{"id":1928169,"date":"2023-05-10T12:11:47","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T16:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-democrats-debt-ceiling-position-makes-zero-sense\/"},"modified":"2023-05-10T12:16:51","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T16:16:51","slug":"the-democrats-debt-ceiling-position-makes-zero-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-democrats-debt-ceiling-position-makes-zero-sense\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats&#8217; stance on debt ceiling is senseless."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-democrats-debt-ceiling-position-makes-zero-sense%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1928169&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>Is Personal Responsibility Really That Simple?<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cIf you buy a car,\u201d White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explained the other day, \u201cyou are expected to pay the monthly payment. \u2026 It\u2019s that simple.\u201d But is it really that simple? Those who argue that the president can cancel millions of student loans by decree aren\u2019t in a position to offer lessons on personal responsibility. The deeper problem with Jean-Pierre\u2019s analogy, though, is that there isn\u2019t a bank on Earth that\u2019s going to keep lines of credit open when a person is compounding unsustainable debt year after year.<\/p>\n<h3>The Federal Government&#8217;s Debt Limit<\/h3>\n<p>The federal government has already hit the debt limit. The Treasury Department is now relying on \u201cextraordinary measures\u201d that will sputter out by June, at which time we will all be forced to forage for food and barter for medicine. The only thing that can save us from this dystopian hellscape, Jean-Pierre explains, is for Congress to do its \u201cjob\u201d and return to regular order.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Senate Democrats need to pass a bill<\/li>\n<li>Negotiate with House Republicans, who have already passed a bill raising the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion into 2024<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Until this week, Democrats wouldn\u2019t even talk to Republicans on the matter. In the old days, this kind of absolutist position would have every newspaper wringing its hands about GOP \u201cobstructionism\u201d and the dysfunction of the political system. Today, outlets like The New York Times simply pretend Republican bills are apparitions. \u201cAre Republicans Willing to Raise the Debt Ceiling?\u201d asks the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/shocker-amazons-a-hypocrite-on-mail-in-ballots\/\" title=\"Shocker\u2013Amazon\u2019s a Hypocrite on Mail-in Ballots\">editorial board<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n<h3>The New York Times Editorial Board<\/h3>\n<p>Does the Times not know that the GOP has already agreed to lift the ceiling? They do. They pretend it isn\u2019t real because it includes \u201cdeep cuts in federal spending\u201d (by which they mean a return to last year\u2019s discretionary spending levels, with no cuts moving forward), the reversal of \u201cinvestments in tax enforcement\u201d (80,000 new IRS cops monitoring, among other things, Venmo accounts with more than $600), a rollback of some \u201cgreen energy\u201d boondoggles, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>And anyway, the Times notes, Biden has offered Republicans \u201ca reasonable path to resolve the standoff\u201d in which the GOP raises the ceiling without any conditions as Democrats demand and then Biden will \u201cseparately negotiate measures to slow the growth of the federal debt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dear Lord, can you imagine The New York Times editorial board urging Democrats to table their policy concerns and simply trust that a Republican president will negotiate in good faith at some undetermined, future time? And not any president, but one who claims a $3.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-democrats-debt-ceiling-position-makes-zero-sense\/\" title=\"Democrats' stance on debt ceiling is senseless.\">5 trillion inflation-inducing bill \u201ccosts<\/a> zero dollars.\u201d So, not exactly a whiz with numbers.<\/p>\n<h3>The Debt Ceiling<\/h3>\n<p>But that\u2019s not even the most ridiculous sentence in the editorial. The Times also contends that the debt ceiling \u201cis not a useful mechanism for preventing the federal government from living beyond its means,\u201d when that\u2019s exactly why the law exists in the first place. The line reminds me of the scene in Woody Allen\u2019s \u201cLove and Death,\u201d in which the newly married Boris is rebuffed by his bride Sonya on their honeymoon bed. \u201cDon\u2019t,\u201d she says, \u201cnot here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If the debt ceiling is mechanically lifted without any debate over spending, then it doesn\u2019t really exist. If you want to spend without any limit, just say so. But even The Times concedes that Washington is \u201cliving beyond its means.\u201d So, then, why is it more \u201creasonable\u201d to negotiate the slowing of spending now, when the ceiling is in view, than a month from now or a year from now when there is no incentive to do anything?<\/p>\n<h3>Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden<\/h3>\n<p>Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who for weeks was sending out snarky tweets demanding Kevin McCarthy show the country his plan on the debt ceiling, won\u2019t negotiate. And it\u2019s clear that President Biden is now pondering invoking the 14th Amendment and simply ignoring the debt ceiling much in the way he ignores the law on a slew of other issues. Such a move would almost surely be overturned by the Supreme Court \u2014 because, as Ilya Shapiro succinctly put it, a \u201cconstitutional provision that prevents repudiation of debt doesn\u2019t also somehow authorize limitless new debt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Democrats spend their time blaming GOP administration for the preponderance of our debt \u2014 most of which Joe Biden has voted for as a senator or helped shepherd through in the executive branch. No one is innocent on that front, of course, but most of our debt is propelled by constantly expanding entitlement programs, which are treated with a reverence by the left that the Constitution can never attain.<\/p>\n<p>But even if the GOP were culpable for every single dollar of debt and were engaged in blatant hypocrisy, it wouldn\u2019t change the fact that they are objectively correct today in arguing that we need to slow spending and mitigate debt. The arguments used to oppose even a modicum of responsible budgeting do not make any sense.<\/p>\n<p>David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/abandoned-all-pretense-of-being-conservative-jonah-goldberg-joins-cnn-as-a-commentator-social-media-erupts\/\" title=\"\u2018Abandoned All Pretense Of Being Conservative\u2019: Jonah Goldberg Joins CNN As A Commentator, Social Media Erupts\">nationally syndicated columnist<\/a>, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books\u2014the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIf you buy a car,\u201d White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explained the other day, \u201cyou are expected to pay the monthly payment. \u2026 It\u2019s that simple.\u201d Is it? Now, obviously, those who argue that the president can cancel millions of student loans by decree aren\u2019t in a position to offer lessons on personal responsibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":831,"featured_media":1928170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[20032,10142,5487,3685,15427],"class_list":["post-1928169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-senseless","tag-ceiling","tag-debt","tag-democrats","tag-stance"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1928169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1928170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1928169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1928169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1928169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}