Clean Debt-Limit Increases are for Suckers or, Tomorrow We Scrimp But Tonight We Spend Like There’s No Tomorrow!

Earlier in the week, the House and Senate passed a
“clean” debt-limit increase which allows the federal government
to borrow more money without even pretending to restrain future
outlays.

Last October, when talk of government shutdown was in the air, I
recorded the video above arguing the only good debt deal was a
dirty debt deal.

Click above to watch “3 Reasons We Need a Dirty Deal on
Debt Ceiling.” Here’s part of
the argument:

As the Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) warns, “increased
borrowing by the federal government would eventually reduce private
investment in productive capital” while also increasing the risk of
a fiscal crisis spurred by jumpy investors worried about the
ability or willingness of the feds to pay back lenders.

None of this is controversial. Indeed, back in 2008, Candidate
Obama was pretty eloquent on the need to “break
that cycle of debt” created by Republican government under
George W. Bush.“we’ve lived through an era of easy money,” he
crooned in one of his stump speeches, “in which we were allowed and
even encouraged to spend without limits; to borrow instead of
save.” And what was it he used to say about increasing the
debt ceiling when he was just a wet-behind-ears senator? That
raising the debt limit signaled “a failure of leadership” and
“reckless policies” that were “shifting the burden of bad
choices today onto the backs of our children and
grandchildren.”

But today, all Obama can talk about are “clean” CRs and “clean”
debt-limit increases. This is what my colleague Matt Welch calls
“junky logic,” the sort of magical thinking particularly strong
among addicts who are always “gonna
kick tomorrow”. Really, man, this is the last time.

Read more here.