Federal debt ceiling: The looming showdown

Republicans, and not just the Tea Party ones, are threatening to vote against raising the U.S. debt ceiling, sending the U.S. into default. Will they really do it?

"The debt ceiling is not something to toy with," says Austan Goolsbee, Obama's top economic advisor.
(Image credit: Getty)

Several Republican lawmakers said Sunday they plan to vote against raising the federal debt limit to force the government to fix its finances — although most economists say that would send the U.S. into default. White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee says he doesn't think the Republicans — including several aligned with the Tea Party, along with moderate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — will really play "chicken" with the U.S. economy, because doing so would cause "a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in 2008." Will the fiscal conservatives follow through, or are they just driving a hard bargain? (Watch Graham defend the GOP's stand)

Republicans are serious this time: Both parties have engaged in "theatrical showdowns over the debt ceiling," to embarrass the party in power, say Jeremy Jacobs and Edmund Andrews in National Journal. In the end, though, the threat of default was always deemed "too apocalyptic to be politically plausible. But that may not be the case this year," with the empowered Tea Partiers serious about not raising the ceiling without steep, offsetting spending cuts.

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