The Dispatch Podcast - The Fight to Raise the Debt Ceiling

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

On today's episode, Brian Riedl, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, joins Sarah and Steve as Congress debates lifting America’s borrowing cap. Will Democrats and Republicans come to an agreement to lift the debt limit? Are we heading toward another government shutdown? Is anyone in Washington concerned about our ballooning national debt? Show Notes: -The Morning Dispatch looks at Biden’s make or break week -Riedl’s piece from earlier this summer “Trillions and Trillions” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgird, joined by Steve Hayes. And this week, we are talking to Brian Riedel. He is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the former chief economist for Senator Portman, former fellow at Heritage. He did a budget and spending for four presidential campaigns, but perhaps most importantly, next week he has his chart book coming out. As he describes it, nerd utopia. It's 118 pages of charts of budget, taxes, spending, and deficit. I mean, really, if you've been looking forward to anything all year, surely it is this. Let's dive right in. Brian, we're going to start big here.

What is the debt ceiling? Hey, Sarah, thanks for having me here. The debt ceiling is the total limit of how much debt the government can hold at a given moment. And back in the day, 100 years ago, they would raise the debt ceiling every time they passed a bill. And starting in World War II, they decided to just raise it to a certain amount that you hit the debt ceiling every couple of years. years. Well, right now, because we're running a $3 trillion deficit this year, we're about to hit the limit on how much money the government can be indebt at a certain point. And if government doesn't change that limit, they will be unable to borrow any more money from that point forward,

which essentially means you have to immediately balance the budget. Are they capable of balancing the budget immediately? To balance the budget immediately, let's say that we're not going to default on the national debt and that we're going to continue paying interest to the bondholders. Because if we don't, the bond market gets very upset and you have all sorts of economic calamities. So let's say we're going to pay all our bondholders. You would have to, among the remaining federal programs, immediately eliminate 46% of all federal spending immediately as in that day, that day that you hit the X payment, the deck state. Now, considering the fact that about 70% of all the budget,

a normal year goes to Social Security, Medicare, Defense, Medicaid, and veterans, you're not just talking, you know, a couple farm subsidy programs or foreign aid. You're talking about Social Security checks not going out. Okay, you've convinced me that the debt ceiling is a real thing and important even, but... I feel like every couple years, there's the sky is falling chicken littles telling me that we're about to not raise the debt ceiling. And have we ever not raised the debt ceiling? Is this a real thing? We have had moments where like in 1977, we were a day or too late.

We came very close within a couple days in 2011 of hitting the debt ceiling when you had this big fight between President Obama and the Republican Tea Party Congress. But we've never had. a legitimate full breach of the debt ceiling. This is a little dance that happens every couple years in politics. The debt ceiling is an interesting bill because both parties agree and understand that the debt ceiling has to be raised, but neither side wants to actually have their fingerprints voting for it. So you have this little fight where everybody knows it has to be raised and both parties

want the other party to be the one to actually vote. So then you end up getting into big fights. and parties extracting concessions and demands from each other. But at the end of the day, both sides know it has to be raised, and it always does get raised. Democrats haven't been as reluctant to vote for debt ceiling hikes as Republicans. Am I right in my recent history? Yes and no. Democrats have generally voted for the debt ceiling pretty, pretty, without many.

major conflict. But part of that is because they get something in return. Just to give you a little history, under President Bush, Democrats voted against the debt ceiling three times. There were three between 2003, 2004, and 2006. Three times you had a unified Republican government that needed to raise the debt ceiling. And they did clean debt ceiling bills, four line bills, we're going to raise a debt ceiling from X to Y. Democrats voted 98.8% against those three debt ceiling increases. Pelosi voted no, Schumer voted no, Senator Obama voted no, Senator Biden voted no. The reason Democrats have voted for the debt ceiling since is because typically under

Republican governments, Republicans give them something for it. Often Republicans will tie the debt ceiling to something Democrats want, like, Like in 2018, the last time we had to raise the debt ceiling with the Republican government, Republicans tied it to a bill to increase the spending caps by $300 billion. And even then, and even then, most House Democrats, including Pelosi, voted no. So usually the way to get a bipartisan debt ceiling vote is that the majority party gives the minority party some sort of policy concession for them to do it. What's unique right now is the majority Democrats want Republicans to help raise it,

and they've said, we're not going to give you anything. And so Republicans are balking at that. And Republicans are pretty insistent. I mean, Mitch McConnell suggests he's not budging. There's no dance here. They're sticking to their guns. Democrats are going to have to do this. They're going to have to take whatever political fallout there is.

