Republicans are threatening to hold the debt ceiling hostage again unless Democrats agree to deep spending cuts. The national debt is about to blow past $40 trillion. This is the same party that added $8 trillion to the debt during the Trump administration while controlling both chambers of Congress.
The move here is transparent. Lose an election, suddenly care about fiscal responsibility. Win an election, pass tax cuts that make the deficit look like a phone number. It's performance art for people who think C-SPAN is too spicy.
Deep spending cuts. That's the demand. Nobody will say which programs get the axe because naming actual programs polls worse than gonorrhea. So we get this: vague promises about waste and fraud, zero specifics, and a debt ceiling standoff that tanks the credit rating while some congressman from a district that takes $3 in federal spending for every $1 it pays in taxes explains why we need austerity.
The election could make this harder, according to the headline. Translation: whichever party loses will pretend to care about the debt for exactly as long as it takes to win again. Then they'll go back to spending like a trust fund kid with a black card and daddy issues.
Retail traders will watch this unfold and decide it's bullish for small-cap momentum plays because the debt ceiling has never mattered before so why would it matter now. They'll buy calls on regional banks or some dogsh*t semiconductor stock that hasn't turned a profit since the Bush administration. First one, not the second.
The ceiling will get raised. It always does. But not before both parties spend six weeks pretending this time is different while their interns draft op-eds about patriotism and tough choices. The tough choice is whether to tank the global economy for political points or wait three months and do this again.
$40 trillion in debt and the solution is to have the same fight we've had nine times in the last decade, except louder and with worse haircuts.
Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash
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