Title:
Debt Limit Talks Show Deeper Debate on Government's
Duties
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Economics Report.
See text below
Text:
Anyone who has ever borrowed money can relate to the
debate over raising America's borrowing limit.
People who have reached their limit can try to ask
their bank to increase it, and go deeper into debt.
Or they can cut their spending and try to get their
finances under control. Or they can do both. Either
way, they have to keep paying their bills. If they
default on their debt, that only makes it harder and
costlier to borrow in the future. In July, President
Obama and congressional leaders held hours of
sometimes tense meetings at the White House.
Opposition Republican leaders agreed on the need to
raise the borrowing limit by August second or risk
the nation's first default. The argument was over
how to cut deficits. Most Republicans oppose any
kind of tax increase. Most Democrats in Congress
oppose big cuts in government spending, especially
social programs for retirees and the poor. Jerry
Webman is chief economist for OppenheimerFunds, an
investment company. He says, "The central issue is
how the US is going to bring its federal budget back
down to a sustainable deficit level." He says the
debate has deep roots in the Constitution. "The
Constitution was written by people who were very,
very suspicious of executive authority and built
into the Constitution lots of ways in which the
three branches of government could check and balance
each other." Those three branches represent the
president, Congress and the courts.Congress passed
the first debt-limit law in nineteen seventeen. That
was to control the costs of America's entry into
World War One. Today, Jerry Webman says the United
States is going through an important debate on what
services Americans can expect from their government.
He says, "I think we may be looking at one of those
almost generational changes in the role of the
federal government in US society." Lenders worried
about the risk of not getting repaid usually demand
higher interest rates. That has happened to heavily
indebted countries such as Greece, Ireland and
Portugal. On July fourteenth, Federal Reserve
Chairman Ben Bernanke warned lawmakers that lack of
action to raise the borrowing limit would mean a
lower credit rating for the United States. The
central banker said that means the government could
have to pay sharply higher interest rates. And that
would only add to deficits in what he called a
"self-inflicted wound." For VOA Special English, I'm
Carolyn Presutti.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
