Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA)
Now that Congress has to raise the debt ceiling again in the next few months, Toomey is back with his bill, as Slate’s Dave Weigel reported:
On Laura Ingraham’s show today, Toomey averred that “we have to raise the debt ceiling” as a “stop along this path” to fiscal sanity. And then he resurrected Full Faith and Credit.
“We should pass a bill out of the House,” he said, “saying there will be certain priorities attached to certain things, namely payment of debt services and payment of our military.”
As ThinkProgress explained at the time, Toomey’s plan is unworkable and doesn’t prevent the U.S. from defaulting on its obligations. These charts from the Bipartisan Policy Center show why. Once the debt ceiling has been breached and Treasury has exhausted the extraordinary measures at its disposal to avoid default, the government will be limited to only the revenue that comes in each day. BPC lays out what happens:
Toomey’s bill doesn’t fix this problem and doesn’t prevent the U.S. from stiffing someone who is legally owed money.
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