I told them so. Not literally, of course. I have no direct access to « them, » nor would « they » ever have likely listened to me. But what I thought and said at the time, others also thought and said, others who did have access and who certainly should have been listened to. The Democrats in Congress and the White House had their chance to avoid the current crisis and the distasteful compromises they may yet have to make to get out of the hole they have dug for themselves. They had a chance to avoid all this by raising the debt ceiling last year, when they still had a modicum of control over Congress. Better yet, of course, they should have completely abolished the debt ceiling, an absurd example of American Exceptionalism that makes no logical, fiscal, or moral sense. (The debt ceiling may even – thanks to the 14th Amendment – be unconstitutional, although that has never been tested.) But, with their typical lack of imagination and their addiction to totally short-term thinking, our leaders missed that opportunity.
So now we are saddled as a country with an unnecessary crisis and the danger of default, a catastrophe so monumental that it seems hard to imagine the Democrats not caving in to at least some degree to Republican villainy. Elections have consequences. Republican control of the House made this catastrophe very likely. Yet nothing was done to avert it.
How many times must we repeat this ridiculous exercise? Most countries do not operate this way, and whatever one believes about « American Exceptionalism, » the U.S, doesn’t have to either. The debt limit could be indexed to rise automatically, or it could be suspended, or better yet abolished entirely. Instead, it has become, as Ezra Klein once wrote, « a cocked gun that reckless legislators could use to hold their own country hostage unless they got what they want. »
