The Debt Ceiling : A Custom More Honored in the Observance than the Breach; Useless Outrage

“[That we have a debt ceiling,] 'tis true, ‘tis true 'tis pity, And pity 'tis, 'tis true.”

A whirling line in “Hamlet” spoken by the tediously long-winded old courtier Polonius. In my version above, I imagine Polonius as Joe Biden’s economic advisor rather than the advisor to Hamlet’s murderous uncle, King Claudius.

Most everyone will stipulate that the debt ceiling is stupid, absurd, and unnecessary, a “thing rank and gross in nature.” The reasons why have been repeated so often that I suspect neither you nor I could bear another repetition. (but, just in case, the reasons are buried at the bottom of this post.)

The fact is our federal government is burdened with the debt ceiling law, and no amount of whinging will, in the short term, whinge it away. Another fact is that the Republicans in Congress appear intent on using the debt ceiling law to score a political victory, forcing spending cuts by using the threat of a disastrous national default as a cudgel.

Is that tactic good for our country? No, but moralizing about it won’t change the fact that from the viewpoint of Republicans in Congress there’s a logic for them to use the debt ceiling to extract concessions. It’s a win for them and sets a favorable precedent for future battles with the President. So the most likely outcome is some compromise on spending cuts in order to raise the ceiling, accompanied by a media hellscape of jagged vitriolic posturing.

There’s often a thin line between understanding motivations of structure or self-interest vs. excusing or endorsing an unwholesome action. For example, I often hear the most strident criticism of Randi Weingarten for promoting policies that prioritize the wishes of the teachers’ union over any other priority. But Randi Weingarten’s job is to represent the teachers’ union. If that wasn’t her priority, she’d be fired. And justifiably so.

We often waste time and thought twisting ourselves in knots about what should be vs. what is. Or about what people should want to do vs. what they are structurally incentivized to do. Of course, structural change is always possible. As with Archimedes’ long enough lever that could move the world, so it is with a long enough timeframe measured in decades or more, a timeframe that, unfortunately, our brains and hearts have not yet evolved to embrace.

So, to our misfortune and against our own mental health, we are led astray by an epidemic of senseless outrage.

I understand this well precisely because I have been an expert practitioner of senseless outrage. A trivial example: late at night ten years ago I stood in line to check into an upscale hotel. The clerk behind the front desk was having a loud and leisurely conversation on the phone with a future potential guest about options for a future stay many months hence. I endured minutes of agony as the check-in line grew behind me. How dare this man not give priority to me and the other “live” guests?

As I recall this incident, an atavistic remnant of useless outrage is triggered in me. That’s a flaw. I should have reasoned that the desk clerk might have been told to always keep a potential guest on the phone. After all, those of us in the check-in line represented certain revenue vs. potential revenue from the caller. At that moment, however, all I could think about was how I was being kept from my room.

Everything we see and think and feel is filtered through our unique point of view. To recognize this and then to try constantly to think as others think is extremely challenging, an exhausting set of mental gymnastics.

My last post about Clarence Thomas and his rich friend provoked some outrage. I think it was mainly around my contention that the $300,000 salary for Justices was low relative to similar positions of authority in the private sector. Some readers found it offensive to describe such a salary as low regardless of any relative comparison. It’s true that $300,000 is five times the average American salary, and Thomas knew what the salary would be before he “took” the job.

In that post, I was trying to imagine Thomas’s POV formed by decades-long experience of interacting with extremely wealthy “friends,” and the resulting temptations to accept their lavish hospitality and gifts, both direct and indirect. It’s human nature to covet what we often see, but do not have, whether for ourselves or for our family. Perhaps some people are immune to this. I know I am not. I had a successful career in finance, but I used to constantly appraise the greater success of others my age or younger and use those appraisals to assail my sense of self-worth.

Some readers thought I was excusing Thomas’s actions. And I suppose in part I was. In considering his POV, I thought and wrote myself into a certain ambivalence. Thomas is a recognizable human being with his own set of virtues and flaws. He’s far from a sociopath or a monster. One consequence of trying to adopt another’s point of view is that it generally becomes harder to maintain one’s formerly unequivocal and comfortable attitude of enmity.

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Reasons the debt ceiling is stupid: 1) We already spent the money so we have to pay. 2) Everything that can be done in negotiations over the debt ceiling can be done through the normal, annual budget discussions. 3) No other Western country has such a mechanism, because see 1) and 2) above.