How much do the Democrats want to spend your money? They are submitting a bill to eradicate the debt ceiling. They are also accusing Republicans who want to keep the debt limit instead of jettisoning it of “weaponizing” the debt ceiling.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who is sponsoring the bill to eradicate the debt ceiling:
The Republicans have chosen to exploit the routine necessity of raising the debt ceiling as a means of blackmailing the American people in order to impose an extremist agenda. The debt ceiling has been a harmless exercise in minor political propaganda from time to time. But they have … weaponized the debt ceiling and made it into an active threat to the American economy.”
Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.): “They’re serious about it. The question with the Republicans is not whether they have the power to plunge Americans into default, it’s a question of whether they have the restraint not to do it.”
Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.): the debt limit is an “archaic quirk”, a “legislative relic.”
Keith Ellison (D-Minn.): “We’re beyond cutting fat. We’re cutting bone, we’re cutting vital services.”
The GOP will most likely kill the bill in the House, and possibly remind Americans that Barack Obama voted against raising the debt limit when he was a senator under George W. Bush. But of course, he wasn’t president then.
There are reports that the GOP leadership will push for spending cuts to equal a debt limit raise, which, of course, accomplishes nothing. If the GOP really is serious, they’ll hold the debt limit and cut spending.
We’ll see.