Ending Debt-Ceiling Farce Won’t Mend Fiscal Policy: Clive Crook

The debt-ceiling law that is once again threatening a US government default is both totally absurd and utterly typical. Washington’s budget process, unfortunately, aligns brilliantly with the country’s broken politics: Combined, they assure institutionalized dishonesty and fiscal recklessness, plus the occasional thrill of possible economic collapse.

Designing a stupider system would be quite a challenge. But critics who confine their complaints to debt-ceiling brinkmanship are missing an important point. American fiscal policy is seriously off-track, and the costs of putting it right are getting bigger all the time. A system that does what the debt limit purports to do — ...