Just a few weeks before President Obama releases
his
budget
proposal to boost deficit spending for the remainder of his term, Congress
voted
to “raise the nation’s borrowing limit through March 2015.” But there’s one big
question: By how much did Congress raise the debt limit, exactly?
As Heritage’s Romina Boccia explains on One America News Network’s
Daily
Ledger, Congress didn’t exactly raise the debt limit. Instead, Congress
voted to “suspend” the debt limit for more than an entire year. This is an
important distinction, because it means that there is no current limit on how
much the United States Treasury may borrow.
Rather than put a ceiling on the
national debt, Congress decided to waive the limit until next March, at which
point the debt limit is automatically raised by the amount borrowed over the
course of the year. Essentially, it gives the Treasury Department
a
blank check to borrow as much as is needed to finance all government
spending authorized in law, regardless of incoming revenues.
Moreover, a clean increase or suspension ignores the debt limit’s purpose in
the first place. Hitting the debt limit presents a focused opportunity for
lawmakers to confront the rising debt and enact reforms to limit spending
growth. As Boccia explains:
The debt limit is supposed to act as a fiscal check on spending and
borrowing, and it is supposed to [protect] younger generations and future
generations from excessive spending today…. [The nation should] have a limit in
place that encourages fiscal restraint, and when you reach that limit, Congress
should make spending cuts to put the budget on the path to
balance.
But what did Congress do? Shirk that job until at least next year.
Even more troubling, the suspension of the debt limit is another abdication
of Congress’s constitutional power to control borrowing, which it has now
delegated to the executive branch. As Boccia further explains:
The debt limit was the last remaining tool with which Congress exercised its
constitutional power to control borrowing. By suspending it, they’ve given up
that power as well, concentrating all borrowing decisions in the Treasury in the
executive [branch], which is President Obama’s Treasury.
Congress recklessly increased
spending by $45 billon just this January with the
massive
omnibus bill. And President Obama is pushing an expansionary federal agenda
that would increase deficit spending during his remaining term in office.
Meanwhile, the President is also dropping any semblance of dealing with the
key
drivers of spending and debt during his term in office.
Taxpayers should be extra vigilant
this year so President Obama’s
year
of inaction on fixing the debt does not end up becoming a “year of action”
on higher spending that ends up exacerbating an already dire budget
situation.
Link to original article here.
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