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Comment by Georgelemental | Hacker News Reader

What is the desired end game supposed to be, of successive "clean" debt ceiling hikes? How much longer should we be spending money we don't have—enough to make inflation even worse? Enough that nobody will lend to us anymore and default is forced? What's the plan here?

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Whatever needs to be done must be done during the budgeting process. Not when the check comes due. Congress wrote the check years ago. Now it's time to pay. If Republicans truly want a more balanced budget they should pursue it then. Of course, the last time the Republicans passed a budget it was far from balanced. Make of that what you will.

> Whatever needs to be done must be done during the budgeting process.

If the "normal" process could fix our serious problem, it would have done so long ago. Instead, deficits have exploded. If the only way to force a discussion on reigning in spending before disaster strikes is via debt-ceiling negotiation, so be it.

> Of course, the last time the Republicans passed a budget it was far from balanced.

And shame on the Republicans who passed that budget!

The debt ceiling isn't what prevents us from spending money we don't have.

Congress causes deficit spending to happen by passing budgets. The debt ceiling is more like refusing to pay your credit card bill after you've already used it to buy stuff.

I am not against Congress passing a debt ceiling hike, I am against Congress passing a "clean" hike that is not paired with the needed cuts in spending. The normal budgeting process clearly hasn't been working, if debt ceiling negotiations are the only way to force a fix then so be it.

But it won't work. The administration won't trade spending cuts for a clean hike. It's like a hostage taker whose demands aren't met. You're left with two options: surrender, or shoot the hostage. Neither gets you what you want, but one is more reasonable than the other.

The adminstration doesn't write budgets, Congress does, even if the president hosts the meetings where they talk about it.

(Although presidents do run on doing a lot of things they don't have the power to do.)

The President writes the budget. You can find the budgets here: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/budget/2023

Congress passes nonbinding budget resolutions on themselves and binding appropriations bills on the Treasury.

No, the executive writes and releases a budget for PR reasons which Congress then receives, tears up into little pieces, and writes their own.

If the presidency and Senate are controlled by opposing parties the Senate wins.

Remember when Trump's proposed budget just defunded Meals on Wheels? That didn't actually happen because it's not real.

> President writes the budget

The President proposed budgets. The House and the Congress have the power of the purse.

The president is part of the legislative branch because they have veto power. It's really not as simple as "the president writes the budget" or "congress writes the budget". The entire legislative branch writes it together.

> president is part of the legislative branch because they have veto power

Veto is a check on the legislature by the President. It does not make the President part of the legislature anymore than it makes every district court judge. (The Vice President has a hybrid role.)

Congress can pass a budget with zero executive input by overriding the veto. One can correctly say the President is part of the legislative process. But not the branch.

You're getting into semantics and I disagree with your definition of legislative branch. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. If you are a part of the lawmaking process you're in the legislative branch as far as I'm concerned.

Well, you know, your definition of the legislative branch is the non-standard one. It's like you looked at rain, and said "that's mud", and someone said, "that's not mud, it's rain, because mud has dirt in it", and you said, "there's some dirt in rain, too; I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree". No, it's not "agree to disagree"; they're right in their definition, and you're wrong.

Tanks for the laugh, but the accepted definition of legislative branch is "branch of government that makes laws" and the president is very much in the part of the government that makes laws, considering the difficulty in passing them without their approval.

No, as others have already explained to you, the president is not part of the branch of government that makes laws. He is (often) part of the process, but he's not part of the branch - not as those words are normally used.

You can go with your own personal interpretation of the definition, or you can talk with the rest of the planet. Your choice.

You basically can’t make a law without the president. I can’t see how you can claim they’re not part of the law making process. Two thirds of both houses means the president absolutely is a a part of the branch of government that makes laws.

That's because he's a "check and balance" on the legislative branch, not part of it. Congress "checks" the other branches by approving nominees and controlling their budgets.

And then effectively nobody checks SCOTUS, which is kind of a problem.

We already spent the money. Raising the debt ceiling is just a way for us to formally say "not declaring bankruptcy see ya in a bit"

Our debt will continue to grow exponentially, along with our overall economy and population size. That's the plan.

Your population size is not growing anywhere near exponentially: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=us+popula...

Biden has already agreed to negotiate on the budget once the debt ceiling is raised.

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