Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner announced on Wednesday that in addition to the fiscal cliff deadline at the end of the year, the United States will also hit its borrowing limit on December 31st, meaning the debt-limit will have to be raised a lot sooner than previously believed. Unlike going over the fiscal cliff, which will have very little economic impact in the short-term, refusing to raise the debt-limit and forcing the United States to default, would have immediate and catastrophic effects. Not only would the US economy be impacted, but the entire world’s economy would as well. But that won’t stop Republicans from using the debt-limit as leverage to force the President to agree to steep spending cuts that target working families across America.
Between the manufactured “fiscal cliff” and the Republicans refusal to compromise over the debt-limit, never in our nation’s history has Congress been responsible for inflicting so many economic wounds on our nation. And we can blame the Tea Party for the chaos on Capitol Hill today, as they were elected by billionaires in 2010, they clearly have no interest in governing, and no knowledge of what the debt-limit even is. And in blaming the Tea Party, we also have to blame the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed billionaires to spend unlimited money electing these retrograde politicians who are hell-bent on playing disaster capitalism to remake America into a billionaires’ paradise.
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