Today, a new report from the Washington Post details the staggering potential cost of the Republican Party’s attempted sabotage of the full faith and credit of the United States by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.
From the report:
“Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, found that a prolonged impasse over the debt ceiling would cost the U.S. economy up to 6 million jobs, wipe out as much as $15 trillion in household wealth, and send the unemployment rate surging to roughly 9 percent from around 5 percent…
“‘This economic scenario is cataclysmic. … The downturn would be comparable to that suffered during the financial crisis’ of 2008, said the report, written by Zandi and Bernard Yaros, assistant director and economist at Moody’s Analytics…
“Treasury officials would face excruciating choices, such as whether to fail to pay $20 billion owed to seniors on Social Security, or to fail to pay bondholders of U.S. debt – a decision that could undermine faith in U.S. credit and permanently drive federal borrowing costs higher.”
The Republican Senators who have committed to holding the American economy hostage have cumulatively voted to raise or suspend the debt ceiling 185 times in their Senate careers. McConnell alone has voted to raise or suspend the debt ceiling 32 times, including three times under President Trump in order to add $8 trillion to the national debt. As Senator McConnell said when making the case to raise the debt ceiling in 2019, “America can’t default. I mean, that would be a disaster.”
“Under President Trump, Senate Republicans were willing to suspend the debt limit three times in order to give a trillion-dollar tax cut to big corporations and the wealthiest 1%,” said American Bridge 21st Century spokesperson Aidan Johnson. “But now that President Biden and congressional Democrats are trying to pass a historic middle class tax cut for working families, cut the price of prescription drugs, and lower the cost of child care, Republicans are willing to risk $6 million jobs, $15 trillion in wealth, and the full faith and credit of the United States in order to sabotage the Build Back Better agenda. This breathtakingly reckless, cynical hypocrisy makes it crystal clear that the Republican Party would rather bring the economy crashing down for middle class families than see their wealthy backers pay their fair share.”
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Published: Sep 21, 2021