NOTE FROM NORM: A Phony Debate About The Debt Limit Means A Real Cost To Taxpayers

For weeks the Democrats who control both Houses of Congress, and the White House, criticized Republicans for refusing to lend them votes to raise the nation’s debt limit.

From one end of the one-party media to the other Republicans faced a barrage of attacks that their unwillingness to help Democrats raise the debt ceiling so they can finance their spending plans would put the country on a path to fiscal ruin.

Yet, Democrats in the Senate have all the votes they need to raise the debt limit.  In the House they do, as well.

Why don’t they do it on their own then?

Because they are looking for political cover as they proceed to pass one of the most debilitating spending plans in modern history.  Plans so massive that it would fundamentally change and undermine the American economy for a generation.

Of course, Democrats will raise the debt limit.  They will do it without Republican votes.  They have no choice if they intend to pass the legislation that the President, and far-left progressives, want to implement into law.

That they should demand Republicans be complicit in their fiscal jailbreak should be of no surprise.  That it is a surprise to them got Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley asking the obvious question:

“If they have 50 votes for raising the debt limit and they’re in the majority… Why do they think Republicans ought to be involved when they’re in the majority….They want to spend this four and two tenths trillion – that’s one of the reasons why it’s got to go up so much – and no Republicans in favor of their programs. Why would we help them to get room in the debt limit to increase their budget.” 

That’s not a mistaken number Grassley mentions in his question.  It’s four trillion dollars.

And two-tenths of a trillion more.

If Democrats wanted to raise the debt ceiling to address current obligations of the federal government that would be one thing.

In fact, Grassley made the point that some Republicans might actually support a bipartisan effort to raise the debt ceiling if that were the case:

“They might get some Republican support if they don’t spend this four-and-two-tenths trillion dollars. That’s baked into this whole thing…They want us to make room for them to spend money for programs we aren’t for. If they want to get rid of that stuff, they might get some Republican support.”

But that’s not what they want to do.

They want to add four trillion dollars – and two-tenths of a trillion more – to a federal budget that is already bulging at the seams.

They want Republicans to support a spending plan that Republicans do not support.

A spending plan that Democrats themselves can’t even get the votes to pass in Congress despite pressure from the President to get it done.

Teeth gnashing liberals in the press, and their stalwart allies in politics and government, berate Republicans and point to bipartisan budget agreements that took place during the last presidential administration as evidence that Democrats did what Republicans are now not willing to do.

Yet, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell points out the hypocrisy in this deceitful attack:

“This isn’t the last four years, when we were reaching bipartisan government funding agreements, bipartisan appropriations, and bipartisan COVID bills…Democrats are making different choices. They want to make policy all by themselves. So, they can come up with the financing on their own as well.” 

President Joe Biden stood on the steps of the nation’s capital in his inaugural speech and made much of his desire to reach across the aisle to build a better, stronger, and more prosperous America.

Yet, his rhetoric, and the action of Democrats on Capitol Hill, are not in synch with one another.  A multi-trillion spending bill that will affect the life of every American with a government that will take more and more from each of us in an effort to make all of us more reliant on the federal government is what Democrats want Republicans to support.

The fact is the accelerated pace of federal spending is already impacting Americans in the form of inflation.  And it wasn’t as though President Biden and Democrats weren’t warned.

Not just by Republicans.

But by Democrats, including Larry Summers who served as Treasury Secretary from 1999 to 2001 and an economic adviser to President Barack Obama from 2009 through 2010.

It was Summers who, in February of 2021 warned that the President’s plan to spend $2 trillion would overheat the economy – resulting in rising inflation – and creating a hardship tax on the middle-class.

Biden, and Democrats, were, and remain, furious with Summers.

And, come July of 2021 the White House was starting to fear that Summers was not only right but that his predictions weren’t dire enough!

We have all seen it as prices of literally everything has increased. And it is America’s middle class that is being impacted by those higher prices at the gas pump, the grocery store, the restaurant and everywhere else.  It is the worst kind of tax on hard-working Americans and it’s just going to get worse if the President and Democrats get their way.

This coupled with a continuing tight labor market had Summers saying “These figures and labor market tightness and the behavior of housing markets and asset prices are all rising in a more concerning way than I worried about a few months ago…”

The drama on Capitol Hill the past week with Democrats not being able to get the votes they need to pass their massive spending plans has drowned out the sack cloth and ashes cries of the one-party media wondering why Republicans aren’t being fiscally responsible by raising the debt limit.

Instead, they have turned their fury on Senate Democrats like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema and a smattering of holdouts in the Democratic controlled House, who won’t capitulate to the demands of an increasingly hostile mob of progressives.

Let the truth finally win out when it comes to the debate over the debt limit.

Democrats aren’t wanting to raise the debt limit to protect America’s credit rating.

They want to raise the debt limit to increase the amount of debt they can add to the nation’s credit card to fund their spending spree.

And, when the bill comes due it won’t be Congressional Democrats that spent the money, and the liberal media that egged them on, that will be pay the bill.

It will be every American now, and well into the future, who will be paying that bill with interest for generations to come.