Leaderless Republicans rush headlong toward default

[Zorro]

“Unfortunately, Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations.”

— President Ronald Reagan, Sept. 26, 1987

This is not Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party. Neither is it the party of the Republican Revolution of ’94, the tea-party-infused GOP of 2010, nor even the Republican Party that surrendered to Donald Trump in 2016.

No, this new version of the GOP is at once so radical and so lacking in responsible leadership that it is plunging headlong and unified toward forcing default on the full faith and credit of the United States. Congressional Republicans are inviting economic calamity.

Reagan presided over 18 increases in the debt ceiling during his presidency. George W. Bush’s treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, compared those who opposed raising the limit to “terrorists.” Former Republican House speaker John Boehner called it “insanity” to hold the debt limit hostage — and those who did it “crazies.”

There have been squabbles over the debt limit for decades, including some near misses, but the United States has never defaulted on the debt its two parties have jointly accumulated. Though crazies threatened default, grown-ups in the GOP — Bob Dole, Boehner, an earlier incarnation of Mitch McConnell — pulled them back from the abyss.

Until now. The crazies are in charge. McConnell, the Senate GOP leader, says flatly that he won’t vote to increase the debt ceiling, and he isn’t even negotiating. “That’s their problem,” he says of the Democrats. And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has threatened to filibuster any debt-ceiling increase, which means Democrats can’t avoid default unless 10 Republican senators agree.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/21/debt-limit-republicans-default-mcconnell-cruz/