Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Defaulting on democracy, simply to score points
Don’t count on spending your income tax refund just yet.
That’s one of the first hits the public is likely to take now that the Chaos Caucus in the U.S. House refuses to allow Congress to raise or extend the national debt ceiling. These are the same people who put the House through 15 roll calls in order to extract humiliating concessions from their party leader, Kevin McCarthy, leaving him Speaker in name only. Now, they would plunge the nation into chaos to get what they want.
Their price is a form of extortion that would make a Mafioso blush. They demand deep cuts in Social Security, Medicare and other programs considered sacrosanct everywhere except on the far-right political fringe where their immensely wealthy darkmoney donors dwell.
It’s a one-sided “bargain” because tax increases are not on the table. Not for the sake of Social Security or anything else, such as paying for Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the very rich. President Joe Biden is right to refuse to negotiate on such terms.
The threat is to put the U.S. into default, like some third-world country, with its economy ruined and its international leadership only a memory.
The Chaos Caucus includes three of Florida’s 20 Republican House members: Matt Gaetz, the Panhandle’s enfant terrible, Byron Donalds from Naples, and newly elected Anna Paulina Luna of St. Petersburg.
Florida would be hit hard
People in Florida depend heavily on Social Security and Medicare. Only California, with almost twice the population, has more recipients than Florida’s nearly 5 million.
Younger people are also the intended targets of this assault, which contemplates raising the retirement age to 70. That could have disastrous consequences for workers in construction, farming and other labor-intensive occupations in this state. People are living longer, so many now need to work longer, and pervasive employment discrimination exists against workers in their 50s and 60s.
It’s time for the more responsible House Republicans — Florida’s in particular — to put down the Chaos Caucus. If they don’t, the reckoning will be severe.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has already implemented what she calls “extraordinary measures” to keep paying the nation’s bills and postpone a catastrophic default.
Those include delaying required contributions to federal employee retirement and savings accounts, which would be made up later.
Every penny of the national debt represents something approved at one time or another by both parties in Congress, including measures to save the economy during the housing meltdown of 2008 and the coronavirus pandemic two years ago.
Not out of line
Even at $31 trillion, the debt is not out of line with the size of the nation’s economy.
About a fourth of it is money we owe ourselves, as bonds held by Social Security and the Federal Reserve. The rest is borrowing from the public and foreign countries.
Even a temporary default would be costly in the long run, inflating the debt more than any act of Congress might, because lenders would demand higher interest when borrowing resumed.
That’s what happens to ordinary deadbeat debtors — if they can borrow at all.
When the government has to pay higher interest, it has a cascading effect on individuals, businesses, states, counties and cities. That is a surefire formula for a deep, lasting recession.
Congress has raised or extended the debt limit 78 times since 1960 rather than take the nation into the chasm of catastrophe. There was brinkmanship on occasion, but regardless of party, everyone knew that default was out of the question and reason would prevail.
This is more worrisome because common sense is lacking among members of the Chaos Caucus.
This manufactured crisis illustrates why the debt limit should simply be repealed. Denmark is the only other Western country with one. Ours began as a condition demanded by Congress in 1917 for agreeing to issue bonds for fighting World War I. It was never intended as a brake on spending.
Congress should consider a long-term strategy for controlling the debt — but not at the point of a gun.
The little-noticed Section 4 of the 14th Amendment arguably gives the president authority to disregard the debt ceiling, which he should consider if the Chaos Caucus won’t budge. It reads, in part: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
Congress wrote that to insure that former Confederates returning to Congress could not repudiate the bonds that had saved the nation from an insurrection. There wasn’t another until Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob invaded the Capitol to try to overthrow a presidential election.
Most members of the Chaos Caucus voted to give those insurrectionists what they wanted. Their present conduct is no less dangerous.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.