ThinkProgress notes GOP Rep.-elect Mick Mulvaney and Sen. David Vitter are both making noises about refusing to extend our national debt ceiling, an action that would result in a government shutdown as government ran out of funds to continue operations. Speaking on Fox, Vitter said:
Big things are either going to happen or not happen in a fairly obvious, dramatic way in the first quarter [of next year]…and the moment that it’s all leading up to is this next increase in the debt limit.
And In The Hill, Mulvaney said:
Rep.-elect Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), who defeated current House Budget Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.) in November, said he would vote against any attempt to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.
“I have heard people say that if we don’t do it will be the end of the world,” he said. “I have yet to meet someone who can articulate the negative consequences.”
Of course, the negative consequence of failing to lift the nation's debt ceiling is that government would shut down. And why's that a bad idea? Well, let's listen to the words of none other than Mike Huckabee trying to talk extremists like Vitter and Mulvaney from walking over the cliff:
Let me tell you what would happen. All the people, including the ones clapping, whose mothers get a Social Security check wouldn't get one because the government would shut down. All of the things -- some of which wouldn't bother me if they shut down -- but it would bother me if physicians at hospitals who are waiting on a check so they can pay their nurses if they didn't get the reimbursements from Medicare. It would hurt me if a soldier didn't get a paycheck and their family had to go scrounge for food because we didn't have a budget and we couldn't have authorization, those are laws. We are a nation of laws, not slogans and ideologies.
Yes, that's conservative Mike Huckabee, explaining on his own show on Fox earlier this month why it would be wrong for conservatives to shut down the federal government. They should listen to him and stop playing games with the debt limit.
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