John,

Here we go yet again. With an October deadline upon us, the United States came dangerously close to hitting the debt ceiling, potentially defaulting, and thus sending the global economy into chaos.

Yes, we've seen this movie before, year after year. And it isn't getting any better.

While Democrats were prepared to raise the debt ceiling, radical Republicans in the Senate were about to force the country into yet another economic cliffhanger, even though raising the debt limit does not create any new spending and just ensures the government pays for obligations that have already been made.

When Democrats are in power, Republicans have continuously used raising the debt ceiling as an opportunity to threaten and extort concessions from Democrats.

It’s selfish, irresponsible, and very dangerous.

Fortunately, there is a simple way we could end their hostage-taking tactics once and for all: We can simply abolish the debt ceiling, which is just an arbitrary limit set by Congress on the amount of funding that the United States Treasury may borrow.

The debt ceiling can just be raised automatically, or abolished altogether, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently suggested.

Sounds good to you? Then sign our petition today in support of ending the manufactured debt ceiling crisis we have now -- and stop Republicans from threatening our economy again.

ADD Your Name

Democracy for America is fighting to make government work better for all of us -- and requiring a congressional debt ceiling vote simply doesn't do that. In today's contentious political climate, it just introduces an unnecessary amount of risk into our system with absolutely no reward.

Republicans are playing with fire -- and rest assured they will threaten to shut down the government again. They’ll continue holding the debt ceiling hostage to push forward their agenda of cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

It is clear we can't trust Republicans to value the full faith and credit of the United States over their own political agenda. Our country desperately needs an adult in the room before these ideologues finally push us over the edge into a financial disaster.

The bottom line is that we must take away Republicans' ability to threaten economic collapse and do away with their hostage negotiations tactics. Sign our petition now to end this routine manufactured crisis by telling Democrats to abolish the debt ceiling.

ADD Your Name

Thank you for adding your name,

– Tre

Tre Graves
Digital Organizing Coordinator
Democracy for America