Republicans can use the debt ceiling fight to better prepare Americans for the next economic crisis
On the outside chance that House Republicans are able to wrangle President Joe Biden into cutting federal spending to set a new debt ceiling, lawmakers need to understand that it will have been all for naught unless they take this opportunity to better prepare the country for the next economic crisis.
The fight over the debt limit may seem all-consuming at the moment, but its greater context is more important. Our country has experienced not just one, but three economic shocks since the start of the 21st century, with the pandemic of 2020 being the most recent. Each time, the government’s response has been rampant political predation in the form of permanent new agencies and programs and unnecessary hyper-spending and regulation.
As it did with COVID-19, the federal government used the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the financial meltdown of 2008, both of which should have been temporary crises, to permanently expand its size and role. Both sides of the aisle are responsible for this. During COVID, for example, Republicans went along with pandemic spending and ill-considered regulations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium and also supported massive spending packages on “infrastructure” and “innovation” in its wake. These bills have disrupted free enterprise and baked in new regulations, yet the GOP has been quick to take credit for the dollars in their districts.
The legacy media have also failed in their role of watchdog. Virtually every media outlet is in line with the Biden administration on raising the debt limit , blasting the GOP for not sticking with its prior commitments. They almost never mention the consequences of a budget deficit that will soon top $2 trillion every single year or the cyclopean $31 trillion debt to which these deficits are added.
Now is the time to sidestep the Left’s traps and instead grant future generations the freedom to manage their own economic crises and spending.
The key to resolving both the debt ceiling battle and our nation’s susceptibility to economic shocks is the “Abuse-of-Crisis Prevention Act.” The legislation would phase out antiquated rules, empower people to build more intergenerational wealth, amend tax laws to allow businesses to better save for future downturns, curtail lawmaker “emergency declarations,” and end federal block grants to the states to empower states to do their own disaster prevention planning.
What is commonly called an economic “reset” today is instead the opposite: the expansion of already-in-process coercive progressive policies. By contrast, the five tentative legislative “titles” outlined above — restoring limits on centralization and putting into effect consequences for political leaders’ exploitation of crisis — offer a genuine reset that is indispensable to any permanent solution to debt crises.
Read the full story on the Washington Examiner.