The Hill News

Along come White House chief economist Austan Goolsbee and Treasury Secretary Geithner crying “catastrophe” in an effort to pressure Congress to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. But the real debt ceiling catastrophe lies not in the predictable fear-mongering of a profligate Administration trying to get its way, but in the fact that the United States is already in the position of having to raise a $14.3 trillion debt limit that is almost as large as America’s GDP. And the other related debt ceiling crisis is making sure that the Republican Party can fulfill its election mandate of bringing the federal spending binge to an end without a suicidal 1990s-style government shutdown that could guarantee a fiscally ruinous Obama re-election in 2012. Both political and fiscal prudence should rule the day if we are to avoid the real debt ceiling catastrophe.

No congressional act comes closer to the old saw of “closing the barn door after the horse is gone” than a v! ote to increase the federal debt ceiling. Excessive spending and debt creation have already occurredâ€"including more than $5 trillion of new debt under Nancy Pelosi. The debt limit vote is simply the acknowledgement of that reality in a country where every individual owns $45,000 of debt. It is a yea vote no one likes to make lest they be deemed an accessory to a fiscal crime.

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