Jarlaxle
Gold Member
congress controls the purse strings? Isn't that what some people like to remind us?
The treasury borrows money to pay the bills that have resulted from congressional spending,
spending resulting from laws the congress passed.
The debt ceiling is designed to prevent the treasury from borrowing money that congress has not authorized;
money needed to pay bills the congress's laws have created is not in the 'not authorized' category.
When the debt ceiling is reached, it's the duty of congress to either raise it or pass spending reductions sufficient to avoid exceeding it.
true to a point. The vast majority of spending measures are authorized on an annual basis, there are very few multi year authorization bills.
When someone claims that the debt ceiling has to be raised to pay for spending that has already been authorized------they are either ignorant or lying.
"in fiscal year (fy) 2011, mandatory spending accounted for about 60 percent of the federal budget."
what you're suggesting is that congress could rightfully freeze the debt ceiling, but only if they refused to authorize most of the discretionary spending in the budget.
ok!