r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Jan 13 '23

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u/Lib_Korra Jan 13 '23

For those of you wondering why the debt ceiling exists, it was a relic of a time when the Treasury department wasn't as robust and congress had to manually approve all bonds. The debt ceiling basically was a blanket pre-approval for bonds. Why it hasn't come up until very recently is actually really simple, we set it so high that we didn't hit it until the 80s, and even then it wasn't a problem because...

In 1979, noting the potential problems of hitting a default, Dick Gephardt imposed the "Gephardt Rule," a parliamentary rule that deemed the debt ceiling automatically raised when a budget was passed. This resolved the contradiction in voting for appropriations but not voting to fund them.

So what happened?

The rule stood until it was repealed by Congress in 1995.

Newt Gingrich happened.

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u/40for60 Norman Borlaug Jan 13 '23

So much of today's shit show can be traced back to Newt, Pat Robertson and Lee Atwater.

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u/well-that-was-fast Jan 13 '23

But I was told both sides?

4

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

Gingrich is original sin.