Sleepy Joe Biden played chicken with the debt ceiling legislation, waited until today to sign the bill hastily passed in the middle of the night yesterday

 Story.

The US House passed the $2.5 trillion increase to the debt ceiling in the dead of night with just one, unneeded, Republican vote

The bill, which lawmakers passed 221-209, with one Republican voting yes, raises the federal debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion to increase the limit to close to $31 trillion.

More. 

Adam Kinzinger was the lone Republican vote in the House:

Representative Adam Kinzinger was the only Republican lawmaker who voted with Democrats in the House to raise the debt ceiling, staving off a potentially disastrous federal default.

Last week, Kinzinger was also the only Republican to back the Democrats over the plan struck by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) allowing Senate Democrats to lift the ceiling through a simple majority vote.

The Illinois congressman, one of 10 Republicans to vote for the second impeachment of ex-President Donald Trump after the Capitol insurrection and one of only two GOP lawmakers on the January 6 committee investigating the riots that day, will not be standing for re-election in the 2022 midterms.

US Senate Democrats passed a $2.5 trillion increase to the debt ceiling 50-49 this afternoon without a single Republican vote after 14 Republicans voted to allow a one time simple majority arrangement

Seems like there's not much wiggle room between a $2.5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling and a proposed Democrat reconciliation spending bill now coming in at $1.75 trillion.

 Story.

 

 

$2.2 trillion Build Back Butter bill Democrats insisted would cost nothing CBO estimates would cost $367 billion over ten years

 

 

 

 

 

 

So-called Democrat moderates in the House voted for it anyway, 220-213, undermining Republican claims their votes could be peeled away once the infrastructure bill had been passed separately.

Between the $250 billion cost of the infrastructure bill and the $367 billion cost of the Build Back Better bill, the optimistic CBO estimated combined ten year costs will dig a $617 billion hole in addition to the $6.8 TRILLION in fiscal year deficits for 2020 and 2021 spent since the onset of the pandemic to alleviate it.

The pandemic spending orgy, which was bipartisan, makes this all seem like a kerfuffle about relatively little.

Already pared back from $3.5 trillion or more in spending, the BBB faces an uncertain future in the Senate. The wild spending dreams of progressives may have been dashed, but anyone who pretends any of this makes any sense is crazy.

The country is currently holding at $28.9 TRILLION in debt, and is set to explode higher pending the raising of the debt ceiling. 

From the story: 

The final outcome wasn't much in doubt after centrist Democrats' deficit concerns largely melted away.

The vote came hours after the Congressional Budget Office issued its official cost estimate of the sweeping legislation, which moderate Democrats eagerly awaited to ease their concerns over the fiscal impact. The Biden administration and Democratic backers of the bill have insisted it would pay for itself and not add to federal deficits.

The nonpartisan CBO, the official scorekeeper, offered a cost estimate with a little wiggle room. It said the measure would increase deficits by $367 billion over 10 years — but that doesn't count additional revenue that could come from increased IRS tax enforcement.

How much new revenue that effort would yield has been hotly debated. The White House has said increased enforcement, aided by an additional $80 billion in IRS funding, would produce $480 billion in new revenue over a decade. The CBO took a more cautious view, saying the effort might produce $207 billion.

Republicans voted for the Biden infrastructure bill despite the CBO's estimate it would add $250 billion+ to the national debt over 10 years

 Is $25 billion a year a big deal?

We're already paying $500 billion+ EVERY YEAR in interest expense on the debt.

Nobody cares.

 

 

"two-year suspension of the debt ceiling expired at the end of July"

Pure gobbledygook.

The limit, a facet of American politics for over a century, prevents the Treasury from issuing new bonds to fund government activities once a certain debt level is reached. That level reached $22 trillion in August 2019 and was suspended until Saturday. 

The new debt limit will include Washington’s additional borrowing since summer 2019. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in July that the new cap will likely come in just north of $28.5 trillion.

More gobbledygook.

The government's bookkeeping shenanigans here are always amazing, but especially now given the orgy of spending during the pandemic, and the reporting is nearly as bad.

The debt ceiling was "set" at $22 trillion in August 2019, but it wasn't "reached" until April 2021.

Add in the ever present "intragovernmental" borrowings and the total debt is now $28.46 trillion at the end of July. Intragovernmental holdings is code for raiding the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds. It's one of the weird things about how bureaucrats think that the extent to which they must raid those funds plus the "normal" public debt becomes the sum they'll use to set the new "public" portion, the debt ceiling, when Congress gets around to it.

They all should be in jail. Instead we are.