Slouching Toward Bankruptcy

Some people work best under pressure, it is claimed. Sometimes Congress works only under pressure. So it is that Congress lurches from one deadline and phony crisis to another. Then--often in the grim hours of early morning, when most members are too groggy to care much what they are doing--the issue is resolved until the next deadline and the next crisis.

Now looms the Thursday crisis over federal spending. Lacking a raise in the debt limit, and after scrounging the Social Security trust fund bare, the government absolutely will not be able to spend another cent as of Friday, the Treasury Department says. Maybe. There is nothing more creative than a government official in need of a way around a deadline.

Still, it would be acutely embarrassing and absolutely irresponsible for the federal government to technically default on its obligations because of the routine and largely meaningless lack of a new debt limit. Legislation to raise the limit above $2 trillion is hung up in a Senate-House-Administration deadlock over the Gramm Rudman proposal to impose arbitrary reductions in annual budget deficits over the next five years.

There is no hope that Congress, with or without the President’s help, can reconcile the Gramm-Rudman plan over the next two days into a reasonable, workable program. The problem is that the issues that divide the three forces are the same issues that have divided them all year. The Republican Senate wants to protect defense spending against major reductions. The Democratic House wants to protect programs benefiting the poor from major cuts. And the Administration refuses to consider a tax increase to cut the deficit.

The protracted Gramm-Rudman debate has gripped Congress with paralysis. It has disrupted the once-functioning drive to pass annual appropriation bills for the various departments. And now, in lieu of those bills, Congress must adopt by Friday a resolution to continue current appropriations or the nation will run out of authority to spend the money that it can’t raise because of the debt-limit impasse.

Congress should pass a simple debt-ceiling bill, approve the necessary appropriations and work out a timetable for a realistic deficit-reduction plan based on national needs rather than political desires. The other alternative is to postpone Gramm-Rudman debate until Thanksgiving Day. What better time to squabble over a turkey?