House Republicans last year used the imminent approach of the nation’s credit limit to force Congress into enacting a series of spending cuts. The hostage scenario led to the nation’s first ever credit downgrade, with the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s repeatedly citing the GOP’s intransigence on revenue as a key justification.
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) has indicated that the GOP is ready to reenact the debt ceiling debacle the next time the nation comes close to its borrowing limit. But as economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers write, the economy was significantly setback during the last showdown, which they call “an act of economic sabotage“:
High-frequency data on consumer confidence from the research company Gallup, based on surveys of 500 Americans daily, provide a good picture of the debt-ceiling debate’s impact (see chart). Confidence began falling right around May 11, when Boehner first announced he would not support increasing the debt limit. It went into freefall as the political stalemate worsened through July. Over the entire episode, confidence declined more than it did following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008. After July 31, when the deal to break the impasse was announced, consumer confidence stabilized and began a long, slow climb that brought it back to its starting point almost a year later. [...]
Growth in nonfarm payrolls decelerated to an average 88,000 a month during the three months of the debt-ceiling impasse, compared with an average of 176,000 in the first five months of 2011 (see chart). Payroll growth subsequently recovered and has averaged 187,000 jobs a month since. Despite the rebound in job growth, employment is likely still below where it would otherwise have been.


Despite numbers like this, House Republicans evidently desire to deal the still fragile economic recover another body blow.
Last August, debt ceiling negotiations between House Republicans and Senate Democrats came to an end when President Obama signed into law the Budget Control Act, a
Last August, the nation
House Republicans made it clear earlier this year that they had
House Republican leadership, under pressure from more conservative members of their caucus, last month
Last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) signaled during an interview with Fox Business that he was
Last August’s deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling included a provision setting the level of federal spending for the fiscal 2013 budget. However, House Republicans
Much of the spring and summer of 2011 was dominated by the showdown between President Obama and Congressional Republicans over whether and how the nation’s debt ceiling would be raised, with some Republicans vowing to oppose any increase in the nation’s borrowing limit and others even 
