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The system is designed in this way though. If it wasn't meant to be a two step process, which allows a new party to make a different (painful) decision later on

The system is designed in this way though. If it wasn't meant to be a two step process, which allows a new party to make a different (painful) decision later on, then it wouldn't have been designed this way. There's a big problem with US debt these days. I'm not sure the Republican's gimmick today is the appropriate solution, but something has to be done, or this will be the undoing of the US. Increase income, reduce spending, there's not many ways to go about it. And you need to do both. Unless you just plan on devaluing the currency, which isn't going to last long with the nascent tug of war in reserve currency status being mounted by China. The US is very vulnerable right now and most people aren't willing to swallow the hard medicine required. The undoing of previous prominent powers historically came in similar fashions. More tax, reduced spending. Harder work.

ROTMetro 3y ago
No, the system is not designed to be a two step process. The debt ceiling was created to give authority to Treasury to issue debt to X limit so that Congress did not need to approve every single bond (think of it as a way to keep the separation of powers yet also run government debt in the more efficient manner needed in the modern world versus when the United States had 2.5 million people). It was not created as a Sword of Damocles. It was purely for administrative purposes not to replace actual budgets being created by a clearly incompetent Congress and horrible political class.