Debt Limits

by Julie Gilstrap, Carolina Journal, October 11, 2013.

Well, this is just great.  Boehner is going to ask Republicans to raise the debt limit.  Fantastic.

This is the federal equivalent of using a new credit card to pay the bill for the existing credit card.  You know what I’m talking about.  It’s that offer you get in the mail for the card with the balance transfer.  Take the existing debt and move it to a new card, thus freeing up more borrowing capacity on the old card.  Excellent!

Except it’s a really bad plan.  It doesn’t work for personal finances, and it doesn’t work for governments.  Unless you get your personal spending under control, increasing your borrowing limit only succeeds in getting you into a deeper hole.  It’s the same with the government.  We can raise the debt limit.  We can borrow more.  We can keep spending.  But unless we actually cut some things, unless we change the patterns of our spending, then we’re just creating an ever bigger hole.  It doesn’t solve the problem – not even temporarily.  It makes it worse.

I understand the temptation for a stopgap measure.  I understand that we need to pay our bills.  But we also need to reduce those bills.  Households decide all the time to adjust the thermostat, or drop the cable, or eat out less, or refinance the mortgage.  They decide to move kids out of private schools and into public ones.  They sell the car and buy something less expensive.  They avoid the trip to the mall.  They make choices to control their spending because they know that, without changing the amount going out, they’ll never catch up.  They’ll never pay off the existing debt.  Increasing their credit limit doesn’t actually fix anything.

Now if Congress could just figure that out…