Do you expect that Republicans will. stick to that position. Yeah, one of the interesting things about the current angle is Democrats can actually raise the debt limit themselves. They don't need Republicans. Democrats control the White House, the House, and the Senate. And if they do it through reconciliation, Republicans cannot filibuster it. So Republicans have said, look, you don't need us.

What you need to do is go redo your budget resolution to empower a debt limit reconciliation bill and go do it yourself. You have four weeks. You don't need our vote. Democrats have balked at that and said, no, we want to do it in regular order with 60 votes and we want Republicans to vote for it. At this point, I've talked to a lot of Republican offices on the debt limit. I probably talked to 20 or 30 Republican offices about the debt limit in the past two weeks. And the ones I talk to are absolutely insistent that Democrats need to do this themselves through reconciliation. If that door for some reason closes at some point and they're not able to do it through reconciliation, then I think Republicans will start negotiating concessions. I don't think Republicans want the fault

either. If their votes are ultimately needed, they'll make a list of demands. But right now, what McConnell is saying, you don't need our vote. You can do this yourselves. Right. What would be, let's say that the unthinkable happens and the debt limit is not raised. What are the, I mean, aside from having the dramatic spinning cuts that you mentioned earlier, what would likely be the immediate effects of something like that? Well, the first interesting question is, can the Treasury prioritize payments? Can they say we're going to pay interest in Social Security first and lower priority programs last? Back in 2011 during the standoff, Treasury Jack Liu said,

we cannot, we don't have the technical capability to prioritize payments. He said, we get, we have to pay millions of bills every week coming in. It's an automated system. We can't separate it out. So that's the first question is what gets paid. And Republicans at the time insisted that they could, right? I mean, that was part of the back and forth with Republicans. Right. To me insisted, yes, you, yes, you can prioritize. And Jack Liu admitted a couple years later that, well, maybe we did have more ability than we let on, but I didn't want Republicans to go down that road. So there was a little dishonesty from Jack Liu, which surprises nobody who knows Jack Lou. But, you know, the other factor is the financial markets would obviously panic. If there's any, even if we're paying the interest

on the debt, the fact that contractors aren't being paid, highway contracts aren't being paid, medical providers aren't being paid, you're going to have businesses that rely on reimbursements from the government not getting paid and not being able to pay their bills. That's going to have a cascading effect on the financial markets, on the stock market. You're going to see interest rates rise a little bit because one of the reasons government bonds are cheap and popular is because they're dependable until they're not. So you would see both questions in terms of who gets paid and the financial markets react pretty negatively. All right.

So we still got a little time left. Never actually defaulted before. And yet I do feel like the last four to five years have been an exercise in, well, just because we've never done it before and people say the sky will fall in our heads, doesn't mean we shouldn't do it now. So when you talk to all of these offices, Republican or Democrat, how seriously are they taking this?

Does a Murkowski or a Collins, for instance, end up voting yes when there's a metaphorical financial gun to their head? I think if there's a gun to our head, if we get to the point where we're going to default in 24 to 48 hours, it's too late to do a reconciliation bill. You need 60 votes. They will come to a deal. They have always come to a deal before.

If nothing else, they could do a two-month extension on the debt limit or a four-month extension or something like that while they negotiate. I haven't talked to a single Republican office that considers debt limit to be a realistic outcome. In fact, the offices I talk to don't even seem particularly worried at this point. I've had past debt limit fights where offices are a lot more standing on guard and getting ready. There's a certain casualness to the offices I talk to that this is going to.

that this is going to get worked out. We're not going to default. This is just the dance we do. Yeah, see, that makes me more nervous because if that's what people think, then both sides think that. And so if you're doing sort of a game theory version of this, if Schumer at all know that,

then they have no reason to actually negotiate with Republicans because they know that actually, the longer they wait, the closer you get to the 48 hours or so, their negotiating position improves. Republicans know that Schumer knows that. I mean, the game theory version of this ends in us not actually raising the dead ceiling. Right, because if there's a hostage being taken and both sides have declared that under no circumstance will they shoot the hostage, then is it really even a hostage at that point? And so you're right that if ultimately, right now Republicans have all the cards because they can tell.

Democrats, you have to, well, for the moment, they have the cards because they can say, we don't have to move on this, Democrats, because you can do this yourselves. Right. But if you get to 24, the 48 hours before, and at that point, Democrats, for their own fault, can no longer do the one or two week reconciliation process, then at that point, the Republicans hand is significantly weaker, because ultimately no one believes that they cannot find 10 Republican senators to avoid the fault and at least do like a four to eight week extension. So why would the Democrats ever do this through reconciliation do something they don't want to do if they know that outcome?

They might, that there could be a take that Democrats believe their own propaganda about Mitch McConnell being this nefarious monster who actually will let everything to fault. I mean, if you just listen to Twitter, you know, there's a smoke-filled-back room where they're eating children and plotting out the destruction of America. I've been in that room. But don't share the secret handshake. So I think Democrats are worried that if it comes down to the last minute, they're not 100% sure they can trust the GOP.

And even then, it might just be a two-week. extension or something like that. But, you know, again, this is going to get solved. So this will get solved in the short term. What appears not to be getting solved anytime soon is the broader question of our debt. $28 trillion, depending on how you count it. You've had a moment, really a five-year moment, where Republicans at least for the sake of public debates seem to be interested in debt and deficits

and seemed to be invested in providing solutions. We had the Paul Ryan moment, the argument about entitlement reform. And then 2016 happened. Republicans abandoned that in the course of the presidential campaign and have since been kind of the eager spenders that they had criticized Democrats for being for years. What's your sense? You worked on Capitol Hill.

How many people in the Senate, since you worked in the Senate, you worked for Rob Portman, former head of the Office of Management and Budget, how many people in the Senate are truly concerned about our debt and the programs, entitlement programs in particular,

that are driving it, and would sacrifice their career in order to make reform a priority? A couple, there's a couple things there. I mean, in terms of what, first, like, what happened to the GOP, I think, you know, again, we had the Tea Party moments, the Tea Party kind of fizzled out a little bit. What ended up happening in 2016 was President Trump killed the Paul Ryan Party. What he exposed was that the rank and file of Republicans, concerns about deficits were concerns

primarily about waste fraud and abuse, stimulus, Obamacare, and Wall Street bailouts. But once it became clear and Paul Ryan made clear that actually long-term deficits are driven almost entirely by Social Security and Medicare, all of a sudden the Tea Party wanted nothing to do with that. There was a poll when Trump got elected that said, Less than 10% of Republicans in 2016 were open to reforming social security and Medicare. 10% of Republicans in 2016. So ultimately, the Republican lawmakers saw the constituency collapse underneath their feet.

And then from there, the 2017 tax cuts for all the economic and tax policy positives, we have to bring down the corporate rate. I agree with all of that. Not paying for it killed Republican credibility on deficits because what that guaranteed is every time a Republican lawmaker gives a speech on deficits, the response from every reporter and Democrat is you're concerned about deficits, start with your tax cuts. So Republicans, because A, Trump exposed that their voters didn't care, were by the way, older, more populace now, more senior. And B, the tax cuts, Republicans just can't talk. about deficits anymore. The funny thing is when I talk to lawmakers, they still care a lot. It's one of those odd things where Republican lawmakers reach out to me a lot privately and say, this is the most important thing. We are screwing up on fiscal responsibility.

