Quotes & Sayings About The Debt Ceiling

We need to get rid of the debt ceiling law. It's anachronistic and it's a problem. — Mark Zandi

When President Obama was in the Senate, when he was a U.S. senator, he voted against raising the debt ceiling. And he said it was a lack of leadership that had brought us to this point. — Cathy McMorris Rodgers

America pays its bills. It always has. It always will. The fact that Washington is now debating whether to honor its debts and obligations, then, should come as a surprise. But playing political football with a necessary vote to raise the nation's debt ceiling has become as predictable as a Twitter rant from Charlie Sheen. — Peter Welch

Bless his heart, I have respect for Mitt Romney, but I do not have respect for what he has done through this debt increase debate. He waited until it was a done deal that we would increase the debt ceiling and more money would be spent, more money would be borrowed and spent on bigger government, and then he came out and made a statement that he didn't like the deal after all. You can't defer an issue and assume that the problem is then going to be avoided. — Sarah Palin

It's a shame that the president doesn't embrace the effort to reduce spending. None of us like using situations like the sequester or the debt ceiling or the operation of government to try to engage the president to deal with this. — Mitch McConnell

The debate we won't be having is whether or not the debt ceiling should be raised. We will not have a situation where people will hold the American economy hostage in order to achieve a specific agenda - at least not until 2013. So we think that is incredibly important as a matter of economic good. — Jay Carney

You watch television and see what's going on on this debt ceiling issue. And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President and nothing's going to get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress. — Steve Wynn

The debt ceiling debacle is almost a horrible metaphor: It's as if a bomb went off at 800 Pennsylvania Avenue and sent shrapnel flying in every direction. I don't know what these guys think they're doing, but it looks like they're committing political suicide. — Charlie Cook

I think the whole issue of a debt ceiling makes no sense to me whatsoever. Anybody who is remotely adroit at arithmetic doesn't need a debt ceiling to tell you where you are. — Alan Greenspan

The only way you can raise the debt ceiling is to change the trajectory of spending - that's my personal preference. But I want the Ways and Means Committee to offer up a solution. — Jason Chaffetz

A lot of the Republicans wanted exactly what Barack Obama wanted, exactly what Nancy Pelosi wanted, exactly what Harry Reid wanted, which is to raise the debt ceiling, but they wanted to be able to tell what they view as their foolish, gullible constituents back home they didn't do it. — Ted Cruz

When you don't have as much debt as we do, we don't have to worry about having this debt ceiling fight every single year. And I really think people are getting sick of having this news cycle every single year from Congress, from the Washington bubble. — Katie Pavlich

First they didn't believe in evolution. Then they didn't believe in global warming. Now the debt ceiling. What I call 'the moron trifecta.' — Bill Maher

Obama has been perhaps the most partisan President since Truman. He hasn't learned to be civil - note his insulting speech to Paul Ryan, who did us the courtesy of scoring a budget. The president has to talk to Republicans when it comes to the debt ceiling. He has reached the debt ceiling before anyone expected. — Grover Norquist

If you ask the question of Americans, should we pay our bills? One hundred percent would say yes. There's a significant misunderstanding on the debt ceiling. People think it's authorizing new spending. The debt ceiling doesn't authorize new spending; it allows us to pay obligations already incurred. — Peter Welch

Raising the debt ceiling is not additional spending. It is simply saying, you, the United States of America, can continue to borrow the money you need to pay the bills you have already rung up. — Jay Carney

I think what's important to understand is if the United States hits the debt ceiling and is unable to pay its debts, the consequences will be immediate and dramatic. — Kenneth Chenault

I would be embarrassed to tell you how many folks ran saying that they weren't going to spend a bunch of money, they weren't going to raise the debt ceiling, and then they went to Washington, D.C., and did exactly that. — Mick Mulvaney

If it took multiple debt ceiling hikes, I'd rather achieve the savings. — Bob Corker

The truth is that the United States doesn't need, and shouldn't have, a debt ceiling. Every other democratic country, with the exception of Denmark, does fine without one. — James Surowiecki

The debt ceiling at some point has to be raised. I don't think there's anybody that questions the fact that if we ended up getting in a situation where the U.S. government was sending out IOUs like the state of California did at one point, that ends up creating quite a brand problem for our country. — Bob Corker

Here's the perversity of Wall Street's psychology: The more Wall Street is convinced that Washington will act rationally and raise the debt ceiling, most likely at the 11th hour, the less pressure there will be on lawmakers to reach an agreement. That will make it more likely a deal isn't reached. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

The bottom line is very simple. You negotiate on this, they will up the ante for the debt ceiling. — Charles Schumer

If we had decided on January 5, in the new House of Representatives, to make no new spending bills, the debt ceiling would've still been hit, because, those are bills that are coming in as a result of purchases and commitments made by the administration and the previous Congress. — Bill Johnson

The American people are fed up ... with political posturing.' True, but also an example of political posturing. — James Taranto

The economy is terrible it's been terrible for years now, and the reason it's bad is not because of a debt-ceiling vote. The reason it's bad is because we have people who believe that by making government bigger by keeping people on unemployment checks and on welfare we're going to dig us out of this mess. — Todd Rokita

The debt ceiling is not what causes our problems, it's the only thing that might help solve our problems. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

There was no avoiding the fact that we were going to hit our debt ceiling. — Bill Johnson

The debt-ceiling vote isn't about what will be done in the future; it is about the integrity of America's commitment to support the bonds we issue. Elected officials have an obligation to maintain that integrity, regardless of whether they voted for the programs that required the borrowing in the first place. — John Sununu

If I was in Congress, I would not vote to raise the debt ceiling. — Sean Hannity

Most of the major increases in the debt ceiling have been accompanied by structural changes in the way we raise and spend money. — Charles Bass

I would vote against raising the national debt ceiling. Again, this is about mortgaging the future of unborn generations of Americans. It's a form of taxation without representation. I don't think we can do that. — Mike Lee

I think at the end of the day we have to raise the debt ceiling, because America pays its bills. — Terri Sewell

Hikes in the debt ceiling - without any political demands from the opposition party - had been routine until President Obama took office. — Juan Williams

We would be somewhat foolish to work out something on stopping us from going over the cliff and then a month or six weeks later Republicans pull the same game they did before and say, 'We're not going to do anything - unless this happens, we're not going to agree to increasing the debt ceiling.' I agree with the president, it has to be a package deal. — Harry Reid

When President Obama asked Congress to raise the debt ceiling $2 trillion and offered sequestration as an offset, I opposed it. I did not believe we should put the country $2 trillion deeper in debt and impose irresponsible massive cuts to our national security. — Mike Turner

It's not about what the speaker wants. It's not about necessarily what I want. There's two other principles involved here. It's what the constituents in my district want, and they didn't want to raise the debt ceiling unless there were significant structural reforms and spending cuts to help us balance our budget. — Tim Huelskamp

The president says we need to raise the debt ceiling because America pays its bills. No if we paid our bills we wouldn't have all this debt. The reason we have to raise the debt ceiling is because we can't pay our bills and we have to borrow money because we don't have any money to pay our bills. — Peter Schiff

It is simply science fiction fantasy to say that, if you do not raise the debt ceiling, that everything is going to collapse. — Mike Lee

The Republican argument that raising the debt ceiling encourages additional future spending is logically irresponsible. The debt ceiling has to be raised to authorize spending already approved by Congress. Despite that fallacy, the GOP has been able to score political points with its argument. — Eliot Spitzer