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The tea-party republicans in the house have a big decision coming up that'll tell us how serious they are about upholding the conservative, constitutional principles on which they got elected....

From Bloomberg -- Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, said if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, the “impact on the economy would be catastrophic.”

“I don’t see why anybody’s playing chicken with the debt ceiling,” Goolsbee said today on ABC’s “This Week” program. “If we get to the point where we damage the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.”

The government is slated to hit the legal limit on borrowing, $14.3 trillion, early this year. Congress must agree to raise that ceiling or the U.S. could be forced to default on its obligations.

Cutting spending is always the last thing these guys consider as a means of reducing the deficit. I'll wager that any house republicans that vote to raise the debt ceiling without concomitant or bigger, spending cuts, will meet stiff challenges to their positions in 2012. And deservedly so. We didn't elect these guys to go along with Obama's spending demands. They were elected to cut the spending, reduce the deficit, and cut taxes, not give them more room to spend money they don't have.

This jackass Goolsbee thinks that not raising the ceiling would be catastrophic, but raising the ceiling is the same as you or me being $100,000 in credit-card debt and rather than stop spending, we just get another VISA with a $10,000 credit limit on it. How is that not the most catastrophic move?