so...much hand-wringing is going on, and i just had a client come by and mention that social security checks could stop coming. so, i looked into it-sure enough, if the govt defaults, ss would be affected. so, some reading turned me to other subjects, other articles, and finally, i wondered....why is there a debt ceiling? when was it put in place? so, of course, i asked the mighty google god...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...fecd_blog.html
The article notes that the debt limit generally was raised without controversy until a White House request to raise the limit in 1953 was sidetracked in the Senate, “where the ceiling was viewed as an instrument for forcing economy on the executive branch of the government.”
Hmm, that sounds familiar.
and the last of the article:
The debt limit was originally conceived as a way to make things easier for Congress, because lawmakers were tired of having to issue bonds for specific purposes. (Congress, after all, had already decided to spend the money.) But then Congress often finds a way to make the easy stuff harder.
Indeed, when he was a senator, President Obama also refused to approve a debt-limit increase in 2006 without a plan to reduce the deficit. The president now acknowledges that was a “political vote, as opposed to doing what was important for the country — which he regrets.