So the Debt Ceiling is Next- Oy

The Speaker of the House now says that every time we come up against the Debt Ceiling he's going to demand big spending cuts again.  It looks like there will be a regular taking of hostages moving forward.

Here's what gets missed: the Debt Ceiling needs to go up whenever the US is running any deficit.  Remember that the Debt Ceiling is about total federal debt, and the only way that goes down is if the US runs a surplus.  The last time the US ran a surplus was in 2000, when taxes were substantially higher for the middle class as well as the wealthy.  (Hmm, I wonder what happened then?)

So the federal deficit has been going down recently, but not to zero.  There's no possible way to get it to zero in the short term.  That means that the Debt Ceiling will have to keep going up.  It's baked into the cake of the system.  People have to keep in mind the difference between deficits and debt.

Furthermore, keep in mind that this isn't "President Obama's Debt Ceiling"- Congress passes budgets, which are the only thing that determine the Debt Ceiling.  Every year the House and Senate get to pass budgets- that's when they work on this stuff.

I really hope this isn't too complicated to explain to the American people, and I really hope that the press is able to remember this fact when reporting on it.  If the Republicans in the House use the Debt Ceiling to destroy the economy, they must be made to pay.  And the administration can not give in to hostage taking.