Debt Ceiling Debate, Debacle (Don't Bother)

Apparently, the United States Congress failed to pass a resolution which would raise the debt ceiling last week. Did you noticed? I didn't, either.

Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew has asserted that the Congress must pass a debt ceiling deal by February 22 or then the United States government will default on its debt.

Frankly, if the first dire, threatened debt ceiling deadline was not as deadly as the Obama Administration had predicted, why should anyone care about the federal government doing anything the second  time around?

As a reminder, official reports had suggested that if the federal government did not extend borrowing authority after Friday, February 7, then the United States would default on its debt.

Of course, that imagined catastrophe is not what happened. The incoming revenues from federal tax receipts exceed the weekly debt which the country must discharge for the next few weeks, if not more

What has changed, however, is that the United States federal government cannot issue bonds in order to borrow money to pay off debt. Finally, the federal government will simply have to operate within the proper means of current income, and nothing more.

The Republicans in the House should stay there, and let the President and the Senate Majority sweat out the spending, while then explain to the American People, and their constituents specifically, why all the alarmism about the debt ceiling is a false alarm.

One poster during the 2009 Washington Mall Tea Party uprising read: "If I spent money like the federal government, I would be in jail." With t his mantra in mind, more legislators at the state and federal level should face  jail time for their reckless indifference to the unsustainable national debt and yearly, trillion dollar deficits. Such waste is sickening, even as the numbers defy rational calculation.

The federal government spends other people's money with an insane, immoral disregard for supply, demand, and scarcity. From wasteful pork projects, to strained entitlement programs, and overextended federal departments, including many which do not need to exist, the federal government is just too damn big. With new entitlements like Obamacare taking up more financial space in the yearly budget, along with the growing interest on the current debt laid on future generations, Congressman Paul Ryan's omen about jittered bond holders demanding a greater yield may flare up sooner than expected. Higher interest rates mean greater debt, or worse (at least in the short run) no more borrowing.

The 2014 debt ceiling deadline passed, and no one died. The federal government is still running, except for its overdone power to issue bonds to take on more debt. Hopefully, House Republicans will learn an important lesson from last year's budget shut-down show-down. Instead of tying an untenable demand to raising the debt ceiling, the House Republican Leadership should tie a moral demand to the debt ceiling, like reinstating military pensions, or requiring that everyone, including members of Congress, submit themselves to Obamacare.

A set of reasonable demands which restore confidence in the federal government's capacity to define priorities, combined with proposals which expose the depraved, partisan venality of the Democratic leaders in Congress and the White House, can give the Republicans in the House and Senate the upper hand to maintain their control of the fiscal debate while determining their responsible advocacy for limited government, fiscal conservatism, and dedication to leaving a solvent United States to future generations.

Honestly, one has to hope that Republicans would have the inner fortitude to sit and wait for the White House and the US Senate to jump to the House's demands, rather than watch Republican leaders cave one more time. Already, current revenues are keeping the federal government afloat, while preventing more borrowing. Since so few are paying attention to the debt ceiling debate-debacle anyone, perhaps Boehner and his conservative colleagues should not even bother dealing on the debt ceiling ever again.