The whole debt ceiling “crisis” is the latest battle in The Republican War on Christmas and, as usual, completely manufactured by Republicans for narrow political ends.

Since March 1962, the debt ceiling has been raised 74 times, according to the Congressional Research Service. Ten of those times have occurred since 2001.

The debt ceiling has been raised all these times without any of the Republican shenanigans now going on. If a default occurs, it will be solely the fault of Republican hyper-partisanship and completely unnecessary. If a default occurs, our nation’s economy will go into the tank as immediately billions of dollars will be extracted from the nation’s economy crushing any economic recovery and devaluing stocks by at least one third and causing a loss of US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of at least 5%. The US economic crash could spiral into a worldwide crash and precipitate another Great Recession or a New Depression.

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