The blank check

“There are men running government who shouldn’t play with matches.” —Will Rogers

RAISING the debt ceiling for the federal government has always been a bad idea. The only thing worse is not doing it. Putting more debt on the nation’s credit card isn’t a good thing. But defaulting on that debt would lead to disaster. There’s a reason the dollar is the world’s currency. The full faith and credit of the United States is not something to toy with.

That said, the president’s reported deal with Charles Schumer & Co. to try to permanently remove the debt ceiling would make bad policy worse.

The debt ceiling is there for a reason: to slow government spending. Not stop it, not end it, but slow it down. To get rid of the debt ceiling would be to take the brakes off and push the lumbering behemoth down the hill—on skates.

“It’s an unpopular vote that nobody likes taking,” said one senator this week. But isn’t that the point? Do we want to make it easier for Washington to spend our tax dollars? It’s been easy enough for our betters to run up the tab to $20 trillion. One wonders how the credit markets would react, long-term, to no limit on the federal budget.

But late in the week, during a meeting in the Oval Office with congressional leaders from both parties, President Trump discussed the idea with Sen. Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. The papers say they hope to finalize a plan in the next few months to “reform” the law and get around the debt ceiling. Or as Nancy Pelosi told reporters later: “Why don’t we just do away with it?”

We’re sure our friends on the left feel the same way. The question is, why would Republicans agree to this?

Back in 2011, conservatives forced a showdown on the debt ceiling. And the markets didn’t much care for it. But the battle did result in $2 trillion in budget cuts. Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, also notes a little detail called the United States Constitution: “I won’t get into a private conversation that we had [with the president], but I think there’s a legitimate role for the power of the purse of the Article I powers, and that’s something we defend here in Congress.” Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to spend money. For good reason. Without the debt ceiling, how could conservatives in Congress ever negotiate cuts in any federal program? There’d be no need for big-government types to ever concede anything. There’d be no deadline, no D-Day, no vote to take, no compromise to find. Just put it all on the credit card.

As for President Trump’s part, he says there are “a lot of good reasons” to get rid of the debt ceiling. But as is his habit, he didn’t back that statement up with any facts. If there are a lot of good reasons to give Washington insiders a blank check, he didn’t name one.

“For many years, people have been talking about getting rid of [the] debt ceiling altogether,” he said. “And there are a lot of good reasons to do that, so certainly that’s something that will be discussed.”

For many years? This is the first we’ve heard of it. And exactly which people have been talking about it? He didn’t say. We’d never recommend the government default on its obligations. But there should be a vote, compromises made, and maybe even cuts to offset more and more spending. A lot of people have been talking about that for many years, Mr. President. And we can give specifics.

The president isn’t a conservative and never has been. Donald Trump has only been a Republican for a few years. It shouldn’t really be surprising that on the debt ceiling he’s thrown conservatives under the bus and is making deals with liberal Democrats in Congress. Especially with his buddy from New York, Chuck Schumer. “I think that’s what the people of the United States want to see,” the president said Thursday. “They want to see some dialogue, they want to see coming together to an extent at least.”

By giving big-spending, big-government types everything they’ve ever wanted by killing the debt ceiling? (“Why don’t we just do away with it?”—Nancy Pelosi) Somebody once said there are three types of people who spend other people’s money: children, thieves and politicians. And all three need supervision.

Keep the debt ceiling.