This week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced the Department began deploying “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting on the nation’s $31.38 trillion statutory debt limit and in order to continue paying the federal government's bills. Those measures are expected to stave off default and keep the federal government operating until early June.
How did we get here?
For two years, the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress went on a $5 trillion spending spree, paying no regard to the debts pushed onto future generations.
After the last massive debt limit increase, it took Democrats only a little more than a year to hit the limit on the federal government’s credit card again. Despite record tax revenues from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, even in spite of shutting down the economy in the early days of COVID, federal spending continues to skyrocket and our nation's financial trajectory remains unsustainable. Now, families are facing record-high inflation as a result of unnecessary government spending, soaring interest rates to try to tame it, and an unsustainable national debt.
Put another way, our national debt has risen $4 trillion in just two years and stands at $31 trillion. Now, Democrats in Washington want a clean bill to raise the debt ceiling with no conditions or government program reforms made.
A raise in the debt limit without implementing spending guardrails will simply schedule another debt crisis in the near future. However, there is a bipartisan path forward to reduce our debt and restore fiscal sanity. House Republicans are working in good faith to pair a debt ceiling increase with budgetary reform measures to avert a debt crisis and protect American taxpayers long-term. It's important to note, all eight major spending reforms made since 1985 have been enacted in tandem with debt ceiling legislation.
I’ve always said it’s not what you make that gets you in trouble, it’s what you spend. Washington’s out-of-control spending must end and any discussion of raising the debt limit needs to be paired with spending cuts and reform. If families across North Carolina are required to pay their debts and live within their means, then the federal government should do the same.
