If you love it when Congress inflicts economic crisis upon America, I've got some great news for you: Republican Sen. Rob Portman made the case on Tuesday morning for putting the country through another debt limit crisis, saying that he sees the debt limit as "leverage" for his party on fiscal policy.
"This notion that we can't use the debt limit to talk about deficit reduction is ridiculous," Portman said during an interview with Politico reporter Ben White. "I think this is an opportunity, and I think the timing is actually pretty good."
We will reach the statutory debt limit next month, but thanks to extraordinary measures, the Obama administration will be able to avoid default until July or August. According to Portman, Republicans should use the threat of default to achieve their political goals. "Let's use the debt limit," he said. "Yeah, it's leverage."
But the ability to force the country into default is only leverage if Republicans are actually willing to follow through on their threats and shoot the hostage. Given that Republicans folded on the debt limit earlier this year, it's extremely likely that they would fold again, but whatever happens Democrats have no political incentive to let Republicans push them around on the debt limit. Default would be an economic train wreck, but Republicans would get all the blame and it would be a political disaster for them in 2014.
Bottom line: The GOP's true debt limit leverage is pretty much non-existent. Sure, it's conceivable that Democrats could use it as an excuse to support more austerity, but if that happens, it'll be a pretty weak excuse. The debt limit might be dumb, but no matter how dumb it is, it doesn't give Republicans the power to force Democrats to accept anything they don't already want to do.