Rep. Rick Larson reflects on raising debt limit

Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Arlington) has a solution for Congress reaching the debt ceiling: pass legislation removing the budgetary ceiling. Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) has again introduced a bill, The End the Threat of Default Act, that strikes from the U.S. Federal Code the term “debt subject to limit” and inserts “the face amount of obligations whose principal and interest are guaranteed by the United States Government.”

The U.S. is one of two democratic countries that has a statutory limit that, being set, has to be raised.

The bill has 42 cosponsors, all Democrats. It will not pass in the Republican controlled House of Representatives, Larsen said while in La Conner Jan. 26.

The 13 term congressman had little to say about Republican intransigence and political crisis creation, though he experienced the 2011 government shutdown.

He noted that though the debt ceiling was reached Jan. 19, it will be May or June before the federal government runs out of money and that the Biden administration has initiated discussion early.

"The amount of hair I have, it is not yet on fire," the balding Democrat remarked.