Some US Republican lawmakers said on Sunday that they opposed raising the ceiling on the US’ debt without tackling government spending, as US President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser warned against political posturing on the issue.
The US federal debt is limited to US$14.3 trillion, but the debt now stands at almost US$13.9 trillion and is growing daily. The US Congress last raised the debt ceiling in February last year and is expected to consider raising it again as early as March.
To some conservatives, refusing to raise the limit on the federal debt could be an effective tactic to force lawmakers into cutting spending and facing such contentious issues, such as the rising costs of the federal Social Security pension program, the Medicare healthcare program and other entitlement programs.
Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said that refusing to raise the debt ceiling would essentially push the country into defaulting on its financial obligations for the first time in its history.
“The impact on the economy would be catastrophic,” Goolsbee told This Week on ABC. “That would be a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in 2008.”
While saying that defaulting would be “very bad” for the US position in the world, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he would not vote for raising the limit on the federal debt unless there was a plan in place for dealing with long-term obligations, including Social Security, and for returning to 2008 spending levels.
“This is an opportunity to make sure the government is changing its spending ways,” Graham said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
US Democratic Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Anthony Weiner want to see how the new Republican majority in the House will handle the issue.
“The Republicans have come in saying that they’re going to not raise the debt ceiling and they’re going to allow the full faith and credit of the American people to go down the tubes,” Weiner said on Face the Nation on CBS. “It’s their ship to run now. That’s the responsibility.”
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
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