If you believe the worst-case scenario predictions, America will hit its debt ceiling in just a few weeks. Avoiding the debt ceiling requires either politically impossible budget cuts or raising the ceiling to allow more debt to accumulate.
Both parties agree that the ceiling needs to be raised; they simply differ by a few percentage points regarding how much to spend. Unfortunately, lawmakers seem to have trouble making it a priority to show markets, taxpayers, and U.S. debt holders that the U.S. will pay its debts.
And in some cases, they can’t even show up. Reuters reports that lawmakers and President Joe Biden “may have just working days to craft a deal” because the House, Senate, and/or president are out of town for the rest of May. This follows on the heels of a presidential trip to Ireland, which Politico reported seemed more about Biden connecting with an ancestral home than conducting the people’s business. It comes during GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s lengthy trip to the Middle East.
Congress has always taken ridiculously long breaks during so-called “recesses,” and it’s important that the U.S. maintains strong alliances in Europe and the Middle East. However, none of these travels are as time-sensitive as the U.S. finding a path past the June 1 debt ceiling deadline.
Related: Happy Talk About a Debt Deal Coming From Congress Not Impressing Senate Democrats
But even when Congress is in town, it wastes far too much time on the taxpayer dime. Instead of working together to cut the budget and raise the debt ceiling, lawmakers tackled consumers’ struggles to get Taylor Swift concert tickets. A Senate committee took the time to hold a hearing about whether Ticketmaster is too large in light of thousands of Swift fans being unable to purchase tickets. And committee leaders from both parties recently sent a letter asking the Justice Department to proceed with an investigation of the ticket sellers.
Concert tickets distract lawmakers from the nation’s critical fiscal issues. But so does micromanaging the military. For example, Congress continues to require more taxpayer-funded purchases of tanks instead of what commanders on the ground say they need. And a recent Defense News analysis of the 2024 budget requests noted that defense officials don’t want a Marine ship—but it’s a political priority for members of Congress, so the taxpayer-funded ship is staying in the budget.
It’s not just troops on the ground who face political micromanagement, most of which is done to make individual members look good by adding jobs in their districts. Roll Call reported last year that a Senate committee tried to add $4 billion that “the Navy did not seek and much of which the Armed Services and House Appropriations panels did not approve—for warships built largely by the constituents of senior appropriators.”
And over in the Air Force, leaders are happy with the KC-46 refueling tanker. However, some lawmakers are pressing for a different design. Their goal is to add jobs… at the cost of years of testing and reconfiguration instead of going with a proven craft that is more mobile and can meet the dynamic needs of military servicemembers. This congressional pressure isn’t just bad for taxpayers and an unnecessary headache for military leaders. It could hurt the military’s ability to accomplish its mission.
One of the most important jobs of Congress is to control the federal government’s purse strings. Both parties have failed miserably at that job. Combining a debt ceiling raise with a few percentage points of spending cuts is the least they can do—if they want to stop doing what looks good and get back to real work.
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