I'm Not Happy to Have Been Right About This

Now, Ed Feulneur, the President of the ultra-conservative The Heritage Foundation, has written an article urging his "fellow consevatives" to hold their ground in the debt limit debate, using the same metaphor of Colonel Nicholson (whom he calls "an upright British colonel") as I did, but with the twist that Congressional Republicans should emulate the Colonel and blow up the bridge. He urges,

"It isn’t too late for us yet. Government spending is currently at 24.3 percent of GDP, and U.S. debt held by the public stands at 69.1 percent of GDP. This bridge needs to be stopped." 

 

The problem with his reasoning is of course that raising the debt limit, of debt ceiling as it's also known, is really a mere formality. It has always been raised in the past because doing so does not mean increasing government spending, it means honoring the debts that the federal govenment has already incurred--not raising the debt ceiling is the same as openly declaring to the whole world that the US government is a deadbeat that doesn't pay its debts. In other words, it would be financial and economic suicide. In the video below, Lawrence O'Donnell gives his take on the situation:

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