Debt Ceiling

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A week before his inauguration, President Barack Obama said he wouldn't negotiate with Republicans over raising the federal debt limit. At an unexpected news conference Jan. 14, the president asserted that he won't trade cuts in government spending in exchange for raising the borrowing limit. "If the goal is to make sure that we are being responsible about our debt and our deficit, if that's the conversation we're having, I'm happy to have that conversation," Mr. Obama said. "What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people.

The Democrats controlled the presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives for two years and yet were unable to come up with a budget for the country. Still, you claim the GOP is "playing chicken" over raising the debt ceiling ("GOP plays chicken," June 5)? At least Republicans are facing the terrible situation we are in. That non-taxpaying Democrat, Timothy Geithner, has cried "wolf" on at least four occasions so far. Now he is trying "the sky is falling. " So, of course, it must be George Bush's fault that we don't have a budget.

Your view of the debt ceiling crisis has a lot of merit, except that the current administration (and, to some extent, the last one as well) has shown no inclination to manage the finances of this country in a responsible manner ("Just say no to financial insanity," Jan. 16). From no budgets passed by the Senate in at least three years (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should be impeached) to President Barack Obama commissioning the Bowles-Simpson team and then not doing any of its recommendations, the country is marching toward a much greater "fiscal cliff" than the small one just averted.

Hey Baltimore Sun, stop with the scare tactics. If the debt limit is not raised by August 2, contrary to your editorial ("GOP plays chicken" June 5) the sky will not fall. Not raising the debt level only means that the Obama administration and Congress will have to start taking money from other programs to pay the interest on our debt so we will not default. What other programs? Well, we can start with eliminating foreign aid to nations that do not support us. Also stop the implementation of Obamacare that the majority of Americans do not want (remember the 2010 elections)

The debt limit vote in Congress that came up last week was a cheap political ploy with potentially catastrophic results. I applaud the three Maryland House Democrats — Dutch Ruppersberger, John Sarbanes and Donna Edwards — who had the good sense to support increasing the debt ceiling. Shame on their fellow Democrats who caved to the threat of a 30-second attack ad. They had a chance to do the right thing. Just because you vote to raise the debt ceiling does not mean you oppose spending cuts.

Regarding the editorial "GOP plays chicken" ( June 5) , it's worth noting the sudden drop off in Republican support for raising the debt ceiling as soon as President Obama took office. Under President Bush the Republicans provided, on average, 39 of the 50 votes that were generally needed to raise the debt ceiling. But under President Obama, the Republicans have provided only one vote on average each of the three times the Senate has voted on it. The national debt in nominal dollars quadrupled during the Reagan and Bush presidencies from 1980 to 1992.

Far from being a "political stunt" ( "GOP plays chicken," June 5), the showdown over raising the debt ceiling is our best (and perhaps only) hope to restrain the runaway spending of the Obama administration. The president is unwilling or incapable of reversing the policies which have given us a bloated bureaucracy with stimulus programs which fail to stimulate, subsidies for ethanol which consumes as much energy as it produces and "investments" in "green" energy which could never compete with existing technology without huge federal handouts.

Your editorial "GOP plays chicken" (June 5) shows a lamentable lack of familiarity with the concept of "playing chicken. " It takes two to engage in this pastime. Your editorial should have been titled "Democrats and GOP play chicken," because that is what is happening. The two groups have opposite aims: Democrats want to continue the spending spree, and Republicans want to curb it. The Democrats have not put forth a budget for two years, and they have spent trillions of dollars that the country does not have.

You've been following the debt ceiling debate, right? What? You haven't been? Why not? Is it because watching people argue over long-term debt restructuring makes your eyes glaze over? We don't blame you. So while you've been doing something clearly more interesting - say, rearranging your [insert secret, obscure hobby here] collection -  we've been following the “mano-a-mano” struggle between President Barack Obama and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner.

Republicans in Washington seem to have recognized that refusing to raise the debt ceiling and putting the nation on the brink of default in a trumped-up "crisis" isn't playing well with the general public, so they're switching tactics. Now, instead of blindly driving off the cliff of fiscal Armageddon, they are pushing for the Obama administration to prioritize federal obligations - so the country can be late on some bills but not on debt payments, Social Security checks and pay for active-duty members of the military.

