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In NYT op-ed, Warren outlines the one place she agrees with Trump
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, no friend to President Trump, does share his belief that the debt ceiling should be abolished.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren penned an opinion piece in The New York Times this week with a surprising headline: “Trump Is Right About This One Thing.”
Warren and Trump align on the idea that the debt limit should be abolished, the senator wrote.
Her argument centers on the idea that the debt limit, which puts a cap on the amount of money the federal government can borrow, is a tool for political “brinkmanship” that “allows the minority party to threaten economic collapse.” The debt limit does not impact the government’s spending, she said, and also does not keep the growth of the national debt constrained.
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In the piece, Warren offers a brief history of how Republicans and Democrats used the debt ceiling to their advantage over the last few presidential terms. Of course, the Democratic senator reserved ample criticism for Republicans who have worked to dish out “giveaways” to wealthy people and corporations.
Writing about the current landscape in Washington, Warren says that Republicans are planning to “rip health insurance away from 16 million Americans and cut food assistance from about a million children” in order to pass “another wave of tax handouts” for the wealthy.
But the GOP is also sneaking a “$4 trillion increase to the debt limit into their bill,” she wrote.
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“The Republican tax bill illustrates a key point: The debt limit doesn’t stop a single penny of spending. The party in power can simply raise the limit to accommodate their new spending. Keeping the debt ceiling around just feeds the political games as one party or the other threatens to block any increase and lets our country default,” Warren wrote.
Read the full Times piece here.
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