Hikes in the debt ceiling - without any political demands from the opposition party - had been routine until President Obama took office.
Debt ceiling is something that, you know, any time the president asks for the authority to increase the debt ceiling, the debt burden on our children and grandchildren, I think that requires a pretty serious discussion, robust debate.
I think the whole issue of a debt ceiling makes no sense to me whatsoever. Anybody who is remotely adroit at arithmetic doesn't need a debt ceiling to tell you where you are.
An increase in the debt ceiling should be accompanied by fundamental policy reforms, substantial budget savings, and a strong enforcement mechanism to tie the hands of any future Congress.
Goals work. Pick one debt, and then put every dime into paying down that one debt. Once that debt is paid off, start paying down the next debt. Pretty soon it's time to move from paying debt to building savings.
The Republican argument that raising the debt ceiling encourages additional future spending is logically irresponsible. The debt ceiling has to be raised to authorize spending already approved by Congress. Despite that fallacy, the GOP has been able to score political points with its argument.
Obama has been perhaps the most partisan President since Truman. He hasn't learned to be civil - note his insulting speech to Paul Ryan, who did us the courtesy of scoring a budget. The president has to talk to Republicans when it comes to the debt ceiling. He has reached the debt ceiling before anyone expected.
If you ask the question of Americans, should we pay our bills? One hundred percent would say yes. There's a significant misunderstanding on the debt ceiling. People think it's authorizing new spending. The debt ceiling doesn't authorize new spending; it allows us to pay obligations already incurred.
No amount of debt restructuring, even debt forgiveness, will help the Greeks achieve real prosperity. What they need is not short-term relief but, rather, a long-term cure.
The president says we need to raise the debt ceiling because America pays its bills. No if we paid our bills we wouldn't have all this debt. The reason we have to raise the debt ceiling is because we can't pay our bills and we have to borrow money because we don't have any money to pay our bills.
The debate we won't be having is whether or not the debt ceiling should be raised. We will not have a situation where people will hold the American economy hostage in order to achieve a specific agenda - at least not until 2013. So we think that is incredibly important as a matter of economic good.
If we reach the debt ceiling, we don't have to default. Getting to that point just won't allow us to reach new debt.
The most serious problems lie in the financial sphere, where the economy's debt overhead has grown more rapidly than the 'real' economy's ability to carry this debt. [...] The essence of the global financial bubble is that savings are diverted to inflate the stock market, bond market and real estate prices rather than to build new factories and employ more labor.
Not raising the debt ceiling does not trigger a default, because we've got enough money to service our debts. Default is when you can't service your debt.
For highly indebted governments, low interest rates are critical to keep debt levels sustainable and ease pressure to restructure debt and recapitalize banks. The shift to a high sovereign-debt-yield equilibrium would make it impossible to achieve fiscal balance.
The United States is the most indebted country in the world. It has almost 17 billion dollars of debt with the rest of the world while living off the world's savings. They are living off the savings of the people of Greece, the savings of the people of Spain, France etc. All of those countries that save their reserves in the banks in dollars are simply financing the American economy, and that is why the average American citizen consumes two and a half times more than their income.