Whew!  We didn’t go over the Fiscal Cliff.  Let’s take a second to regroup – oh!  No?  Now it looks as though the Republicans – the craziest of them, at least – have found another potential disaster and are steering us straight for it.  What now?  The Debt Ceiling.  

The Debt Ceiling is yet another term that everyone is using and that completely belies its real meaning.  But this is a particularly bad misnomer.  The Fiscal Cliff sounded bad.  It sounded as if we were all going to fall into the abyss if Congress didn’t resolve the problem by December 31^st.  Then we went over the Cliff and didn’t even get our feet wet.  It turned out to be a Bump, so it was basically a lot of hue and cry over very little.  On the other hand, the Debt Ceiling sounds like something important but fairly innocuous that we have real control over.  But it isn’t something we have control over.  No one does – if we want to maintain our financial credibility and credit and avoid doing major damage to the world.  Keeping it low is not a decision for now – that needed to be considered a long time ago.

I don’t get it.  Aren’t the Republicans supposed to be the fiscally responsible ones?  Isn’t that what they’ve been telling us for – well – forever?  I know they’ve been talking endlessly about the terror of the National Debt and how it will bring us to disaster if we don’t find a way to bring it down.  I specifically remember them repeatedly comparing the U.S. economy to our own private household finances, saying that we can’t spend more than we take in, that we’re expected to cover our expenses in our private lives and we should expect no less from our government.

Fair enough.  On its face, debt is a bad thing.  That’s a nice, simple concept.  Different economists have different ideas on how directly one can compare a multi-billion dollar economy that is part of an interdependent world financial system with the personal finances of a family of four living in suburbia, but let’s assume the comparison holds.  If so, it should hold across the board, right?

Evidently not, because now the GOP House members are salivating over the prospect of refusing to raise the Debt Ceiling and forcing the U.S. Government to renege on its obligations, furlough workers, skip payments to Social Security recipients and veterans, risk yet another credit downgrade and likely set off a new global recession.  Obviously, they learned nothing from 2011 and they seem to have no concern for any of the people they’re planning on pushing off a new, real cliff.

I’m struggling to see the responsibility in this.  Using the private finance scenario, If my partner and I go on a spending spree, we can’t get away with telling our creditors that we’re not going to pay for anything until my partner gives up eating and cancels his medical coverage.  They will send someone after us, whether it’s a lawyer or some big guy named Vito.  We will have to pay penalties for being so ridiculous.  And I’ll bet all those hard line, conservatives would condemn us for shirking our responsibilities and brand us as two of those “takers” they hate so much.

Congress has spent the money, people!  If they want to lower the Debt Ceiling, they actually need to raise it now and stop spending so they don’t need to do it again; they can’t turn to all of our creditors and say, ”Sorry!”  I don’t know about anyone else, but to me American exceptionalism includes paying our debts.  We can’t be the world financial gold standard if we don’t live up to our obligations.  Deadbeats are exceptional in the wrong way.

Bottom line:  A majority of our representatives voted for the things that are pushing the Debt Ceiling up.  We don’t have access to a time machine, so we all have to work forward.   No, it’s not fun; it’s the real world.  There is no definition of that term in Conservapedia (I checked), so the conservatives will have to take my word for it.  We’ve got to listen to the President when he says “We can’t not pay the bills we’ve already incurred.”

Senator McConnell, Speaker Boehner, et al need to raise the Debt Ceiling and stop screwing around with our full faith and credit.