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WASHINGTON – As Congress continues to flirt with the idea of not raising or suspending the country’s debt limit, economists and academics are once again questioning whether creative loopholes like a trillion dollar coin or the invocation of the 14th Amendment could help the United States avoid self-inflicted economic calamity.
Republicans and Democrats disagree on the responsibility of raising the country’s borrowing limit. Democrats are insisting this be done on a bipartisan basis, reflecting the fact that both sides have incurred large debts in recent years. Republicans, who voted to suspend the debt ceiling when President Donald J. Trump was in power, now say they don’t need to help because Democrats control all levers of power in Washington and they are preparing to spend trillions of dollars in new spending by themselves.
All of this drama begs the question of what the debt limit really is, how it got here, and why the United States does not completely remove the debt limit and spare the nation its periodic confrontation with a economic time bomb.
What is the debt limit?
The debt limit is a cap on the total amount of money the federal government is allowed to borrow to meet its financial obligations. Because the United States has budget deficits – meaning it spends more than it earns on taxes and other income – it has to borrow huge sums of money to pay its bills. This includes the financing of social protection programs, interest on the national debt and the salaries of troops. While the debt ceiling debate often sparks calls from lawmakers to cut government spending, lifting the debt ceiling doesn’t authorize any new spending and in fact simply allows the United States to fund existing obligations.
When will the debt ceiling be exceeded?
Technically, the United States hit its debt limit in late July, after a two-year extension that Congress accepted in 2019. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen has since used “extraordinary measures” to delay a default . They are essentially tax accounting tools that hold back some government investments to keep bills paid.
The Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that the Treasury will be seriously short of liquidity between October 15 and November 4. However, it is more difficult to project the so-called “date X” due to all the pandemic relief money the government is handing out and the uncertainty surrounding the amount of tax revenue to come this fall.
What is the debt of the United States now?
The national debt now stands at $ 28.43 trillion, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s live tracker. Currently, the borrowing limit is set at $ 28.4 trillion, leaving the federal government little room for maneuver.
To give an idea of the size of such a deficit, the total U.S. gross domestic product was $ 20.93 trillion last year.
Why is the United States limiting its borrowing?
According to the Constitution, Congress must authorize borrowing. The debt limit was instituted at the start of the 20th century, so the Treasury did not need to ask for permission every time it needed to issue bonds to pay bills. The first debt limit came under the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917, according to the Congressional Research Service. A general limit on the federal debt was imposed in 1939.
Are other countries doing this?
Denmark also has a debt limit, but it is set at such a high level that increasing it is usually not a problem. Most other countries don’t. In Poland, public debt cannot exceed 60% of gross domestic product.
Why is it so difficult to raise the debt ceiling?
For many years, raising the debt ceiling was routine. But as the political environment has become polarized, the debt ceiling deadlock has deepened. The House used the “Gephart rule,” which required that the debt limit be raised when a budget resolution was passed, but most of it was phased out during the 1990s.
During the debt ceiling battle in 2011, some argued that President Barack Obama had the power to unilaterally lift the debt ceiling. Former President Bill Clinton said at the time that if he was still in office he would invoke the 14th Amendment, which says the validity of US debt should not be questioned, would raise the debt ceiling on his own and would force the courts to arrest him.
Mr. Obama and his lawyers disagreed and opted against this approach. After leaving office, Obama admitted that he and Treasury officials had considered several creative contingency plans, such as minting a $ 1 trillion coin to pay off part of the national debt. In a 2017 interview, he described the idea as “wacky.”
If the debt ceiling were to disappear, what would it replace it with?
The lack of a replacement is one of the main reasons for maintaining the debt ceiling. The United States could follow Denmark’s model and raise the debt ceiling to a stratospheric level. Some have also suggested that it might also force the limit to gradually increase with new funding.
Would it be a good idea to remove the debt limit?
Few lawmakers in either party benefit from a debt ceiling vote, and default that would be caused by failure to raise it would lead to economic disaster. With political polarization in the United States showing no signs of slowing down, it often seems that the risk of accidental default outweighs any fiscal responsibility encouraged by the debt ceiling.
However, it would take an act of Congress to remove the debt limit, and finding a deal is never easy.
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