Limbaugh Claims ‘Nation’s Creditworthiness Would Go Up’ If The Debt Ceiling Isn’t Raised
From ThinkProgress:
The United States officially hit its legal debt limit on Monday, forcing the Treasury Department to dip into federal pension funds to prevent the country from defaulting on its obligations for the first time in history. Secretary Geithner has said he can only stave off default until August 2nd, at which point Congress must vote to raise the limit or risk setting off a global economic meltdown.
Republicans in Congress are not only holding the country hostage — demanding trillions of dollars in spending cuts before they will agree to raise the debt ceiling — but are increasingly denying that defaulting on our debt would even have negative economic consequences. Politico investigated this disturbing trend of “default denialism” in an article on Tuesday, pointing out that the claim is based on fringe conservative theories that have seeped into the political mainstream.
On his radio program yesterday, Rush Limbaugh blasted the Politico piece, proudly embraced the “default denier” label, and then went a step further — by claiming that not raising the debt limit would actually improve the nation’s credit rating: