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No, raising the debt ceiling isn't like running up your 'credit card' bill [1]

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Date: 2023-01-25

For example, as reported by MSNBC’s Steve Benen, here’s newly elected Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy delivering this now- standard talking point to his credulous media bobble-head and right-wing shill, Maria Bartiromo:

“If you gave your child a credit card and they kept hitting the limit, you wouldn’t just keep increasing it. You would sit down with them to identify where they are overspending and where they can change their behavior. It’s time for the federal government to do the same thing."

As Benen points out, McCarthy employed the same analogy in four separate instances in January alone; it was also repeated by Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise on Jan. 10. So-called Republican “moderates” like Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R. PA) have jumped on the “credit card” bandwagon as well. It’s clearly a focus-group tested theme they intend to push as the country approaches the brink of disaster, probably intending to shout it loudly even as the country tumbles over the precipice into an unprecedented fiscal calamity.

The problem though (leaving aside the fact that the U.S. government cannot, does not and has never operated in any fashion similar an individual “household”) is that the analogy is pure garbage. Its most obvious flaw is that the U.S. government is not just the borrower here, but the lender as well: we are, in fact, the credit card company and can raise our limit, if necessary, anytime we want (in fact we have, dozens of times, over the past century). And our “government” is made up of the very people afforded with the right to pass laws on how much to spend, and what to spend it on. As Benen notes, “[I]f House Republicans want to introduce legislation to cut spending they consider unnecessary, they’re welcome to do so at any time,” without holding the country hostage.

This was also pointed out by University of Michigan Economics Professor Justin Wolfers in a Jan. 19 interview on CNN. From the transcript, as reported by Eric Kleefeld, writing for Media Matters:

ERICA HILL (ANCHOR): And this something I think that Speaker McCarthy was really looking to do, so he compared the debt limit to a family’s finances saying, “look, Congress at this point can’t just keep raising the government’s credit card limit.” That’s an analogy I think most Americans can understand. And it’s one you called “cute,” but you also said it’s wrong. Why doesn’t that example work here? JUSTIN WOLFERS (ECONOMICS PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN): So, it’s wrong because the person who raises your credit card limit is the credit card company, it’s the lender. Speaker McCarthy is part of the government. The government’s the borrower. The only choice the borrower makes — and we all face it every month — is the credit card bill comes due, are you going to pay it or not?

So, when Republicans commit to refusing to raise the ceiling on prior borrowing that they themselves— as “the government” — have already incurred (through tax cuts and spending) what they are actually suggesting is that the nation simply not pay its bills: that it should instead behave like a deadbeat borrower would. That is the exact, polar opposite of “moral responsibility.”

But that’s only one thing wrong with the “credit card” trope; there are far more basic, more important distinctions that refute the entire comparison. As Benen points out:

But just as notably, if we take this dumb metaphor just a little further, the family that received the bill doesn’t get to tell the credit card company, “We’ll refuse to pay this bill unless you meet our demands and pay us a ransom.” Republicans insist that the government’s approach to bills should mirror that of typical American families. Fine. If families can’t refuse to meet their financial obligations unless they receive some kind of reward, why exactly do GOP leaders think the government should do this?

Because Republicans generally will only speak on Fox News (where they are guaranteed “softball” questions and their answers are almost never challenged) one might expect this this kind of disingenuous sophistry to be limited in its effectiveness. But even media outlets that should know better have seized on this comparison in an effort to explain the looming debt issue to their audience. As Kleefeld reports, on Jan. 22 CNN’s John King somberly intoned that ““The government’s credit card comes due, and there is no plan to pay it down.” This was echoed by Tia Mitchell, the Washington correspondent for the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, in a panel discussion on the same program, when she opined “And I think the people at home are looking at Congress — they’re not just looking at the White House, but they’re looking at Congress — and they’re saying, ‘We have to control our spending, because we only have so much we can put on our credit card.” Kleefeld notes other cable news reporters, including Brian Chung and Garrett Haake of NBC that have also contributed to reinforcing this sloppy metaphor.

The fact that Republicans only care about the “debt ceiling” when a Democrat is in the Oval Office --and the fact that they themselves incurred 25% of the national debt throughout the Trump administration— should really be the beginning and end of this “debate.” But if Republicans actually follow through with destroying Americans’ hard-earned savings, jeopardizing all of our futures and wrecking the country with this dangerous, cynical brinkmanship, they’re going to need a lot more than cute analogies to fall back on when they’re forced to face the American public.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/25/2149261/-No-raising-the-debt-ceiling-isn-t-like-running-up-your-credit-card-bill

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