I don’t think I’ve talked any about the current “debate” over whether or not the government should raise the debt ceiling. The reason I haven’t talked about it is the same reason I put the word debate in quotations, I don’t view this as a debate at all but simply political theater. You know damn well that the government will raise the debt ceiling, they’re too addicted to unlimited money not to.
If you’ve been reading this site for very long it’s probably obvious that I oppose raising the debt ceiling because it would hopefully force some semblance of a balanced budget. Overall though I find it rather absurd that the government has the power to raise it’s own credit limit.
Right now our government is like an 18 year-old kid who just received a credit card. As many 18 year-old kids have no concept of managing money our hypothetical kid goes out on a giant spending spree and maxes out the card’s $1,000 limit (number arbitrarily selected). Keeping with our government is the kid analogy, through some stupid mishap in the contract the kid was allowed to raise his credit limit whenever he wants. Instead of trying to pay off the $1,000 that he owes the kid decides he’ll just raise his credit limit by another $1,000 worry about paying the money back later. He keeps doing this through the years and eventually ends up with a debt of $100,000 dollars which he has no hope of every paying back.
That’s where our government is, they have a multi-trillion dollar debt that they can’t hope to pay back so they’re not worried about it. Nobody has called us on our debt yet (and most of it his held domestically anyways) so why worry about it? But the fact of the matter is our government is insolvent and could never payback the debt if needed. I would love to see some attempt of fiscal responsibility by leaving the debt ceiling firmly where it is but I know it won’t happen, it’ll get raise now and again next year and again the year after that.
The entire “debate” is political theater with the Republicans trying to pander to the fiscally responsible and the Democrats pandering to those who want free shit. Both parties fully intend to continue giving free shit but they want to be able to point at the other party and blame them for the increasing debt/lack of free shit.
EDIT: 2011-08-01 6:07: I wrote this power last night before going to bed and this morning saw that the cronies on Capitol Hill reached a “deal” to raise the debt ceiling. I could have deleted this power as it hadn’t been published yet but I’m leaving here because I like demonstrating when I’m right; it boosts my ego.