Earlier this week, the U.S. Congress voted in favor of a bill to raise the national debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion.
Senate Democrats approved the measure on December 14, 2021, with House Democrats quickly following in their footsteps.
Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) both opposed the final vote to allow the United States Department of the Treasury to issue additional debt.
However, Daniel Friend of The Texan observed that Cornyn voted alongside 13 other Republicans in favor of a cloture motion for the measure that ultimately allowed Democrats to raise the debt ceiling through a simple majority vote.
Democrats possess 50 Senate seats on top of the tie-breaking vote in Vice President Kamala Harris.
In Cruz’s case, he voted against the bill to raise the debt ceiling and the procedural motion to realize its passage.
“Our national debt is $28.9 trillion, and today Senate Democrats voted to increase the debt limit by $2.5 trillion, the single largest increase ever enacted by Congress,” Cruz declared in a press release.
“At the same time, President Biden and the Democrats are hell bent on ramming through their radical Build Back Broke agenda to spend trillions of dollars more on socialist priorities, which will drive inflation even higher and make it more expensive for hard working families to put food on their table, gas up their cars, and heat their homes. Americans could not have asked for a worse gift for Christmas.”
The passage of the debt ceiling hike was done on a largely partisan basis.
In the U.S. House, all Democrats voted for raising the debt ceiling. On the other hand, all Republicans, with the sole exception of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), voted against the bill.
The $2.5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling came on the heels of a short-term increase of $480 billion that was approved in October, which Friend observed came “with the help of Cornyn.”
The recent debt ceiling increase came after December 15, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen declared that the $480 billion short-term increase would be sufficient to fund the government.
“[T]here are scenarios in which the Treasury would be left with insufficient remaining resources to continue to finance the operations of the U.S. government beyond this date,” Yellen stated in a letter she sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Fiscal conservatism has become an afterthought in DC. Even Republicans can’t be counted on to keep spending in check.
At this point, it may behoove Republicans to focus on making cryptocurrencies a normal part of American economic activity. That’s because this decentralized ecosystem will do more to bring about fiscal restraint and economic growth than any kind of conventional legislative reform.
