United States Politics: ∆τ_i*ε*φ*m_i<0 where ε=4 and φ=0.25

[benji]

You'll get tired of winning so many higher prices: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/27/trump-debt-ceiling-democrats/

Since then, Republicans have repeatedly held the debt limit hostage to secure their demands, including in 2023, when they forced President Joe Biden to claw back investments in the Internal Revenue Service.

Through it all, Democrats have repeatedly pushed for no-fuss increases in the borrowing limit, arguing that demanding concessions in exchange for preventing a debt crisis was completely irresponsible.

Now that they’re out of power, however, Democrats say they should seize on this year’s deadline as an opportunity to abolish the debt limit — or suspend it for decades — as some in their ranks have been arguing for years.

With Trump, they may have a willing negotiating partner, even if his own party is less eager to cut a deal.

Even before he was sworn in for a second term, the president in December ordered Republicans to raise the debt ceiling as part of a government funding bill, crashing already tenuous negotiations between House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and members of the party’s hard-right flank, some of whom have never voted for a debt ceiling increase.

” Now Democrats are putting together wish lists for policies they might trade for their support.

Among the options: undoing some of the flurry of executive orders Trump signed during his first week in office that seek to slash the size and scope of the government, lay off civilian federal workers and enact immigration restrictions.

But some Democrats think the biggest prize would be eliminating the debt limit altogether.

“The days of Democrats just voting to raise the debt ceiling under a Republican president, they need to be over, period,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pennsylvania), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, told The Post. “We need to make sure that Democratic priorities are met, if we are in any way going to vote to increase the debt ceiling. But at the very least, we need to make sure there’s a permanent resolution to the perennial debt ceiling dysfunction.”