlimited credit, to be paid at somebody else’s expense, forever. If so, I would like them to morally justify that. Or, it may be that they think that in today’s America nobody may challenge what African-Americans or Hispanics desire, kest the challenger be destroyed. If so, they have valid cause to think they will be treated thusly–but I don’t think they will be able to fit credo that into “there is no Jew, there is no Gentile….”.
Liar. My household debt doesn’t go up to pay bills I already have; it only goes up if I incur new ones.
We need a minimum IQ requirement for members of Congress. Preferably at least two digits.
It wasn’t the “standoff” that lowered our credit rating — it was raising the debt ceiling that did it. When you signal you’re willing to take on more and more debt, you also signal that you’re unwilling to pay back your debt.
I read somewhere that someone compared this administration’s and its party’s economic policies to the Cargo Cults of the S. Pacific after WWII. Create imaginary/illusory sources of federal revenue, and at no time allow for the actual creation of wealth from which revenue can be extracted.
Trillion-dollar coins anyone? “Borrowing from ourselves” as Obama said on “Letterman?” Unlimited debt ceiling? Spend trillions to try to pretend to create jobs? Make no cnnection whatsoever between wealth creation and the resultant job creation? Subsidize the crap out of failing industries and call that a success?