On the homepage, I examine some of the GOP’s options regarding the debt limit. Namely:
They can raise it (in return for concessions):
This can fairly be called the consensus approach favored by most Republicans and many prominent conservative figures (to the dismay of those preferring the former strategy). It is a much more open-ended approach that offers plenty of room for disagreement over what constitutes a meaningful concession, but its underlying premise is that raising the debt limit is both necessary and a useful point of leverage in the fight for serious reforms. “Being a good steward of the U.S. credit rating means that [Congress] has to pay Obama’s credit-card bill,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of American Action Forum, writes on NRO. “Being a good steward of the U.S. economy means that business as usual — a clean increase in the debt limit — cannot be an option.”
Or they can refuse to raise it (at least not right away):
The conventional wisdom in Washington — on the left and among many on the right — is that the debt ceiling must be raised in order to avoid defaulting on the national debt, a potentially catastrophic scenario, the thought of which has business and financial leaders lobbying hard to raise the ceiling. Plenty of conservatives don’t buy the doomsday rhetoric and point to polls that show nearly two-thirds of Americans (and almost half of Democrats!) don’t want Congress to raise the debt limit.
Of course, there’s more to the debate than a simple yes-or-no question. Read the whole thing here.
Fox News’ Brit Hume gives a pretty concise rundown: