I find the headlines about the debt ceiling deal to be generally very misleading. They give the impression that Congress raised the spending limit for a limited time period from October 17^th, to February 7^th, on a temporary basis, in order to allow the government to run while negotiating for a new funding agreement and a new deadline.

That type of debt ceiling extension would retain the power to control the purse with the Congress, but it would have also required a specific dollar amount to be stated, thereby requiring agreement between the House and Senate. That obviously wasn’t going to happen. The Republicans tried hard to get the Democrats to agree to their continuing resolutions, to no avail. If the debt ceiling were extended through a continuing resolution, the spending levels would have remained constant at the congressionally preapproved levels.

What came out of the “shutdown showdown” was nothing but an unconstitutional transfer of power from the legislative branch to the executive branch. Instead of raising the debt ceiling, Congress passed a debt ceiling suspension, for the second time this year. This suspension allows indiscriminate spending by the executive branch. Our system of checks and balances has been circumvented. By permitting the Executive Branch to extort a capitulation from them, the House surrendered their Constitutional responsibility.

To put it simply, on October 17^th the American people lost control of their government expenditures.

There is no limit as to the amount of money the federal government can spend between now and February 7th. They have a book full of blank checks, pre-signed by Congress.

Any accolades heading the Republican’s way for this one are sadly misdirected and way off the mark. Had Congress held strong and supported the actions of Senators Cruz and Lee, and Congressmen Gohmert and McCormick, they would have eventually been recognized as fiscal heroes. As it turned out, they look like any other politicians.