I want to do more on this, but my own base of voters don't care. And so you have this odd situation where the elected officials are still more of a Paul Ryan framework, but their voters are against it. A lot of them have told me, if we had a bill that came to the floor that would fix these issues, I would happily lose a re-election over it. Talk is cheap, of course. And additionally, but they won't give a speech, but they won't give a speech about it. They won't raise it. I mean, the parallels between this and Trump generally are very similar. we spend a lot of time talking to Republican lawmakers who will admit this on this podcast. We'll say to them, like, how many of your colleagues will come to you and say privately,

boy, I can't believe what the party has done having followed Donald Trump? And then literally go out and hold a press conference 20 minutes later and say, thanks Donald Trump for endorsing my reelection bid. I mean, this is what, you know, our listeners would be forgiven for concluding that elected Republicans is like, class are the biggest bunch of cowards and followers elected in recent memory. Is that too harsh? I mean, I don't think it's too harsh. I mean, on that point, these lawmakers say if there was a bill that dropped in the Senate to fix Social Security and Medicare in the long-term deficit, I wouldn't be willing to lose my seat over it. And I say, well, one of those bills isn't just

going to suddenly magically appear on the vote docket. Somebody has to write the bill. Somebody has to make the speeches, build the coalitions, go on TV, lay the groundwork, and make the argument. And that's when they say, yeah, you know, that's a lot of heavy lift. I'm not really able to do that. And so there's a certain problem right now where there's a chicken in the egg angle where Republicans say, my voters don't care about economics or deficits or long-term social security and Medicare. So I won't talk about it. Well, you need to talk about it. You need to to do public education. You got to get them to care. Right. You have to get your leaders. One of the reasons, look, I mean, we don't need to go back and spend a ton of time on the history

of this, but what are the reasons that, you know, Republican voters came around before the crash around 2016 in their concern about debt and deficits? I mean, there was this buildup through the Tea Party era. But then Paul Ryan engaged in an education campaign. He first did it with Republicans on the Hill. I mean, literally leading PowerPoint to for groups of five to seven of them at a time walking them through and, you know, in some ways educating the recently elected Tea Party Republicans that no, it's not just about eliminating pork and foreign aid. It's these bigger programs, the mandatory spending. But then they made arguments about it. They said this is why this is important. These are the ramifications. These

are the consequences if we don't address this. And for a while there was a sustained public argument that Republicans made. Then they just dropped it, which, you know, I think could lead you to wonder, to question their sincerity about the original case. I guess I'm sort of, should I be, I'm sort of optimistic about this cowardice that you're pointing to. I mean, at least they're saying privately that they care about it. I mean, that's better than not, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm kind of trying to take up Paul Ryan's old role because I, I knew PowerPoint presentation for lawmakers, which is why I'm plugging my chart book coming out. These are the charts that I show members in one-on-one meetings and group meetings. And the amazing thing is, they get it more than ever

the lawmakers fully understand and grasp our fiscal challenges, what's causing it, and what needs to be done. They just don't think there's any constituency. And what a lot of them will say is, well of course i don't want to jump alone there has to be a grand deal we have to get democratic buy-in because they will eat us alive if i if i speak on this okay so go make so go work with democrats you know i mean go start building those bridges start doing those meetings and nothing comes of it because they'll say well the parties don't get along enough and and they won't talk to me because of January 6th or, it, I have, there's a lot of handholding I have to do, but they understand that they're just afraid to move on it.

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we have another government shutdown. First, it seems to me that since, what, 2018, we've had more government shutdowns in a shorter period of time. Like, they're increasing in frequency, like the beginning of some sort of horror movie about alien invasions. Why? Why? is this happening more frequently, it seems? And I assume this is Congress's fault because everything that is happening bad to our government right now can come down to the fact that Congress has entirely abrogated any duty it once had to legislate. But if you could walk us through yet another government shutdown and is what could be done differently. Yeah, I mean, what's happening with the government shutdown is as cooperation between the parties have broken down, they have

use the government shutdown now as a way to take a hostage for unrelated items. In 2014, Ted Cruz started a government shutdown trying to defund Obamacare. In 2018, Democrats initiated a government shutdown over a path of citizenship for dreamers. Now, it's a government shutdown over I'm not really sure what. It's a government shutdown. It's a government shutdown. I guess partially over Republicans angry about the debt limit and all the spending Democrats are doing outside of appropriations like, you know, the infrastructure bill, the debt limit, or sorry, the reconciliation bill. And the Democrats aren't making it. And wait, real quick, why can't this be done through reconciliation? Why is this different?

