Dump debt ceiling before GOP wins the House

It’s time: Congressional Democrats need to get the ball rolling on ending the risk of defaulting on the nation’s debt. If they don’t tackle this before the current term ends, we run the risk that a Republican House majority will be irresponsible enough to allow a default to happen. That’s why the Democrats should seize the opportunity during the lame-duck period after the November 8 midterms to eliminate the borrowing cap entirely.
The reason this is so pressing is that the US has a law limiting the amount of debt the government can borrow. Since the federal government almost always runs a deficit, the total amount of debt is almost always increasing, which means that periodically the limit must be raised as well. But because the government sets the limit, and the government also decides how much to borrow, the law is entirely superfluous; it’s as if credit card limits were set by the cardholder and not the card issuer.
The problem is that raising the limit takes an act of Congress, and many in Congress fear that voters will punish them based on a mistaken belief that it’s a vote to increase the deficit (even though there’s no evidence that voters would do such a thing). But if Congress fails to increase the limit, the US would default, leaving the government unable to pay its bills or fund crucial programs.
Which brings us to the threat: the possibility of a Republican House majority driven by the most extreme members of the party. We don’t know exactly what would happen if Republicans win a majority in November. But it does seem clear that the percentage of radicals — those who oppose compromise on principle and increasingly reject democratic norms and values — keeps growing within the House Republican conference and that those who are radicals are becoming more extreme.
How this will play out will depend on the size of the Republican majority (assuming there is one, which appears highly likely but not quite as certain as it did a few months ago) and how GOP leaders manage things. It’s possible that they will be surprisingly disciplined, focused on damaging President Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 election but avoiding actions that could make them look bad. It’s also possible they will turn on each other, perhaps even failing to elect a speaker and organise the House for some time, or splintering so badly that they wind up losing their majority to some sort of coalition of Democrats and dissident Republicans. The majority in the Senate will matter, too, although radicals appear to have less influence there than in the House. And when it comes to must-pass items such as the debt limit it only takes one chamber to cause a problem.
Yet the move that would do the most damage to the nation, and to Democratic chances in 2024, is also the one that Democrats could solve right now. A debt limit crisis could be put off — for a year, for two years, or permanently — if Congress acts before the year ends.

—Bloomberg