The debt ceiling dance is upon us in regular fashion again. It has become a constant excuse to reduce investment in the people and the land. After all, who wants to be in debt, right? Climate is one of the many important investments we need to make and that we could make with a small change in the monetary system that would democratize power relations.
Why the Debt Ceiling Debate Is Also a Climate Fight
“Congress is once again fighting over the nation’s debt ceiling, the legal limit on how much the United States can borrow. It’s a highly politicized battle that has threatened to paralyze the federal government almost every year for the past decade, with potentially significant long-term consequences for the U.S. economy. Now Republicans want to use it to repeal President Joe Biden’s climate agenda.”
Indeed, both sides of the aisle use this systemic ruse fueled by corruption. It is often used to project the notion that there isn’t enough money so they can deny support for the lives of ordinary Americans and much less so to support the health of our planet. To spend we must borrow because all our money is created by the banking system as interest-bearing debt when they make a loan. We are all supposed to believe that this does not privilege banks with undue power to decide what happens, what gets funded and what does not. The President and Congress can decide to do whatever, but if the funding isn’t there it will not happen. This control which has been developed over the years extends not only to public policy but to who the policy makers will be as money is key to the electoral success in this system.
The big secret, “kept secret by public incredulity” as Marshal McLuhan pointed out, is that Congress could just create all the money needed to not only ease the economic pain of the people, not only to eliminate poverty and war, not only to reverse biodiversity loss and planet warming, but could return our world to a peaceful Garden dedicated to the thriving of life.
The power to create money is the power to decide the economic development of the nation. But the “might makes right” US is not into development unless it is more profitable than war to the banks. The US spends more time, lives and money bombing and destroying infrastructure that it does building any. Fortunately, the…
