Fiscal Conservatives vs. GOP Establishment on Debt Ceiling

Big spending politicians in Washington consider the debt ceiling limit to be pesky and annoying.  They despise the legislative restriction on the amount of national debt that can be issued by the Treasury. Instead, they would rather spend to their hearts’ (and lobbyists’) content and not be subjected to debates on whether raising the amount of money that the U.S. can legally borrow is destructive to the nation’s financial stability. (Hint: a nation $16.7 trillion in debt is not sustainable).

Fortunately, there are several lawmakers that are willing to force them to have that necessary debate. Fiscal conservatives in the Senate such as Senators Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz are fighting to stop the GOP and Democrat establishment from raising the debt ceiling behind closed doors with no strings attached. 

Last week, Senator John McCain and the Democrat majority attempted to disregard regular order to sneak through a debt ceiling increase as part of a budget compromise. These dishonest tactics in Washington are nothing new. The GOP establishment wants to allow big government Republicans to cast a symbolic vote against the debt ceiling and nonetheless allow the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. 

This is their ideal outcome so they can tell their constituents, “hey, I voted against the debt ceiling. Look how fiscally responsible I am.” Yet, they wanted to raise the debt ceiling the entire time and gave Democrats a free pass to do so.

 As Senator Mike Lee said, “they want to go straight to closed-door, backroom meetings. There senior negotiators in the House and Senate will be free to wait until a convenient or official deadline and ram through their compromise un-debated, un-amended, and mostly unread.”

Congress hit the debt ceiling on May 19. For the first time in history, Congress set the debt ceiling for a date rather than a dollar amount. This was decided after the debt ceiling was last hit in January. Even though $300 billion in debt has been added in the past three months, the Treasury Department says that it has enough money to make it for a little while longer.

It is an outrage that establishment senators want to push through a debt ceiling limit without even having a proper debate. Click here to send a message to your senators demanding they resist voting to raise the national debt ceiling behind America’s back.