Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced today that the United States will hit its $14.3 trillion debt limit on March 31 of this year. If Congress does not move to increase the national debt ceiling by that time, “disastrous consequences” for the nation’s economy will result, according to a report from the Center for American Progress.

Despite the real danger, many Republicans in Congress are trying to use the debt ceiling as a political chip in order to impose draconian spending cuts or demagogue to the right-wing fringe. Leading candidates for RNC Chairman, including Michael Steele and Ann Wagner, have also expressed their unequivocal opposition to raising the debt ceiling. At least seven Republicans also want to go so far as to shut down the federal government rather than see the debt ceiling increased.

The ignorance of the anti-debt ceiling wing of the GOP was encapsulated by Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC). Speaking with The Hill, Mulvaney declared that he would not vote to raise the debt ceiling because he had “yet to meet someone who can articulate the negative consequences.”

Today, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) articulated those negative consequences. Speaking with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Graham described what would happen if the debt ceiling weren’t raised: “financial collapse and calamity throughout the world. That’s not lost on me”:

BLITZER: You said on Sunday something that has raised a lot of eyebrows. As you know, in the coming weeks, next few months, the U.S. is going to have to raise the debt ceiling, otherwise America’s creditworthiness is going to go down the drain. You said you’d be willing to vote to do that, but only – I’m paraphrasing now – if there’s a deal in place to deal with Social Security and unless we go back to the 2008 spending limits. Those are your two conditions. How realistic are those conditions? Because you know what’s involved if the U.S. creditworthiness is evaporated.

GRAHAM: Let me tell you what’s involved if we don’t lift the debt ceiling: financial collapse and calamity throughout the world. That’s not lost upon me. But we’ve done this 93 times. And if we keep doing the same old thing, then that is insanity to the nth degree. We’re going to have calamity of a different fashion if we don’t get our spending under control. So what I said is the House is going to go back to 2008 spending levels. I would like to see the Senate mirror what the House does. Now that means tightening our belt, but name somebody in America who hasn’t had to tighten their belt.

Watch it:

However, despite the fact that Graham is fully cognizant of the dangers posed by not raising the debt ceiling, that’s not stopping him from holding the vote hostage until Congress passes regressive Social Security and spending cuts.

Ever since President Obama took office, Republicans have waged an unprecedented campaign of obstruction against the president’s judges. As a result, nearly one in nine federal judgeships are vacant and federal judges are now retiring faster than new judges are being confirmed. Yet Senate Republicans Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor yesterday to make the astounding claim that he has always been a champion against filibusters of judicial nominees:

Some have also suggested that one’s view of the filibuster depends on where one sits. And it’s true that when I was in the majority I opposed filibustering judicial nominees. But I opposed doing so when I was in the minority too, and I opposed doing so regardless of who was in the White House. In short, I was against expanding the use of the filibuster into an area in which it traditionally had not been used—period.

Watch it:

McConnell is simply not telling the truth about his record on judicial filibusters. While McConnell certainly joined his caucus in claiming that such filibusters were unacceptable when President Bush was nominating judges, McConnell literally filibustered the very first nominee named by President Obama. McConnell was one of 29 Republicans who joined a failed filibuster attempt against Judge David Hamilton, the first person nominated to a federal judgeship after Republicans lost the White House.

And judicial nominees are hardly the only victims of McConnell’s single-minded campaign to prevent the Senate from functioning. Indeed, the minute McConnell became Minority Leader, the number of filibusters spiked massively:

So while McConnell’s claim to consistency on judicial filibusters is obviously false, he has been consistent on one thing: doing everything in his power to make sure only conservatives are allowed to govern.

Campaigning before the recent midterm elections, House Republicans were adamant that, if given power, they would cut government spending. However, when pressed for specifics, many were unable to list even one single item they would cut from the budget. “The line-item will be across-the-board,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) embarrassingly responded when asked for specific cuts.

Speaker of the House John Boehner was no stranger to the promise to cut government spending. In fact, he promised over and over for months to do everything he could to reduce the budget:

“We need to cut spending. That’s what the American people want. That’s what the economy needs.” [12/17/10]

“Let’s be clear, if we actually want to help our economy get back on track and to begin creating jobs, we need to end the job-killing spending binge. We need to cut spending significantly.” [12/17/10]

“Our new majority will prepare to do things differently, to take a new approach that hasn’t been tried in Washington before by either party. It starts with cutting spending instead of increasing it.” [11/3/10]

“We will not solve our fiscal challenges until we cut spending.” [8/25/10]

“If we want to solve the budget problem, we’ve got to have a healthy economy and we have to get our arms around the runaway spending that’s going on in Washington, D.C.” [8/9/10]

“And if in fact we’re elected to the majority you’re going to see us cut spending. You’re going to see us revive the economy and reform the way Congress does it job.” [10/5/10]

“If the lame-duck Congress is unwilling to cut spending and permanently stop all the tax hikes, the new House majority will act in January.” [12/1/10]

“Republicans have been consistently focused on offering better solutions to cut spending now.” [6/21/10]

“We will never get our economy out of the ditch until we cut spending and have real economic growth.” [8/30/10]

However, now that he holds the speaker’s gavel, it seems that Boehner is no better than his colleagues at actually identifying specifics in the budget that he would like to see eliminated. In an interview set to air tonight, NBC’s Brian Williams asked Boehner to name a specific item he’d cut, and Boehner couldn’t deliver:

WILLIAMS: Name a program right now that we could do without.

BOEHNER: I don’t think I have one off the top of my head.

Watch it:

During just their first couple of days in control of the House, Republicans have voided loads of promises when it comes to the budget, including halving their promised budget cuts for the current year (cuts which they now say were “hypothetical”) and exempting their first bill from their own budget rules.

ThinkProgress intern Paul Breer contributed research to this post. Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.