Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine offered up some inapt metaphors Wednesday about the proposed debt ceiling increase on MTP Daily:
My first problem with this is that it’s a mixed metaphor containing two different metaphors, neither of which works.
First, this isn’t about a guy who won’t contribute to the dinner tab. It’s about a guy who, having rung up an expensive dinner he could never afford and paid with a credit card he never intends to pay back, decides not to reopen the tab and order a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue as a digestif.
Well, almost.
Then, there’s the guy Kaine refers to who runs up his credit card and won’t pay it off. The problem with this metaphor is that not a soul in Washington (not Kaine, not his entire party, and also not the other party) is offering to pay off that credit card. Most Republicans think the national economy can just grow its way out of the national debt, which is delusional. Most Democrats, President Joe Biden included, seem to think we can just inflate our way out of it — or, if they’re extraordinarily stupid, they want us to mint a $30 trillion coin. But no one is proposing to pay off the debt or present a budget that could get us anywhere near that point.
A more apt analogy might be that of the guy who maxes out his credit card but then declines to apply for a credit line increase so that his wife can max it out again. But even that analogy doesn’t quite work.
Here’s the one I’d like to use: Think of a guy who is spending about three times his take-home pay on booze and sports gambling and then each month, when the bill comes due, he transfers balances from one card to another not to pay off the debt, but rather just to be able to barely make the minimum payment on all of the other cards he’s already maxed out paying for booze and sports gambling.
That’s a bit closer to how screwed up our national government’s finances are. It’s not a bad illustration for a lot of people’s messed-up personal finance situations, either.
The deeper problem with Kaine’s remarks is that you have to be pretty insincere, talking out of one side of your mouth about fiscal responsibility and such, and then out the other side calling for passage of Biden’s big social spending bill.
Stripped of its sneaky budget tricks, Biden’s bill will add more than $5 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, above and beyond both normal government operations and the infrastructure bill that Congress may or may not pass.
When Kaine discusses raising the debt limit, he is already feeling the hole burning in his pocket at the mere thought of what he could do with all that extra money he could be borrowing right now. Obviously, people like that will resent anyone who even hints at cutting up their credit card. It’s enough to make me feel like we should just default on the national debt, let the world burn, and move on.
