AMAC Exclusive - By Shane Harris
With the country’s financial forecast looking increasingly grim, Democrats and their media allies are engaged in a scheme to use the looming debt ceiling battle to accuse Republicans of “holding the economy hostage” and blame the GOP for any negative economic headlines in the months ahead.
The left’s new messaging strategy, which is reminiscent of another attempt to use every weapon in their cultural arsenal to engineer a narrative of Joe Biden as a “moderate” hero, as covered in AMAC Newsline’s first installment of the ‘Narrative Alert’ series, was on full display during President Biden’s State of the Union Address last week. In between gross mischaracterizations of his own record, the president alleged that Republicans “say if we don’t cut Social Security and Medicare, they’ll let America default on its debt for the first time in our history.”
The accusation, which directly contradicted prior public statements from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, led to loud condemnations from the Republican side of the chamber during the speech and widespread pushback following Biden’s remarks. Notably, some congressional Republicans have even supported legislation exempting entitlements from the debt ceiling.
But even though the president’s assertion was demonstrably false, the exchange between Biden and congressional Republicans ultimately succeeded in thrusting the debt ceiling debate into the national spotlight – and put Democrats in a position to claim that Republicans are “holding the economy hostage.”
The facts, however, paint a quite different story. Over the past two years, Democrats’ reckless spending spree has led to 40-year high inflation, a turbulent stock market, and a stagnated economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government spent $6.5 trillion in FY 2022 alone – much of it on new far-left government programs and policies – causing the national debt to balloon to more than $31 trillion.
It is this spending that has directly led to the current debt ceiling crisis. The debt ceiling, or the total amount of money that the federal government is allowed to borrow, is a limit set by Congress, and has been raised 78 times since 1960. The government technically blew past the debt ceiling on January 19, but the Treasury Department is able to use what it calls “extraordinary measures” to temporarily finance the nation’s debts. Those methods are expected to extend the deadline to raise the debt ceiling until at least early June.
If Congress does not vote to increase the borrowing limit by that time, the U.S. will default on its debt – something that has never occurred before – sending shockwaves throughout the entire global economy.
House Republicans have argued that any debt ceiling increase should be accompanied by cuts in federal spending to ease inflation and help reverse some of the economic damage from the past two years. “Nobody in America wants us to blindly just raise the debt ceiling again if we don’t get structural reforms around here” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) told reporters recently. Republican leaders have argued that voters sent a GOP majority to Washington precisely to reign in federal spending and avoid such high-stakes debt-limit showdowns in the future.
But President Biden has stubbornly refused any and all negotiations, repeatedly spurring compromise offers from McCarthy. Instead, the administration and congressional Democrats have continued to intentionally stoke panic over a potential default. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, for example, made the media rounds one day ahead of Biden’s State of the Union to warn that “economic and financial catastrophe” are just around the corner. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer similarly said that “things could blow up” and accused Republicans of “hostage taking” and “brinkmanship.”
The media, for their part, have dutifully towed the party line. NPR, Reuters, USA Today, The Washington Post, and the LA Times all released stories parroting Schumer’s accusation of Republican “brinkmanship.” The Atlantic, NBC News, and The Hill published pieces defending Biden’s decision not to negotiate with Republicans, which all incredibly accused Republicans, not the president, of being unreasonable.
Many mainstream outlets are even rewriting the history of a similar debt ceiling standoff in 2011 between congressional Republicans and President Barack Obama – when Joe Biden himself led negotiations for the administration as vice president. That battle led to $2 trillion in spending cuts and averted a full-on economic backslide. However, Obama’s stubborn refusal to work with Republicans resulted in market turmoil – something that the media has since blamed solely on Republicans.
The clear aim of resurrecting the 2011 debt limit battle is to set the stage to once again blame Republicans for any economic downturn in the months ahead. With many economists predicting a rough year for the stock market and potentially a deep and prolonged recession, Democrats need a scapegoat – particularly heading into a pivotal general election year in 2024. Even though it is liberal fiscal policies which have sent the economy into a tailspin, the media narrative will be that Republican efforts to save the economy from complete collapse are the real problem.
Expect to hear more allegations about Republican “brinkmanship” and “holding the economy hostage” as the deadline to raise the debt ceiling approaches this summer. Once again, Biden and his Democrat allies have found themselves desperate to escape blame for a crisis of their own making.
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