Despite a seemingly straightforward name, the nation's debt limit does little to curtail future debt. For months, they've used the debt limit to attack Democrats' big-spending social and environmental agenda while pledging to staunchly oppose the current effort to increase the threshold. Under the agreement, an amendment was made to an unrelated Medicare bill that passed last week with Republican votes. It created a one-time, fast-track process for raising the debt limit that allowed Democrats to do so with a simple majority, bypassing the 60-vote threshold to avoid a GOP filibuster. The nation’s current debt load of $28.9 trillion has been racking up for decades.

Source: thestar December 15, 2021 12:29 UTC