That analogy only works if the people doing the charging and the people refusing to pay the bill are the same people.
That story was from Friday. They'll have the brawl again in May when it's budget time, but basically the GOP realized that holding the default gun to the economy was bad politics and bad policy
It is the same people, congress. You can't say my wife bought that dress which I was against so I am not going to pay for it!
They are the same people. Congress first votes to authorize expenditures, then holds a separate vote on how much debt the Treasury can incur to pay for those expenditures. If Congress didn't want the debt level to increase, why vote for the expenditures in the first place? It's even more ridiculous if you consider the fact the debt ceiling has historically been an afterthought. Congress has raised the debt ceiling something like 40 times in the past 50 years (10 times in the last decade alone?), but for some reason...it just suddenly became a huge deal recently.
The 24/7 media made it a big deal. Polarizing politics must make for good ratings with our current executive leader.
Congress is not a monolithic entity, it is made up of hundreds of individuals. It further has a changing membership. If the individuals that vote against raising the debt ceiling are not the same individuals that incurred all the debt in the first place, then the analogy breaks down. Now certainly any congressman who votes for increased spending and then refuses to raise the debt ceiling is clearly analogous to a person that runs up a credit card bill and then refuses to pay it, but only those individuals do so.
Are you suggesting that the 113th congress can ignore all the laws voted by the 1st, 2nd, ... congresses?
If we're going to go down this stupid road - you do realize that's not the way going-concern legal entities work, right? When company X gets a bunch of new senior managers, it doesn't automatically repudiate any and all contracts/obligations that the previous regime had entered into. Though I agree that making stupid analogies to family paying bills is why so many people are unable to understand debt-related issues in the first place and wrap them up in a dumb cluster**** of morality.
For the most part, outside of the handful of people who lost their seats in November, the current Congress are the people who authorized the budget for this current year's spending.
This. The fact is that if Congress were taking in earnest about spending cuts, they would pass the spending bills that include the cuts. When they passed the spending bills that they did, they knew what kind of debt would be incurred.
This is all that need be said. Anything else is just procedural gamesmanship and putting team/party over country. You don't want the spending, then don't approve it in the first place. The Republican Party is taking the economy hostage to prevent the implementation of programs they suspect will increase Democratic Party power over the long haul. It doesn't matter if these programs will decrease the deficit over time, increase jobs, or help lead to a healthier overall political economy. No, what matters is will it help Republicans win the next election. The sad thing is that party leaders have said this exact thing from time to time. It's pitiful the 24/7 reality shows... um, cable news refuse to hold politicians feet to the fire of their own words and actions.
