The Beginning of the End of the Debt Ceiling
With another deal with Democrats, President Trump could release the hostage that congressional Republicans took during their early fiscal battles with the Obama administration.
When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January 2011 after sweeping then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi out of the majority, one of the first things they did was to take a hostage. The nation’s statutory debt limit, they decided, would no longer automatically be increased when Congress passed a budget; instead, the House would only vote to raise the debt ceiling if it was accompanied by equivalent spending cuts and reforms.
The debt limit was, as then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said , a “leverage moment”—a way to force President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats to adopt the fiscal restraint Tea Party Republicans had promised
