This is an opinion column.

We’re going to raise the debt ceiling at some point. The question is whether America will have a fiscally responsible deficit and debt reduction package to go along with it.

Democrats gamble that Republicans don’t have the spine to demand fiscal reforms in the face of an extended federal government shutdown. Republicans admittedly have some skeletal deficiencies when it comes to maintaining fiscal restraint.

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Economic sanity should not be a partisan issue. We can debate the balance between tax policies and spending priorities, but a responsible financial equilibrium isn’t a bizarre goal.

“Like the president has said many times, raising the debt ceiling is not a negotiation; it is an obligation of this country and its leaders to avoid economic chaos,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre recently noted. “Congress has always done it, and the president expects them to do their duty once again. That is not negotiable.”

Jean-Pierre’s statement is the clarion call of failed political leadership in America. Leave it to politicians to leverage decades of irresponsible spending into a patriotic duty to pay the bills.

“It ought to be something that’s done automatically because the stakes are so high and it’s a fundamental responsibility of government,” said Sen. Angus King (I-ME), who caucuses with Democrats. “It ought to be done as a matter of routine, like turning the lights on. All we’re doing is authorizing the payment of bills we’ve already run up.”

King whistles past the graveyard of fiscal idiocy which has been equally as automatic as recent debt ceiling hikes. Our leaders seem incapable of understanding basic financial mathematics, but King would rather avoid the hassle of being forced to discuss the topic at all.

“It’s utterly essential that Congress raise the debt ceiling, and this has been the position of every treasury secretary,” Janet Yellen told reporters while traveling in Africa. “I would just say that really we cannot negotiate over whether or not we’re going to honor our obligations.”

If we can’t negotiate on paying for our irresponsible behavior, can we at least negotiate about the behaviors themselves? The debt ceiling is the andon light on America’s fiscal assembly line. It’s blinking red to let us know we have a massive problem.

Only an imbecile turns off the light without addressing the underlying problem.

The United States paid an average of $1.3 billion dollars per day in net interest during FY2022. Put another way, we paid as much in net interest on our debt as we did on the budgets of Department of Education, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Energy, and Agriculture combined.

Rather than put any real limitations on federal spending, Democrats immediately suggest that low taxes for the wealthy are the real issue. This is nothing more than the end product of bovine digestion.

Current federal revenues at 20 percent of GDP are the highest they’ve been in nearly two decades. The liberal pipe dream of soaking the rich to justify drunken federal spending is a lie.

If America taxed the top 1% in 2020 at 100 percent of their adjusted gross income, we’d raise $2.8 trillion instead of the roughly $720 billion that the economic elite actually paid in 2020. Call it $2.1 trillion in additional federal revenue for 2020. We would have still run a $1.3 billion dollar deficit in 2020 while essentially wiping out the income of the top 1%.

The United States will not and should not take all of an individual’s income no matter how rich they are. That means additional federal revenue has to come from more economically average Americans. If President Joe Biden isn’t going to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 per year, the math doesn’t work…at all.

This doesn’t justify the Republican position that taxes are never part of fiscal solvency. Federal debt and deficits amount to a math problem. In that sense, how we tax and the amount we tax absolutely matter. We simply can’t tax enough as a practical matter to catch up to our wild spending.

If Democrats had a lick of interest in fiscally responsible governance, they’d be putting forth suggestions on spending restraints that dovetailed with their political constituency. That isn’t on the table. They want to spend what they want when they want, inflation be damned.

The script has already been written.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will pan any spending restraints passed by the House without suggesting any viable alternatives. Biden will beg Republicans to put aside politics and do what Congress has always done.

Then we’ll wait.

Republicans must find their spines to avoid raising the debt ceiling without reforms because Democrats have certainly lost their minds.

Smith is a recovering political attorney with four boys, two dogs, a bearded dragon, and an extremely patient wife. He engages media, business, and policy through the Triptych Foundation and Triptych Media. Please direct outrage or agreement to [email protected] or @DCameronSmith on Twitter.