Leave it to The Billings Gazette editorial board to copy and paste MSNBC, Pres. Barack Obama, and Sen. Jon Tester’s (D-MT) talking points right into their editorial.
The Gazette, much like MSNBC and President Obama, is following suit and twisting the words of President Ronald Reagan to somehow justify the continued unchecked overspending.
The impending crisis is that House Republicans refuse to raise the federal borrowing limit to finance the spending Congress previously authorized. House members, including Denny Rehberg of Montana, are holding the nation’s credit rating hostage in an ideological battle over future spending.
The numbers are much bigger now. But the dilemma is similar: The U.S. must be able to borrow to meet the obligations it has incurred to Americans and to U.S. creditors. Social Security recipients, military veterans, federal workers and others are worried they won’t receive their August checks.
Congress must avert disaster. Americans who pray for wise leadership may consider praying that today’s leaders see what Reagan saw: the urgency of preventing a national credit crisis.
While The Gazette would have you believe that the debt ceiling itself is the only problem facing our country, the actual ratings agencies tell a much different story. The dramatic over-spending, more so than simply raising the debt ceiling, is the real problem facing our country.
Since The Gazette missed this, you may have too. Bloomberg News has this:
David Beers may be the most influential political commentator in the U.S. right now, even though he’s hardly a household name, that isn’t technically his job and he’s only visiting.
As the London-based managing director of sovereign credit ratings at Standard & Poor’s, Beers will help determine whether the U.S. government’s credit rating will be downgraded as a result of the battle over raising the debt limit.
His company has gone beyond competing credit rating agencies to say that it isn’t enough for lawmakers to agree to lift the government’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. Congress and the White House also must agree to a deficit-reduction package to avoid a downgrade in the government’s AAA credit rating.
Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com had this earlier in the week:
So it’s not the debt ceiling that’s triggering a potential ratings change — it’s the trajectory of debt generated by the federal government. This explains why the White House abandoned its “clean debt-ceiling increase” demand so early in the process. It wouldn’t have done anything to avoid a downgrade anyway.
The debt-ceiling debate does impact the ratings agencies’ decision in one way: it forced Congress and the American people to confront the problem of escalating deficits and runaway entitlements. That’s the debate we need to have, and the debate that Obama has been hoping to avoid.