Moody’s: Just get rid of the debt ceiling and end all this foolishness

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Ratings agency Moody's on Monday suggested the United States should eliminate its statutory limit on government debt to reduce uncertainty among bond holders. Moody's suggests U.S. eliminate debt ceiling:

The United States is one of the few countries where Congress sets a ceiling on government debt, which creates "periodic uncertainty" over the government's ability to meet its obligations, Moody's said in a report.

"We would reduce our assessment of event risk if the government changed its framework for managing government debt to lessen or eliminate that uncertainty," Moody's analyst Steven Hess wrote in the report.

Moody's said it had always considered the risk of a U.S. debt default very low because Congress has regularly raised the debt ceiling during many decades, usually without controversy. Exactly. Because Congress has a constitutional duty to honor the debts of the United States, this has been a perfunctory procedural vote – until now. Just get rid of this unnecessary statutory requirement that serves no useful purpose and leads to this foolishness.

Nicole Belle breaks it down at crooksandliars.com in this post. Meet the Press Panel Plays The "Both Sides Do It" Argument On Debt Ceiling:

[L]et's be clear here: the ONLY reason that we have such sturm und drang over the debt ceiling debates is because THE REPUBLICANS WANT IT SO. They have voted (usually without incident and in the majority) to raise the debt ceiling 74 times since 1962, including 10 times in the past 10 years. Most of those ten votes have been basic, procedural votes that didn't even register a blip amongst these alleged "fiscally responsible" (never have quotes connoted so much irony) partisan hacks.

Since 1950, the federal government has taken action to increase the debt ceiling 86 times. 1 Now admittedly, some of these increases were much larger than others (and some were temporary), but that’s still 86 times Congress and the President worked together to increase the debt ceiling. Using my crude estimation of party control, the debt ceiling has been increased nearly as many times when Republicans had at least partial control over the federal government (21 times) as when Democrats were in control (25 times) (See the above table). Further, during this time period there were nearly twice as many increases under Republican presidents (57) as under Democratic Presidents (29). (Notably, the debt ceiling was increased 18 times while Ronald Reagan was president.)

Additionally, while the Republican position on the debt ceiling is clearly being driven by its Tea Party wing — many of whom were only recently elected — there are a whole lot of Republicans currently serving in Congress who only a few years ago voted to increase the federal debt limit. The difference was they had a fellow Republican in the White House.

This entire hostage situation with the full faith and credit of the country is ENTIRELY at the hands of the Republican Party. This is a vote they have made many, many times in the past. This is NOT and never has been an ideological divide.

But damnit, the media isn't going to let you blame the hostage takers for holding that gun to the country's collective heads. That would only be giving in to reality and as we well know, "reality has a well-known liberal bias." (Stephen Colbert).

Just get rid of this unnecessary statutory requirement that serves no useful purpose so we don't have to go through this kabuki theater of hostage taking over the federal debt ceiling every few months.