Raising the debt ceiling cannot be a bargaining chip

News struck last week that the Republicans, according to House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., will tie an increase in the debt ceiling to defunding the Affordable Care Act.

The Republicans, according to Cantor, will not raise the debt ceiling without an agreement that the implementation of Obamacare will be delayed or canceled.  

They probably think this is good politics.

Beating up on Obamacare is to Republicans, as drinking tea is to Britons. But they’re probably going to come to regret it.

First of all, the debt ceiling.

The debt ceiling is the amount of money the government is legally allowed to borrow. It’s totally arbitrary. It’s been raised more than 70 times since 1962. That’s about one-and-a-half times a year.

At literally no point in time has raising the debt ceiling had a negative impact.

Additionally, raising the debt ceiling merely allows the executive branch to spend the money that the legislative branch has already told it to spend.

In other words, failure to raise the debt ceiling is like your boss telling you to go buy some supplies and giving you an expired credit card to do so.

Most modern Republicans — despite their rhetoric — are not deficit hawks. They’re as responsible for debt as Democrats are.

Republicans have passed tax cuts and war that have added significantly to our deficit.

In fact, the Bush tax cuts will account for nearly half of all debt by 2019, making them the largest contributor to our debt.  

But those are facts, which are often separated from politics.

The politics don’t favor Republicans either.

A new CNN poll reveals that 62 percent of Americans think a government shutdown would lead either to a “crisis” or at least to “major problems.”

And 54 percent would blame Republicans, while only 25 percent would blame President Obama.

Democrats, in turn, can’t afford to cave on this.

The government needs to raise the debt ceiling.
The failure to do so in 2011 caused a credit downgrade, which has the potential of making it more expensive for the government to borrow money.

Even worse, it risks a government shutdown.

But Democrats have to defend Obamacare. Agreeing to delay Obamacare for a year will only lead to an exact replay of this situation a year from now.

Besides, Democrats have long held that Obamacare will become popular once it’s enacted.

That’s the idea.

I think Democrats are going to cave, one way or another.

They won’t cave all the way on Obamacare, they won’t delay it for a year or agree to defund it. But they’ll cave.

Dave Barry once wrote he was unsure of who to vote for because “Democrats seem to be the nicer people, but they have the management skills of celery.”

And Will McAvoy, the main character of HBO’s “The Newsroom,” ranted that “If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?”

The Republicans are dealing the Democrats a winning hand.

The question is, how are the Democrats going to lose it?

­— shlumorg@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @flukemorgan.