Nobody on Capitol Hill likes raising the debt ceiling.
But now Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wants to end the practice.
Forever.
GOP aides say that in talks with congressional leaders on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Geithner proposed a “permanent” increase in the debt ceiling — meaning changing the law so that Congress no longer has to approve an increase in the statutory borrowing cap, which has been in place since 1917.
He hinted at it in an interview with Bloomberg News a few weeks ago. But the fact that Geithner is proposing giving the administration such authority behind the scenes adds a new dimension to the idea.
The need for a separate vote on spending, and then the borrowing cap, is somewhat unique to the United States. “The United States is unusual among the countries we reviewed in using the authorization of additional borrowing authority as an occasion to draw attention to past fiscal policy decision,” the Government Accountability Office noted in a 2011 report.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
