Conservative historian Bruce Bartlett explains why Tea Party thinking on national debt ceiling is "idiotic" Bruce Bartlett is a historian whose résumé includes stints as a domestic policy advisor during the Reagan administration and a Treasury official under George H.W. Bush. He is also the author of the 2006 blockbuster "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." For years, Bartlett has been passionately calling attention to Republican fiscal irresponsibility, and now that the fight over whether to raise the debt ceiling -- and prevent the U.S. government from defaulting on its debts -- is promising to be one of 2011's major political dramas, Salon decided he was the perfect person to bring some clarity to a confusing issue. He spoke with Salon by phone on Wednesday morning.
---- But isn't there a limit to how irresponsibly politicians can act? When the House Republicans rejected the first TARP authorization vote, the reaction in financial markets swiftly changed their minds. Wouldn't the same thing be likely to happen this time around?
Perhaps. But do we really want to pay that price? Do we really want to introduce an element of doubt into the financial markets, that a security that is primarily bought because there is assumed to be risk zero risk of default is no longer safe? There is no other security on earth that has that reputation, not even German government bonds. The U.S. Treasury is the gold standard and we have benefited enormously from this fact. Every time there is some disruption in the world financial markets, people flee to quality by buying Treasuries. As a result, we have benefited by not having to pay for the consequences of our own profligacy. Foreign central banks hold trillions of dollars of Treasuries as the backing for their own securities. The minute we introduce an element of doubt into their own minds about whether these debts will be paid, suddenly other alternative investments may start to look better to them, and we will lose market share, which will greatly increase the costs of borrowing over the long term. It's the most monumental insanity that I can even imagine.
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But the Obama administration certainly isn't willing to do that. Won't the White House cut some sort of a deal?
Of course they're not. I don't think John Boehner is either. The problem is that the Tea Partyers are nuts. That is my point. They are irrational, they are ignorant, they don't know anything about financial markets and they think that they are standing up for God and the balanced budget.
I have no doubt that there are enough rational people in the Republican Party together with enough Democrats to have the votes to increase the debt limit. The problem is that as we've seen in this last election, the Tea Party people have shown us that they don't give a crap. Look, for example, at the defeat of Sen. Robert Bennett in Utah. He was one of the most conservative members of the Senate, and he was defeated primarily because he merely co-sponsored a bill with the Democrat Ron Wyden that put out an alternative approach to healthcare reform. This was deemed to be beyond the pale. He was defeated in the Republican primary, and I think this is the concern that every Republican has -- of having someone run against them in the primary who says, This senator or congressman s.o.b. voted to increase the debt limit. They voted to give Obama more money to destroy our country with.
I don't think there are very many Republicans that are going to take the risk of allowing that to happen.
