Hillary Clinton has warned that failure by the GOP-majority House to raise the national debt ceiling will open the door for China and Russia to rev up its attacks that "American democracy is in terminal decline and can't be trusted."
In a commentary for The New York Times, the former Secretary of State lamented that paying the nation's debt has been "weaponized" in an increasingly partisan debate.
"Republicans should stop holding America's credit hostage, shoulder their responsibilities as leaders and raise the debt ceiling," she urged.
"If Congress keeps flirting with default, calls for dethroning the dollar as the world's reserve currency will grow much louder — and not just in Beijing and Moscow. Countries all over the world will start hedging their bets," she warned.
"It's a sad irony that [House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.] and many of the same congressional Republicans seemingly intent on sabotaging America's global leadership by refusing to pay our debts are also positioning themselves as tougher-than-thou China hawks," she wrote.
"They talk a good game about standing up to Beijing, yet they are handing a major win to the Chinese Communist Party."
Clinton recounted that "Republicans in Congress have consistently voted to raise the debt ceiling with little drama when a fellow Republican is in the White House — including three times under President Donald Trump."
But, she lamented, "during Democratic administrations, they have weaponized the debt ceiling to extort concessions, despite the danger of default."
Clinton wrote that in both 2011 and 2013, raising the debt ceiling came perilously close to "careening into the fiscal abyss."
"Fortunately, Congress and President Barack Obama finally reached an agreement to raise the debt ceiling" in 2011, but "the S&P still fell 17 percent, consumer and business confidence nose-dived, and the government's credit rating was downgraded for the first time ever," she wrote. "After another crisis in 2013, the lesson was clear: Negotiating with hostage-takers will only embolden them to do it again."
The risks are even higher now, she argued.
"Today the competition between democracies and autocracies has grown more intense," she wrote. "And by undermining America's credibility and the pre-eminence of the dollar, the fight over the debt ceiling plays right into the hands of Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia.
"America's credibility will help determine whether nervous Europeans continue to stand with us and support Ukraine or seek an accommodation with an emboldened Russia," she claimed. "It could determine whether more Asian nations welcome American military bases and troops to deter Chinese aggression… or buckle to Beijing's bullying."
Clinton added, "playing games with the debt ceiling imperils the dollar's pre-eminent position in the global economy and the power that gives the United States."
Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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