The debt ceiling

This is barely worth mention, but here goes. Congress raised the debt ceiling and the president signed it into law. This has so many people from both sides of the aisle up in arms. Read here.

From that article:

By passing such a huge increase in the debt limit, with no strings attached, Congress has effectively given the Bush administration a blank check to continue running large deficits, said Stephen S. Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley. "An open-ended license for this kind of fiscal irresponsibility is a recipe for disaster," he said.

Ok. Let's tell it like it is. The debt ceiling is like the credit limit on your credit card. Of course, you have control over how much you borrow on that card, but suppose you also had the authority to control your own credit limit. Now, tell me what significance that credit limit has (other than perhaps being symbolic)? The debt limit is meaningless!

I have always hated the fact that we have to go through this business of raising the debt limit all the time. It takes the focus off the real problem. The mere mention of the debt limit puts the focus on an arbitrary number and takes the focus off of the budget priorities. Finger pointing about who is to blame for the arbitrary number is not productive at all. Why don't we get back to work figuring out how to reduce that number?

But we won't have that debate today, and that should disappoint concerned people of either party persuasion. Democrats and moderate Senate Republicans should push hard to restore some sanity to the budget process which is spinning out of control. Deficits, in and of themselves, are not necessarily a big problem. However, a process that allows things like the prescription drug bill to pass without any discussion about how to pay for it in the long run is a process that is broken. I favor some discretion in the budget, but in the current economic environment, you cannot ignore long term implications. Health care continues to grow as a percentage of GDP, and any discussion thereof must take that into account. If we want prescription drug coverage, we need to figure out how to pay for it or we shouldn't do it.

Demographics, the saying goes, is destiny. In a simpler time, Congress didn't really need to worry about its implications for budgets. Those days are over. But please, let's have a rational discussion and not repeat what happened this week.