How The Debt Ceiling Debate Impacts The Average American
If you’ve been watching the news lately, you have probably heard all about the “debt ceiling,” and how disastrous it will be if Congress doesn’t raise it. Fortunately, the sky isn’t actually falling — at least not yet. Just like other times in history, some negotiating and wrangling must take place within Congress before an agreement can be reached.
In the meantime, you may be wondering what the debt ceiling actually is and why should you even care?
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Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in business and economics at the Pacific Research Institute, says that no increase to the debt ceiling will result in “short-term costs created by delayed payments, furloughed workers, and — depending on the disruptions — adverse impacts in the financial markets.”
He also points out that there are costs from raising the debt ceiling, too. However, the current debate is obscuring the proper perspective on the issue, he says.
In a story Winegarden recently published in National Review, he argued that the root cause of the problem is rampant government spending that has occurred over the past two decades. He writes that our excessive spending “harms the U.S. economy, contributes to global-capital market distortions, and is costly to taxpayers.”
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