Keep the Debt Ceiling, but Use It as Intended!

Liberals say ditch the debt ceiling that recently put the United States on the verge of an economic meltdown. They decry how the opposition party, the Republicans, clearly used it as a tool to try to humiliate President Obama.

Liberals point out that other sovereign countries don't have debt ceiling requirements, and seem not to suffer from that lack.

Should the debt ceiling therefore be eliminated?

The Founders intended it as a check on "cowboy wars", on military actions undeclared by presidents. The bombing of Libya is an example of such an action - the Obama administration justifies saying it is not really a war, that it is just a military action, by saying "no lives have been lost", meaning no U.S. lives, like Libyan lives don't count. The Congress would have been justified to use the debt ceiling check to oppose this action for what it is, an undeclared "cowboy war". Using it as they did, however, in an attempt to humiliate a sitting president is, of course, unacceptable.

But this egregious and shameful misuse doesn't justify getting rid of the debt ceiling.

That's because the debt ceiling serves as a necessary "check and balance" against an imperial presidency going off to war without congressional support - and the United States has a long and sorry history of "cowboy wars", and a frightening trend toward an imperial presidency with almost unlimited powers. Indeed, Obama is militarily involved on more fronts than George W. Bush ever was.

The argument that other countries don't have debt ceiling requirements is therefore specious. Other countries, except perhaps Russia and China, don't have a comparable recent history of "cowboy wars", of unilaterally deciding to intervene in the sovereign affairs of other countries. (Russia and China falsely claim, for instance, that their actions in Chechnya and Tibet are police in nature, quelling of civil unrest, denying what they really are - wars of genocide on nations that should by all rights be sovereign countries.)

Of course, government should be conducted on a pay-as-it-goes basis. Of course, any failure to do so should result in the elected or appointed perpetrators being immediately removed from office.

And of course, most wars almost inevitably require a government to go into debt. The ever increasing debt in the United States is not the result of social services to the poor, but of a colossal and fast-growing military budget.

Once government goes over the line into debt, and lightning doesn't strike (nobody gets booted out of office), then there is no more restraint, no more shame, and the temptation to go ever farther into debt is irresitable - the temptation to "solve" budgetary impasses not by negotiation but by giving everybody what they want - giving everybody their big piece of pork to wave in front of the voters back home.

And the larger the deficit grows, and the larger looms the very real possibility of a powerful economic entity, the United States, going entirely bankrupt - and taking the world, economically, down with it.

And this reality is exacerbated by the cuts in social services and the transfer of taxation from the super-wealthy and their corporation to the poorer and middle classes - all while the military budget continues to grow at an alarming rate.

The solution is simple.

Deep cuts in the military budget.

Tax the super-rich at the rate they should be taxed.

Tax corporations rather than giving them public money.

Support social services that enable poor and middle-class people to survive, to get on their feet.