As for the debt-ceiling opportunity, it’s hopefully that U.S. voters wake up to the truth that all government spending, whether taxed away or borrowed, is deficit spending. Congress is spending our money. Always. If the latter can be heard above all the hysteria spewed by academics, politicians and pundits, maybe voters will realize that the answer isn’t so much to increase or shrink the debt-ceiling as it is to shrink federal spending in total, and without regard to debt or surplus.
It’s the spending, stupid. Always the spending.
John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, Director of the Center for Economic Freedom at FreedomWorks, and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research and Trading (www.trtadvisors.com). He's the author of Who Needs the Fed? (Encounter Books, 2016), along with Popular Economics (Regnery, 2015).