Debt Ceiling

 

Sixteen Tons

You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

Debt is bad, but the alternative is worse.

The US is facing a debt crisis of its own making. Its Congress is responsible for all spending and revenue bills. If revenue is insufficient to match spending, then debt is a way of time shifting revenue from the future. So if Congress has authorized spending, and Congress has authorized revenue, then Congress has de facto authorized debt.

If spending increases because of price inflation, and revenue is lowered because of inflation (e.g. the tax brackets are adjusted for inflation) they why isn't the debt ceiling also adjusted for inflation.

You might not be old enough to remember, but there was a time when prices were more stable than today. Then Nixon (er…wasn’t he a Republican) applied his Shock and dollars that were used in international trade could no longer be used to trade for US gold, so they competed with domestic dollars to buy other assets and unsurprisingly inflation was the result.            
https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-happening-riding-high-on-top-of.html

Then Reagan (er... wasn’t he a Republican too?) promoted the first of what became many tax, revenue, cuts. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2020/06/taxman.html So if you cut revenue, and have inflation increasing spending, then don’t you need more debt??

Congress pretends that it also has a debt ceiling. (I guess Congress forgot that it authorized spending and revenue). That debt ceiling was last raised in 2021. At that time, the debt ceiling was set at 31.4 trillion dollars, but isn’t that in 2021 dollars. If that debt ceiling was expressed in 2022 dollars, then it would have been $33.91 trillion. So if revenue is in 2023 dollars and spending is in 2023 dollars, then why isn’t the debt ceiling also in 2023 dollars. If the debt ceiling is $33.91 trillion, or even higher given the fact that we are in 2023 not 2022, before Democrats start talking with the Republican House, if Republicans caused inflation to increase spending, and Republican tax cuts have decreased revenue, then why doesn’t the principle of "you broke it, you own it" apply?