Why do you need the 60 votes versus the 50 votes if this is about spending? In terms of the government shutdown? Yeah. That, yeah, that cannot be done through reconciliation. This is about just the regular appropriations bills that pass every year with 60 votes to go overcome a filibuster. Reconciliation is a specific thing that can do three things. Change taxes, change mandatory spending, and change the debt limit. It's separate from just your annual appropriations that can be filibustered.

But Democrats aren't making it easy for Republicans because in the House, they attached the debt limit to, the continuing resolution. So they're telling Republicans, if your position is, I don't want a government shutdown, you have to, you have to vote to raise the debt limit with it. If they did a separate bill, they might have better luck. So yes, definitely Congress's fault. So, okay, putting these all together, is there something, so you mentioned the history, by the way, of the debt ceiling, which I find really interesting at the beginning of the podcast. This isn't the way we used to do it. And that, what, this was really the new way, new meaning in the last 70 years, 90 years, whatever it is, actually was supposed to increase the power of the presidency,

once again, Congress giving away some of its power to the executive branch. Think Christmas list here. Brian's Christmas list of things Congress could do better. Is there stuff on the actual appropriations or the debt ceiling, et cetera, that they could do so that we don't have to do this every so often? Yeah, the debt limit is, the debt limit has been effective in one way in that the eight biggest spending cuts enacted since 1985 have all been attached to the debt limit.

So in that way, there was a period from 85 to 2011 where the only time you ever got spending caps or deficit reduction was the debt limit. that we've passed that point now. The debt limit's not particularly effective. It doesn't motivate Congress to cut spending. It just scares the heck out of the financial markets. I would rather replace the debt limit with something else to fix Congress's bias

towards spending and deficits, some sort of spending caps or something other countries do like in Swiss where you have to limit the budget deficit over the course of the business cycle, something addressing the automatic annual growth of entitlements, the fact that these programs grow six, seven percent per year automatically without any vote, there needs to be something, some sort of break in the system to counteract all of the bias towards increasing spending. You can do this with caps, a stronger pay go, which is to pay for increases. But right now, the debt limits kind of all conservatives have. And so they fight on it because we don't have a better break on the system.

I would prefer to replace it. We've gotten nowhere with Congress trying to replace it. Instead, what Democrats have talked about doing is raising the debt limit to 99 gazillion, which they can do. And then you just never have to worry about it again that way. Until the second term of the Sanders presidency, that is. I like Brian's a bumper sticker when he runs for office. Better pay go now. Perfect. Can you help us appreciate? I mean, you do, you wake up every day and you look at this.

You look at spending. You look at debt and deficits. I mean, I think I'm sort of obsessed about it, but I'm a piker compared to you. This is your life. Can you help us understand the, what we've seen happen over the past two years in terms of overall spending on the discretionary side, what have we seen the government do in terms of the COVID emergency relative to what spending was three years ago and seven years ago? The numbers are staggering.

If you just want to take a look at spending increases, I remember in the early 2000, when Republicans passed a Medicare D bill that would cost a staggering $400 billion over 10 years. And that was one of the biggest spending expansions in decades. You know, people hadn't seen anything like it, $400 billion. These days, lawmakers won't even get out of bed to vote for $400 billion. So, I mean, what we've seen is we had a budget deficit that was, you know, in the four, five, six, $800 billion range

in the last couple of years, growing gradually towards a trillion. Then we had $3 trillion in deficits in 2020 and $3 trillion more in 2021 in part based on $3 trillion worth of COVID spending, which may be necessary.

