Most Americans Have False Idea Of What Debt Ceiling Means

What it doesn’t mean is incurring additional expenditures. Raising the debt ceiling gives us the ability to pay for debts already incurred. It’s money already approved and spent by Congress. Once the ceiling is raised, Treasury can borrow the money necessary to pay monies already rung up by Congress.

Nearly three in four Republicans, 73 percent, said the debt limit was for “future expenditures,” but a majority of Democrats, 53 percent, also agreed. Independents, at 62 percent, fell in between the two major parties.

The confusion is one reason President Obama has continued to play professor and try to explain the law to Americans. “This is not raising our debt,” Obama said Tuesday at a press conference. “It does not add a dime to our debt.”

…Most economists say that failing to allow the federal government to borrow more money, which would eventually lead to defaulting on bills, would seriously harm the economy. In the summer of 2011, when Congress last flirted with allowing the nation to breach the debt limit, the stock market took a dive and the economy slowed. The nation also lost its AAA credit rating from Standard & Poors for the first time.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.