White House Wants to Raise Federal Debt Limit

January 3, 2011 RSS Feed Print
  • Comment (14)

More News

BY Kenneth R. Bazinet
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - The White House's chief economist is warning there'll be a worse catastrophe than the 2008 financial meltdown if Congress doesn't increase the government's credit limit.

"I don't see why anybody's talking about playing chicken with the debt ceiling," said Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

"If we get to the point where you've damaged the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity." he told ABC's This Week.

Goolsbee urged Congress to raise the debt limit, but many new Tea Party-influenced Republican lawmakers and mainstream conservatives trash the idea of raising the cap on the amount of debt accrued by the federal government. [Read more about the deficit and national debt.]

Tea Party darling Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said on CBS' Face the Nation that the message from voters was "stop spending money that you don't have."

"I am not in favor of raising the debt ceiling," Bachmann said.

[See who donates the most money to Bachmann.]

The $13.9 trillion national debt is approaching the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. Congress will likely consider raising the ceiling this spring.

Pat Toomey, a conservative ex-congressman from Pennsylvania elected to the Senate in November, said severe spending cuts must be on the table in the new Congress or he won't support raising the debt level.

"We are on a disaster track," Toomey warned on NBC's Meet the Press.

You might be interested in...

Tags:
New York Daily News,
Congress,
deficit and national debt,
Michele Bachmann,
unemployment,
Pat Toomey

Reader Comments Read all comments (14)

Add Your Thoughts
Your comment will be posted immediately, unless it is spam or contains profanity. For more information, please see our Comments FAQ.

If IRS is required to release the composite amount of Social security taxed(Form 1040 line 20b) once it is available , It may raise many eyebrows!,and dampen any push to reduce benefits. The estimated actual tax could be directed to Social Security fundings

T. E. White of GA 4:07PM January 04, 2011

I read a good comment on this that is worth repeating here "Why is it always prospectively a “crisis” or “catastrophe” to limit government spending in any way, but business as usual to take double-digit percentages of incomes from their actual earners?"

If any of us spent ourselves into debt like these yahoos in the government have done, we would have been put into jail for failure to pay back on our debts. They should realize that they have to stop this obscene military spending(and Iraq wants us out, why spend money on them anymore), stop treating themselves as though they were royalty(1.5 billion to just cover the president, disgusting), take pay and benefit cuts, stop taking our Social Security money(it belongs in a place where it can earn interest), and hundreds of other common sense actions that would cut the spending and start paying back the debt. I read somewhere that the interest on the debt was in the 100s of billions of dollars. Are these people idiots not to realize that this money could be saved by getting rid of the debt? Personally, I think they are.

Kurt of MN 7:39AM January 04, 2011

The budget won't get balanced because we have more politicians than statesmen (and women), i.e., real leaders, in Washington. Politicians point fingers and speak in sound bites, but watch how none will want their constituents to suffer from cuts needed to balance the budget. Thus the debt ceiling will have to be raised, else we will be in default on our debt. That would mean a collapse of the bond market and the implosion of global stock markets. This is not an impossibility, given that the first legislative action after the midterms--with their so-called mandate to reduce spending--was that the government borrowed another trillion dollars, approximately 700 billion of it to extend tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

M.H.G. of CO 8:34PM January 03, 2011

Photo Galleries

History of U.S. Bombings, Failed Attempts

A look at some of the worst bombings in the U.S. and infamous failed attempts.

advertisement

Latest Videos