Geoffrey Norman: Washington Rules

When you do this, the nation’s debt rises … and rises.

Until …

Well, until it reaches something called the “debt ceiling.” Which is a fiction… a number that Congress decides sounds about right for how much the nation can afford before …

Well, before what?

The sky falls? The government is forced to shut down?

This has happened. Sort of. And when it did, it was done in a fashion that would punish the voters and get them to accept the necessity of raising the debt ceiling. So Washington closed Yellowstone Park. That showed ‘em.

Once the government is open again and profligately spending money it doesn’t have, it is business as usual. Deficits. Earmarks. A billion here. Another billion there. Show those drunken sailors how to really spend money. Of course, the sailors have to stop spending when they run out of money. They can’t just raise the debt ceiling and keep the party going.

So for the next few week, we will likely be hearing about deficits and spending caps and debt ceilings. President Biden – who thinks of himself as being smarter about economic matters than Milton Friedman – has made clear his position on raising the debt ceiling. He is for it. And what a surprise.

One doubts that he will propose raising taxes. Washington will send a few thousand new IRS agents out into the field to rake in what they can find in the pockets of taxpayers with unreported earnings. Government doesn’t like it when people hold out them. After all … it really needs the money.

But it won’t be enough to cover the deficit. Not by a long way.

So unless Congress is willing to either get a handle on what are called “entitlements” (the name that pretty much says it all) there will never be enough money to do that.

The debt ceiling will be raised and so will some taxes. Congress will pass a budget and call it “responsible.” And we can all get back to working for the government until the next time we find ourselves coming up against the “debt ceiling.”

After a while, it gets old.

Which brings us to … the mishandling of classified documents.

We know that former President Trump has been doing this in his usual gaudy fashion.

President Biden professed to be shocked by this, calling it totally irresponsible. Which it was.

But when Biden was going on about the gravity of what Trump did, he was hiding the fact that he, and his staff, had mishandled classified documents, some of which were still in their custody. If being locked up in Biden’s garage, along with his Corvette, counts as “custody.”

The usual Washington “analysts” and “experts” have gone to work explaining to the rest of us how what Biden did was not so egregious as Trump’s actions. And there have been counterattacks. Biden, after all, was merely Vice-President so the latitude given him, in the law, was nothing close to that of a President. Biden and the people working for him were operating under restrictions that apply to anyone in the government. If they had been Army signal clerks, they might be looking at time in Leavenworth.

Biden himself seemed to take umbrage at the suggestion that anyone would even think that he, or members of his staff, would mishandle classified material. Speaking to the press in California, he got a bit petulant.

“I think you’re gonna find there’s nothing there,” he said. “I have no regrets. I’m following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. That’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no there there. Thank you.”

Interesting, in a way, that the President would quote Gertrude Stein’s little witticism. But, then, he was in California.

He will return to Washington where a special prosecutor is investigating. But the whole thing will almost certainly just go away.

Eventually.

As for the debt ceiling, well, this is where the Stein line is truly appropriate.

There is no there, there.

Geoffrey Norman is a former editor of Esquire magazine and is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard and National Review. He has authored more than 15 books and remains active shaping public policy discussions. He lives in Vermont.