How Would This Go For You?
Let’s say that you had run up a bunch of spending on your credit cards. They’re totally maxed out, and any repayment plan would take years, decades in fact.
So you decide to call the folks at Discover or MasterCard and tell them that you are deciding to increase your credit limit. You’re not asking them to raise the limit, you’re simply telling them.
They might protest, since you’re running up this debt by using their money. You’ve shown no signs of making payments to bring the debt down, so why do you think you should have a higher credit limit?
You’ll tell them not to worry, that you’re sure you’ll be finding ways to increase your income or revenue soon enough. And you promise to keep your spending down…not to stop spending, of course, but to try to modify your behavior.
The credit card company would be well within its rights to deny you the increased credit limit…in other words, to put a ceiling on the amount of debt you can run up with them.
Yet Congress has the ability—actually, the responsibility—of increasing the debt limit whenever it gets reached. Max out on the limit? No problem, just pass a bill increasing it.
By all rights, we have the right to say no…by voting them out for spending as if there’s no limit. Oh, wait…that’s literally the case right now, since the debt ceiling was not increased last week, it was suspended—sort of like MasterCard saying you can spend as much as you want, so long as it’s before January 1, 2025—that’s when the government debt ceiling suspension ends.
I have no idea how to fix this, since we have four Republican Members of Congress—three in only their second terms, one a freshman—and they all voted for it. So we already voted people out to get this group.
But the one thing we cannot do is give up, to stop being vigilant, to stop trying to hold these folks accountable.
Because they work for us…and they’re spending our money.
