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Comment by calgarymicro | Hacker News Reader

> The debt ceiling functions primarily to give negotiation leverage to the minority party.

Have Democrats ever actually made such a big deal out of this though? It seems like the increases were fairly painless during the Trump years when the Dems controlled the House.[0]

[0]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whats-in-the-budget-deal-negoti...

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No, they haven't. All crises have been caused by Republicans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt_ceiling#Leg...

It sounds like a very even handed way of saying it’s a republican stunt to hold democrats hostage.

I know what I’m writing sounds charged and partisan, but is it wrong?

The calls by deficit hawks always seem much quieter when there's a republican administration.

The reason is that at least officially, the Republican Party is in favor of small government. So if the Democrats as the minority party were to say,"Compromise with us or we won't raise the debt ceiling," the Republican Party's response would be a sarcastic, "Oh no! Don't impose drastic spending cuts! Anything but that!" Thus the Democrats have no leverage to hold back a Republican Administration's spending priorities.

> Oh no! Don't impose drastic spending cuts! Anything but that!

Actually, if the Dems had done this in response to Trump's tax cuts, I think the Republicans would have been pretty cornered. After all, the three things you can't touch (and the GOP have promised not to this time around) are the military, Social Security, and Medicare.

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