It has been another one of them days, so let’s get to it. First, let’s deal with Washington, D.C., or at least how much I can explain. I’m going to try to explain this whole “debt ceiling” business but it’s one of those things that elude me, like matrices or golf or marriage. I figure I need to be a bit sharper on it – after all, it does you no good if I don’t know what I’m talking about – but let’s see what we can do with what we go.
While hearings on Afghanistan and The Great American Temper Tantrum are going on and everyone’s starting to lose patience with that wacky Kyrsten Stewart’s kooky shenanigans, shit’s about to get expensive. As in your gas and your hamburger and your bread and your harmonicas, because the United States faces a debt ceiling crisis and could face default.
Now, what all that means is this. Every year, Congress sets a budget on how much it can spend. This includes part of, but not all the military, but social services, employee pay, processing things like welfare and land grants, basically anything the government does. It sets aside this much money until this certain time comes along and they do it all over again.
The “debt ceiling” is that amount on that date, and no more, and that date is tomorrow. What we’re looking at is the government’s running out of money to pay its bills if Congress can’t get its shit together. If we default on our loans, shit will get expensive soon. If we pass a debt ceiling raise or suspension, shit will still get expensive but on down the line and mostly because we’ve decided to buy new shit.
The Democrats want to raise or suspend the debt ceiling, but the Treasure Department says it’s about that time. Secretary Janet Yellen gives us until October 18, less than twenty days from now. The Republicans are against it because fuck you, that’s why. However, it’s not as simple as that. The GOP claims to be the party of fiscal responsibility and wants everyone to think they’re tight with a dollar.
Whether that’s true or not – no comment, but come on now – this sort of tussle over the debt ceiling is pure politics. Both parties have used the debt ceiling as their way to lean on the other party a little. While the Democrats have a slight lead in both Houses, remember, it’s slight enough to where they don’t have too much swing anyway. And, beyond Sinema and Joe Manchin, several Democratic House members don’t dig on the current economic plan the party’s laid out.
We’ve had about 22 of these things, going back to 1980 for the first official one in Jimmy Carter’s waning days. Now, don’t get it twisted, the only reason such things didn’t occur earlier, probably, was because the way Congress set the budget changed fairly significantly in 1976. Early on, the shutdowns were only a couple of days, and a couple of times we’d ran out of money but still had the time, so it didn’t matter. And we have come out above the line plenty. It’s been more than 22 years since 1976, do the math.
Anyhow. It’s not like the government comes to a screeching halt if it shuts down. Active military will still get paid, though the civilian workforce won’t. So long as they have funding, parks will stay open and files will get filed, but that’s just as long. Congress critters, however, still get paid regardless. And for the record, that’s because the Constitution sets rules on how their pay can be affected. Put down the rhetorical pitchforks. The Office of Budget and Management does the figuring on how it goes.
The first one of any significant length came in 1995 when House Republican leader and absolute scum bag Newt Gingrich forced a shutdown because goddamn Bill Clinton. Nothing in particular, just spending. The one that had the biggest impact happened in 2013 when House Republicans were trying to scuttle the Affordable Care Act. That cost us $2.1 billion and damaged our national credit with Standards & Poor, which is apparently important.
The last one – and the longest at 35 days – happened in 2018 because of Trump’s goddamn wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for. All in all, it cost us $5 billion but the real issue is we’d had a shorter shutdown at the beginning of the year over Trump being a dick about Dreamers and DACA. Though more workers were furloughed this one wasn’t as painful in the pocket, but it’s important to remember all of it could be avoided if Stephen Miller wasn’t such a damn racist.
But I digress. Should Congress be unable to come to an agreement on this, what’s really serious about this shutdown is the very real possibility we could flat-out default on our loans. This is the hard part. The government takes out loans to pay for stuff. What sort of stuff? Well, whatever stuff the Congress budget might fund. We’ve been doing it forever – sometimes borrowing from ourselves, sometimes from other countries – and in fact, modern capitalism can’t run without some form of debt moving things. That’s the part I don’t get, but c’est la vie.
Right now, our debt is $21 trillion. We’ve had debt since 1790, it rarely goes down to any appreciable degree, and it’s been in the trillions since 1982. The only time it actually got paid off was because Andrew Jackson was such an anti-banking hard ass and, well, the country was a fraction of the size and complexity. The seven trillion raise between the end of Barrack Obama’s term and Trump’s is blamed on 2017’s massive tax cuts for the rich, showing once again that trickle-down economics doesn’t work. Well, maybe next time.
A default would possibly crash financial markets and disrupt Social Security payments, just to begin with. That is bad, trust me, mainly because we really don’t know what could happen. Now, you might wonder how a country with 638 billionaires – including 24 new ones this year alone – could ever come to this point where people who depend on Social Security checks might get the biggest finger of them all. Well, that’s a good question.
The fear of default comes with every budget tussle, but the experts are a bit warier this time around, mostly due to the very contentious nature of modern American politics. If nothing else, we do have one party where the loudest voice is perfectly happy being a butthole just because. But this is a political thing. Democrats do it. Republicans do it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Regardless, both sides will blame the other and the Washington press will stroke their collective chin wonder if there was some way the Democrats could’ve given up more. They’re just trying to help people who ain’t got, after all, and they don’t make jobs. Apparently.
Now. The noise out of Washington is that despite some hiccups, we’ll probably avoid anything major. One of the major bones of contention is President Joe Biden’s $3.4 trillion infrastructure bill that conservatives can’t figure out how it’ll be paid for since “raising taxes on the rich” isn’t an option. I can’t make any prognostications, so I won’t.
But knowledge is power and I hope that helped. Again, we’re a country that can send tourists on 20-second atmosphere-scraping joyrides and spend more money on “defense” than the next 11 countries combined – up from 10 in 2019 – but this seems to be an ever-present issue. There’s going to be some things I can’t help you with, friends and neighbors.
Dear Y'all 