re: Why is the debt ceiling the hill the GOP wants to fight on?

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Games being played. Nothing more.


Polls are showing that the closer to the government shutdown it gets the more people are blaming the Democrats.

The Republicans are stalling to gain political points going into next years mid terms. It is all political theater.

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That.
The debt ceiling isn't real. They agree to suspend it and ignore it unless they need to put on a show to keep their bases riled up.
28+ trillion, what's a half dozen more?

I don't know why and I don't care. Just don't increase the ceiling, make Congress stick within a fricking budget for once.

Ultimately though it doesn't matter whether Congress raises taxes or not because they'll continue to spend far more than they take in. Once you realize that you understand that raising taxes is simply trying to push back on the actual date the economy crashes.

We're currently spending around 1 half-trillion on debt servicing (ie: just interest payments), that's ~15% of total revenues while continuing to accrue more debt. This FY and the last have each been over $3T in just deficit spending, funded primarily through the Fed buying the debt.

The problem in figuring timeframes on when things will go to shite is that these bonds have a range of maturity dates ( example).

I think it's safe to say though that when we get to 25%-30% we will see issues speed up (more frequent calls for ceiling increases and larger increases in each instance) as Congress will absolutely not make the cuts to spending (nor even spending growth) necessary to avoid the fiscal cliff we're headed toward.

They want to be able to say, "We tried, but there weren't enough of us to stop it. VOTE REPUBLICAN."

Optics

Because the dims told them it would be fine to not pass it the first time so that people would be tricked into thinking the rinos actually have a little bit of a conservative lean.

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Why is the debt ceiling the hill the GOP wants to fight on?

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Maybe because the nation is fekkin' BROKE AS shite! After all the decades of deficit spending and borrowing, even the very first dollar in any new budget from D.C. is money our nation doesn't have.

This is most definitely a hill to die on.

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I don't understand Turtle and his group. They are a-ok with massive spending, deficit spending, but don't want to raise the revenue for it and don't want to raise the debt ceiling to fund it.

Why is this the path they choose? Why not be against the deficit spending from the start, and then you don't have to worry about the debt ceiling?

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while i'm never one to defend republicans, not raising the debt ceiling has been a consistent position whether Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, or Biden.

LINK

pretty much every time it's republicans saying "no." or "cut spending and then we'll talk"

don't get me wrong. they acquiesce just about every time because they're spineless, but they're general stance is to not do it.

a literal metaphor would be my wife maxing out my credit card and me saying "stop," and her shaming me into calling the credit card company and raising our limit.

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They want to be able to say, "We tried, but there weren't enough of us to stop it. VOTE REPUBLICAN."

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Calling Richard Russell, calling Russell Long, calling Strom Thurmond, your country needs you desperately.

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Trump was certainly no fiscal conservative when it came to government spending though. It’s my biggest beef with him.

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Same.