I just read your editorial, "Another cliff ahead?" (Jan. 4). Please understand Washington does not do anything these days unless it's forced to. The only leverage to get Democrats on board to have a serious discussion on our debt and the slowing of spending growth (calling it cuts is a joke) in the future are issues like the debt ceiling. You agree that we have a debt problem (as do most Americans), but do not want the Republicans to use the debt ceiling as leverage, then I have a question for you and your colleagues.

You state that the Republicans' "demanding spending cuts to reduce our deficit is holding the debt ceiling increase hostage" ("Another cliff ahead?" Jan. 4). Really? Most American citizens would have the common sense to cut spending if confronted with a problem of paying creditors! This would be done to ensure that the problem would not have to be dealt with in the future. Cut future spending and pay future bills! Republicans and Democrats should also hold themselves accountable and prior to raising "our" debt ceiling should demand spending cuts.

With the fiscal cliff surmounted, at least temporarily, a new Congress sworn in and Republicans licking their self-inflicted wounds, it is tempting to theorize that a new political reality has taken hold in the nation's capital - one where the American economy won't be taken hostage by the House GOP and Washington won't bounce around from one trumped-up crisis to another. The best evidence of this would be the lopsided and bipartisan votes in favor of the final tax package approved by both the House and Senate.

The announcement that House Speaker John Boehner has offered to take the debt ceiling off the table in the current "fiscal cliff" negotiations is, in one sense, a welcome development. If the Senate agrees, we will temporarily be spared the sort of embarrassing brinkmanship that accompanied the last increase, in August 2011. But a year from now, we will likely be back in the same place, where the debt ceiling is being held hostage by people who have no qualms about using the good credit of the United States as a negotiating ploy.

The U.S. Senate hasn't passed a budget in four years, during which time our budget deficits have averaged $1.1 trillion a year. The national debt is $16 trillion and rising, and it is now more than 70 percent of GDP. Meanwhile, unfunded mandates for Social Security and Medicare exceed tens of trillions of dollars. Yet according to The Sun, Republicans are the ones who are being irresponsible by attempting to use the debt ceiling to restore fiscal sanity to the nation's budget chaos ("The GOP's cynical debt limit ploy," Dec. 10)

The House of Representatives approved a bipartisan deal to raise the nation's debt ceiling Monday in a vote that splintered the Democratic and Republican members of Maryland's congressional delegation and pushed the months-long battle toward a climax in the Senate on Tuesday. In an indication of how deeply the proposal challenged the traditional political landscape, several Baltimore-area Democrats who tend to vote similarly wound up on opposite sides of the roll call. Maryland's two House Republicans, Reps.

The whole process of "debt ceiling" negotiations between President Obama and Congressional Republicans has baffled me. The White House explanation seems to be that the president is trying to be "the adult in the room" while letting the Republicans act like children, hopefully to their discredit. But I have a different view. The Republicans are not behaving like children. They are behaving like thugs. Thugs running a protection racket. So we need more than an adult in the room. We need the cop on the beat!

Doyle McManus is absolutely correct ("Reading the tea leaves - post-Iowa, a weaker movement," Jan. 6) when he observes that the tea party has clearly lost influence, and of all the Republican nominees, Mitt Romney would be the last we'd choose. Congratulations to those who've painted us as radical, racist and terrorists. We've apparently managed to procrastinate once again in addressing the core of our fiscal dilemma. Oh, there are signs that the economy is wakening, and everyone's hopeful that somehow things will fix themselves, but they won't.

Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot's recent letter to the editor stating his opposition to another debt ceiling increase says it all ("Maryland can't keep borrowing and spending," Jan. 4). As a "proud Democrat," Mr. Franchot writes, "my vote last month to oppose an increase in the state's debt ceiling wasn't based upon my party or philosophy, but on sheer common sense. " I've known all along that Democrats have no common sense, and now they've said it in print. R.A. Hausmann, Joppa