Even After This Crisis, Root Issues Will Remain

We’ll probably get through this latest debt ceiling crisis as usual, but we’re cutting it awfully close this time, and even if things work out, we’ll eventually suffer the consequences of all this politics and debt.
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This has happened numerous times. Lawmakers have always cut a deal before the deadline and likely will again. Most Americans are going about their business not thinking too much about it. They know that politicians are doing what politicians do.
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If a default did happen in the coming weeks, things suddenly wouldn’t be boring.

Checks wouldn’t get sent. The full faith and credit of the United States would be called into question. It would send ripple effects throughout the national and global economies.

Why is it so hard for Congress and the president to get together on this? There are many reasons, but a big one is that we live in an almost 50-50 divided nation as reflected in its political leadership. Republicans control the House, 222-213, while Democrats control the Senate, 51-49, and the White House.

The division is compounded by the fact that party politics was not originally designed into our system.
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The Constitution does not mention political parties, but they emerged early in the nation’s history, and now they effectively determine how everything works. Elected officials behave as if they are part of a British parliamentary system. President Biden is the leader of the Democrats in Congress, functioning sort of as a prime minister when his party controlled everything. Speaker Kevin McCarthy is supposed to be the leader of the House, but he really only leads the Republican half of it.

Even if we get through this latest crisis without shooting ourselves in the foot, these and other underlying challenges remain. The reason Washington, D.C., works at all is because, especially over the past 25 years, elected leaders have been able to mask the dysfunction by just adding more debt – much of it automatically. This has greased the wheels and allowed Americans to go about their business rather blissfully.

But a major institution in American life, Congress, simply doesn’t work anymore. We are fooling ourselves if we think there won’t eventually be consequences that affect our everyday lives – either in the next few weeks or somewhere down the road.

- rest of column at Even after this crisis, root issues will remain | Opinion | magnoliareporter.com

 

If Congress did its job properly during the yearly appropriations process, then there would not be a debt ceiling crisis.

 

The federal government would only pay for what it could based on the cash it had coming in. Which, as I understand it, is what the Treasury Department has been doing since January, but they were able to delay some payments and shuffle money around to not have to cut out sending Social Security and Medicare payments, paying the military, etc. Sounds like their ability to shuffle money around is running out of steam on June 5.