By Steve Levy

Any American with an ounce of common sense understands that federal spending is out of control. A $31 trillion debt level and yearly deficits now regularly in the trillions is a recipe for fiscal disaster. If we keep this up, it’s not a matter of if we collapse, but when and how hard.
So we totally agree with Republicans in the House who want to stand firm and draw a line in the sand.
But we think there’s a better way of doing it than holding up extensions to the debt ceiling.
We do not agree with past actions that brought us to this debt level. Congress
members on both sides of the aisle should never have let it get to this level.
Republicans talk a good game but spent quite extravagantly when fellow Republican Donald
Trump was in office.
Yet, despite the willingness of Republicans to spend, spend, spend, they’re nowhere near as
bad as the Democrats in Congress. Since Joe Biden came into office, an astonishing $6 trillion
has been spent by the Democrats who controlled the house, the Senate and the White House.
And this was after the economy had generally recovered from the COVID slide.
So there is indeed an urgent need to pump the brakes on spending. The problem with using the
debt ceiling as the basis to do so is that this is money that Congress has already voted to
spend. Not agreeing to raise the debt ceiling to pay for it would, in essence, put us in default,
threaten our credit ratings, and likely lead to a drop in most people’s 401(k)s.
The bigger question is how this crazy system was ever developed in the first place, whereby we
agree to spend money now but don’t agree to pay for it until a later day to be determined. This is
absolutely absurd. So here are four solutions:
1…..In exchange for raising the debt ceiling, Republicans should require Democrats to join them
in changing this atrocious system so that no spending in the future can take place without a
simultaneous agreement to have it paid for, even if it’s through borrowing.