Quit sipping tea and raise debt ceiling

Coffee shop griping by tea party types serves a vital purpose and holds a storied place in American political dialogue.

That purpose is to vent cranky frustration. That place is ... well, that would be the coffee shop.

Washington, conversely, is a place for the uncomfortable and uncertain reality of governing, where often noses must be held while grudging but responsible votes are cast.

Welcome, then, to our nation's capital, you tea party types, where you will encounter a new world in which you will have to stand on something other than a coffee shop soap box.

Case in point: These neo-hawks on federal spending have come to the Congress just in time to have to vote either to increase the federal government's borrowing limit, which is the very antithesis of what they came to Washington intending to do, or risk a national and even global economic collapse exceeding that of 2008.

These tea partiers have no sane or responsible choice on the issue itself, which is not to predict what they will do.

Our nation's current debt ceiling is about $14.3 trillion. At some point in the next few weeks, we likely will reach that limit. Failing congressional authorization to raise it, the United States essentially would be forced to leave unpaid some part of the principal and interest due.

That is to say that the United States would be in default on its debt.

Our continued economic functioning, indeed the world's, would be imperiled by a new uncertainty about the ability of the polarized and volatile American government to act with sufficient efficiency and responsibility to keep debt payments flowing and keep credit lines extended.

This little warning might get the readers' attention: Economists say that a failure to raise the debt limit to the debt owed would send the stock market plummeting more precipitously than what we sustained in late 2008 and 2009.

To be fair: This might not actually be so catastrophic. Maybe some accommodation could be reached.

But who wants to roll loaded dice in one's congressional debut? Not this new Congress, we can only hope.

These kinds of issues are not uncommon in a culture in which, sometimes, your best bet is to avoid the prospect of a dire circumstance that might otherwise occur.

It is possible that our economy would have survived without the Wall Street bailout that tea partiers rose to power protesting. Fortunately, we will never know. Some things are not worth the risk, thus better left unknown.

It is conceivable that tea partiers could say that now is the time to do something so drastic as to freeze the debt limit. But there are two debts. The first is the one we currently owe. The other is the size of the one we will continue to incur. It is only in regard to the latter that real and responsible deficit-reduction and debt-reduction can take place.

First you pay your bills. Then you stop incurring new ones.

More experienced and garden-variety Republicans are seeking to advance that very line of thinking: They will vote to raise the debt ceiling, but first they want a serious discussion on longer-term spending reductions that would get us out of this death spiral.

That is fair enough, appropriate even, although the White House has suggested otherwise.

The Obama administration has asserted that even a contentious debate seeking to couple spending cuts with raising the debt ceiling would send the world a damaging political and economic message.

Really? Should not the world concern itself simply with whether we pay our debts, and on time, not with the political arguments we might have along the way among ourselves, and which would seem our business alone?

The world can rightfully dun us on what we owe. But it cannot yet presume to tell us what to say to each other.

John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and author of "High Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@ arkansasnews.com.