Dems squabbling over raising the debt limit

A dangerous direction.

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air: The Washington Post reports this morning that an effort to get the Senate to raise the national debt limit — a requirement for the Obama administration’s spending plans — have hit an impasse. Senate Republicans don’t want an increase at all, but instead want significant cuts and less deficit spending. The White House wants an increase in the ceiling with no strings attached, as do progressives in both the Senate and House. However, moderate Democrats want the worst of both worlds in a bipartisan commission:

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said Friday that the government needs to borrow at least $1.8 trillion more next year to avoid defaulting on its debts.

Such an increase is much larger than House Democrats had planned earlier this year, when they proposed raising the nation’s debt limit.

His comments came as senior White House officials and Senate leaders planned to resume negotiations over the debt limit, with the two camps at odds over how to chart a course toward fiscal solvency.

Late Thursday, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag and other senior White House officials met with more than a dozen lawmakers at the Capitol, including Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

Conrad is the leader of a group of Senate moderates threatening to block an increase in the debt limit unless Congress also votes to create a bipartisan task force on deficit reduction with broad powers to force tax increases or spending cuts through Congress.

But the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have resisted giving an independent task force the power to make potentially momentous budget decisions outside the regular legislative process. One option: President Obama could appoint a task force by executive order, though that body would be significantly weaker than one created by statute.

Right now, everyone should be asking themselves, “Where in the Constitution does this mysterious fourth branch of government exist to force bills through Congress?” It’s a great question, and here’s another: why can’t Congress cut its own spending? The answer is simple — Congress doesn’t 'want' to cut its spending. It wants to 'raise taxes'. And worse yet, it wants to pass the blame for higher taxes onto a “bipartisan task force” that will entirely consist of people who either have no accountability to voters or incumbents who have almost no risk of losing their office.