From TPM Reader CA …
I would like to see TPM emphasize more strongly not just the history of raising the debt limit, but the essential dynamics by which it is made necessary.
Congress passes budgets that are unfunded and require borrowing; Congress must vote to raise debt limit. The President can be described as structurally incidental to this process.
Lindsay Graham (and others) are therefore (as always) lying when they seek to describe the problem as overspending on the part of the executive, and that needs to be hammered home again and again.
