As this nation lurches towards an artificial economic catastrophe engineered by House Republicans in their longstanding effort to gut (and ultimately eliminate) Social Security and Medicare, those same Republicans are parroting one talking point over and over again: The annual necessity of raising the debt ceiling somehow equates to an ordinary consumer exceeding their credit card’s spending limit.
They use this analogy because it serves a dual purpose: First it conjures up an image familiar to just about everyone, attaching an aura of moral “responsibility” to an otherwise complex process that most Americans can’t or won’t bother to understand. Secondly, it paints Democrats as reckless spendthrifts while ignoring the outsize role of unfunded Republican tax cuts in ballooning the national debt.
RELATED STORY: What is the debt ceiling?
As reported by MSNBC’s Steve Benen on Jan. 19, barely elected Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy delivered this now-standard talking point to his credulous media bobble-head and right-wing shill, Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo:
“If you gave your child a credit card and they kept hitting the limit, you wouldn’t just keep increasing it. You would sit down with them to identify where they are overspending and where they can change their behavior. It’s time for the federal government to do the same thing."
As Benen points out, McCarthy employed the same analogy in four separate instances in the first 19 days of January alone; it was also repeated by Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise on Jan. 10. So-called Republican “moderates” like Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick have also jumped on the “credit card” bandwagon as well.
It’s clearly a focus group-tested theme the GOP intends to push as the country approaches the brink of disaster, probably intending to shout it loudly even as the country tumbles over the precipice into an unprecedented fiscal calamity that will also impact the global economy.
The problem, though (leaving aside the fact that the U.S. government cannot, does not, and has never operated in any fashion similar an individual “household”), is that the analogy is pure garbage. Its most obvious flaw is that the U.S. government is not just the borrower here, but the lender as well: We are, in fact, the credit card company and can raise our limit, if necessary, anytime we want. (In fact we have, dozens of times, over the past century.) And our “government” is made up of the very people afforded the right to pass laws on how much to spend, and what to spend it on. As Benen notes, “[I]f House Republicans want to introduce legislation to cut spending they consider unnecessary, they’re welcome to do so at any time,” without holding the country hostage.
This was also pointed out by Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan in a Jan. 19 interview with CNN’s Erica Hill.
From the transcript, as reported by Eric Kleefeld, writing for Media Matters for America:
ERICA HILL (ANCHOR): And this something I think that Speaker McCarthy was really looking to do, so he compared the debt limit to a family’s finances saying, “look, Congress at this point can’t just keep raising the government’s credit card limit.” That’s an analogy I think most Americans can understand. And it’s one you called “cute,” but you also said it’s wrong. Why doesn’t that example work here?
JUSTIN WOLFERS (ECONOMICS PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN): So, it’s wrong because the person who raises your credit card limit is the credit card company, it’s the lender. Speaker McCarthy is part of the government. The government’s the borrower. The only choice the borrower makes — and we all face it every month — is the credit card bill comes due, are you going to pay it or not?
So, when Republicans commit to refusing to raise the ceiling on prior borrowing that they themselves— as “the government”—have already incurred (through tax cuts and spending), what they are actually suggesting is that the nation simply not pay its bills. That it should instead behave like a deadbeat borrower would. That is the exact polar opposite of “moral responsibility.”
RELATED STORY: Democrats don't need to negotiate debt ceiling, let the GOP fight it out among themselves
That’s just one flaw with the “credit card” trope; there are far more basic, more important distinctions that refute the entire comparison. As MSNBC’s Benen points out:
But just as notably, if we take this dumb metaphor just a little further, the family that received the bill doesn’t get to tell the credit card company, “We’ll refuse to pay this bill unless you meet our demands and pay us a ransom.”
Republicans insist that the government’s approach to bills should mirror that of typical American families. Fine. If families can’t refuse to meet their financial obligations unless they receive some kind of reward, why exactly do GOP leaders think the government should do this?
Since Republicans generally will only speak on Fox News (where they are guaranteed “softball” questions and their answers are almost never challenged), one might expect this this kind of disingenuous sophistry to be limited in its effectiveness. But even media outlets that should know better have seized on this comparison in an effort to explain the looming debt issue to their audience.
As Kleefeld reports, on Jan. 22, CNN’s John King somberly intoned: “The government’s credit card comes due, and there is no plan to pay it down.” This was echoed by Tia Mitchell, the Washington correspondent for The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, in a panel discussion on the same program, when she opined: “And I think the people at home are looking at Congress—they’re not just looking at the White House, but they’re looking at Congress—and they’re saying, ‘We have to control our spending, because we only have so much we can put on our credit card.’”
Kleefeld notes other cable news reporters, including Brian Chung and Garrett Haake of NBC, have also contributed to reinforcing this sloppy metaphor.
RELATED STORY: Threats to blow up the debt ceiling aren’t normal, and they aren’t coming from ‘both sides’
The fact that Republicans only care about the “debt ceiling” when a Democrat is in the Oval Office—and the fact that the GOP themselves incurred 25% of the national debt throughout the Trump administration—should really be the beginning and the end of this “debate.” But if Republicans actually follow through with destroying Americans’ hard-earned savings, jeopardizing all of our futures, and wrecking the country with this dangerous, cynical brinkmanship, they’re going to need a lot more than cute analogies to fall back on when they’re forced to face the American public.