Which is what should happen - authorizes not a single penny of spending.

The size or existence of a debt ceiling has no bearing whatsoever on what the dems will pass. Not one bit. There is close to a 0% chance that the current rec bill is going to pass. We are either getting nothing at all, or something smaller than the 3.5 tril bil. That’s true whether or not the dems raise the debt ceiling. Because it has no bearing on what we decide to buy. Just on whether we’re willing pay after we buy it.

Not raising the debt ceiling does one thing, and one thing only - it causes us to fail to meet obligations. Obligations already made. Things we already bought.

You know, like every repub used to say when it was they demanding that the dems pay for things, whether or not they liked them. The tax bill added very significantly to the deficit. Almost all dems opposed it. Yet once it was an obligation, they joined the repubs in saying “ok, we’ll pay for what we bought”.

The debt ceiling should not even exist. It merely provides an option for reckless politicians willing to do anything for power to drive the country into a ditch.