This is a blatant scare tactic, designed to garner support from the naive masses. If they can convince the average, hard-working, middle-class American that we need to raise the debt ceiling again to avoid financial armageddon, the fiscally responsible in our government (a rare animal indeed!) will be hard-pressed to oppose raising it unless without a PR nightmare in advance of this year's election. But it's becoming a harder and harder sell as the national debt grows bigger every day and more and more Americans get wise to the game they are playing with our hard-earned money.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the sole power to borrow money on the credit of the United States. In 1917, Congress established the first debt ceiling, limiting the amount of bonds the U.S. Treasury could issue. The first debt ceiling, called the First Liberty Bond Act, set this borrowing limit at $5 billion. Since then, the debt ceiling has been raised 103 times. During President G.W. Bush's two terms, the ceiling was raised 7 times; under Obama, it has already been raised 4 times. Usually, raising it is a mere formality. Congress raises the credit card borrowing limit and then proceeds to max out the credit card again. Today's debt ceiling is about $15 trillion dollars, which is roughly 3,000 times greater than the first debt ceiling in 1917.
Unfortunately, our fearless leaders' unrelenting spending spree is unsustainable, and we are now at a crucial crossroads - we can no longer continue to borrow and spend without being buried under by our mounting debt. So we need to either leave the borrowing limit where it is, forcing the politicians to live within their means, or combine a raise of the debt ceiling with cuts in spending to ensure that we don't simply repeat what has been done 103 times already. Ideally, we should be reducing the scope of government, not merely the amount it spends. If a government department's budget is cut, it can easily be raised again later; however, if the government department is eliminated entirely, there will be no budget to raise later. And there are plenty of government agencies and departments that should be eliminated, ensuring permanent reductions in spending. There are only 18 enumerated powers of the federal government in the Constitution, yet there are literally thousands of government agencies and departments - the government has been acting beyond the scope of its constitutional duties for a very long time.
But what about this unavoidable default the progressives keep warning us about? Well, let's look at the numbers. In 2010, the federal government spent $3.55 trillion dollars, and they spent even more in 2011. In fact, since the Republican-dominated Congress balanced the budget and produced a budget surplus in the mid-90's, Congress has raised spending every single year. During this period, whenever their spending spree bumped up against the debt ceiling, they raised it so we could borrow more money to keep the spending machine runnng without a hitch. If they don't raise the debt ceiling again, the government may not have enough money to cover all of its financial obligations in the short-term. They won't be able to fund everything on their wish list, meaning they'll have to prioritize spending for a change.
Since the Constitution requires the government to fulfull its debt obligations, payments on our debt would naturally be paid first. Medicare and Social Security would most likely be next to get funded. But as they get near the bottom of the list, they would run out of money, and things like subsidies to oil companies and banks might not continue. Items such as funding research/treatment for alcoholic prostitues in China and giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip would also be eliminated.
Far from defaulting on our debt obligations, and far from seniors being left to die on the street, the government would merely have to stop spending money on stuff it has no business spending money on. There are thousands of items that can and should be eliminated from the federal budget which would not affect our lives at all, but that would, in total, greatly relieve the fiscal stress we are under.
Don't let the politicians confuse or mislead you - there is plenty of pork that can be trimmed from the budget. The problem we are suffering from is not a lack of revenues, but rather a lack of even the slightest shade of responsibility in the politicians we elect. The culture of Washington needs to change, but that won't happen until they know the American public is onto their con-game and willing to throw the thieves out of office. The threat of taking away their power is just about the only thing that sways these "civil servants."
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