NONE…..
They are begging President Biden to go first…..
It IS that BAD…..
Republicans were fine with the last president signing $4.7 trillion in new deficits into law even before covid-19 hit (plus, trillions more thereafter). Now that a Democrat is president, though, the GOP’s born-again deficit hawks decided that Something Must Be Done about the nation’s fiscal health.
It’s not clear what Something is, however, beyond taking a valuable hostage: the nation’s debt ceiling.
That’s the statutory limit on how much the government can borrow to pay off bills that previous Congresses already agreed to. Not raising the debt ceiling would force the federal government to renege on some of those commitments, possibly missing payments on obligations such as interest payments, Social Security benefits and military salaries. The other potential consequences of an even accidental default include, in the near term, a global financial crisis; and, in the longer term, higher borrowing costs, because the United States would no longer look like the safe, reliable borrower we have always been….