You know, a lot of it was necessary. Some of it wasn't. But this exceeded the size of the new deal as a percentage of GDP. Like this, you have to go back to World War II or in peacetime well before World War II to see anything legislatively as big as our response to COVID. I mean, there's nothing like that it was, it was an enormous, there's almost 15 to 20 percent of GDP. And then you see what Democrats are doing right now. This year alone, they're proposing $8 trillion in new spending and $6 trillion in new deficits.

as a 10-year cost in one year. I mean, again, we used to have a $400 billion with an earthquake, and now you're looking at $6 to $8 trillion. Let's simplify and put this all together. Before the pandemic, the national debt was held by the public, not counting the trust funds, was $16.8 trillion. If we do everything President Biden wants, the debt in 10 years will be $44,000.

trillion, 16.8 trillion to 44 trillion. That is how big the numbers are. And then you get into the real fun after that, which is CBO assumes a baseline deficit of a $112 trillion over 30 years exclusively due to Social Security and Medicare shortfalls from the retiring baby boomers. So, you know, you take what we had before, you know, which is deficits in the hundreds of billions, a $16 trillion debt, and you just blow the numbers through the roof. It's almost unfathomable. The numbers are so big

that when I tell them to people, their eyes glaze over. All right. So I am surrounded by a certain type of person these days. My husband is back in his home state at the Ryder Cup. Steve, of course, yammers nonstop about brats and cheese curds. And Brian, you've got Wisconsin. High's deep-rooted as well.

Oh, God, he's wearing his Wisconsin t-shirt. I didn't even know he was wearing Wisconsin red. It didn't occur to me that it would be a University of Wisconsin t-shirt. All right. So here's the question for you. Aaron Rogers, yes or no? This year, it's a no. He's playing like he's been more interested in Celebrity Jeopardy, or hosting Jeopardy.

than anything else he he's got to get it going i mean should they trade him is this it you want to see the season through see the season through because jordan loves not ready um i think that's what my husband says but i think you guys just don't have enough faith like that how is love supposed to feel if you don't believe in him unloved love may be the answer he may not be but The positive angle of the Packers have a brutal schedule this year and they're not looking that great right now, which the positive side is that will spare me from getting my hopes up right before a devastating playoff collapse that they have become famous for. If you don't get my hopes up, you can't dash them.

I mean, were you, how much of the, you know, after the first game, the Packers got blown out in the first game playing the Saints who don't really have much of a receiving core, a good defense, a journeyman quarterback, got blown out. And even against the Lions game that they won earlier this week, they did not look like the Packers. How much of this do you attribute to the Aaron Rogers inspired drama of the offseason where Rogers said he was going to, he didn't want to come back to the Packers, and then he would, and lots of airing of grievances. is he seems to, anytime he finds a microphone these days, he bags on the organization and how he's been wronged. I mean, at a certain point, how much does that matter? Well, I don't think it's

a coincidence that the opening game, I think it was pro football focus said that he had his third most inaccurate game of his career. Now, part of that is maybe the fact that the coach won't play anybody during the preseason, but he sure looked pretty rusty. I mean, he was, was missing wide open receivers but in all honesty the bigger problem the first two games has been the defense i mean this is i haven't seen a packer defense this bad since the 1980s um you know it's they have a new defensive coordinator the esra johnson era yeah exactly the esra johnson john anderson uh uh as george coots he was a little later he was a little he was a little later but this hood oh boy that those 80s packer defenses when you had you needed

Lynn Dickey to put up 45. The problem right now is they hired a defensive coordinator who in his previous four stops has ranked last with every team. So the Packers hire him. And then they play no preseason games for their defense

to teach them the system. Then they start them week one and everyone's pointing at each other trying to figure out why three people covered one guy and nobody covered the guy streaking towards the end zone. Right. So I think they're a mess. all right well thankfully y'all still have cheese curds you still have culvers custard i mean you have a few

things to hold on to bring you joy and the bucks are champs for us wisconsinites the bucks are champs yeah you know it's funny though like so true in my household if they had lost scott would have been like angry for years but because they won he's like yeah good they won and like he's moved on like it didn't provide him the joy of the win compared to the the loss of the law. So, Brian, thank you so much. This was an illuminating, if a slightly depressing, conversation. We'll see what the health of the hostage is in a couple weeks, I suppose. And definitely, we will look forward to your book of charts, nerd utopia. I hope that is the subheadline. Thank you for having me. And thank you to the listeners for enduring all this talk of

budget numbers, budget rules, and football. Yes, there's at least four people left listening. They're very grateful. We'll talk soon, Brian. Thank you. Thank you. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime.

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