JamulBlog

Fool or knave?  It doesn't really matter...  Sometimes you really can't make this stuff up.  Here's Obama, in a speech to the Business Roundtable:

Now, this debt ceiling — I just want to remind people in case you haven’t been keeping up — raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy.  All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you’ve already racked up, Congress.  It’s a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved.

I must be one of the slow ones.  Here I was, all along, thinking that when the debt ceiling gets raised, we'll incur more debt.  My slow thinking goes like this: “If they raise the debt ceiling, well then of course they're going to use that ability to borrow more!”  And there's some evidence to support such slow thinking: that's exactly what's happened over 100 times before.

So what is Obama on about?  He's referring to a long-time legislative practice: Congress authorizes expenditures, then later says “Oh, gee, I guess we have to actually, like, pay for this!”  When they don't have the cash available (and they never do), they authorize the Treasury to borrow the money (by selling Treasury bonds).  So Obama is saying – to a bunch of business executives, who most assuredly know better – that the two acts are totally disconnected.  That's a great piece of legerdemain for the progressives: they get to pretend that spending is totally disconnected from borrowing.  They may actually be stupid enough to believe it, but I strongly suspect that they (including Obama) really are knowingly trying to hoodwink us...