"Debt Crisis"

   I'm getting a little tired of hearing John Boehner on the news talking about solving the "debt crisis."
    There is no debt crisis. There's a debt problem, sure: we're spending more than we're taking in. But the fact that we're bumping up against our debt ceiling is not a crisis ... unless we fail to raise the ceiling. Then, yes, it's a crisis, but it will be a political and economic crisis, not a debt crisis.
   It's a function of how successfully the Republicans and the Tea Party have twisted our perceptions around  that people think we have an immediate debt or deficit crisis.
    We don't.
   Next week's crisis can be easily avoided by passing a clean bill to raise—or better yet, eliminate—the debt ceiling. There's no reason in the world not to do that, unless you want to hold the economy hostage in an attempt to wring political changes out of the administration.
   And that's of course the game the Republicans are playing: by endless repetition of their loaded talking points, they want to make everyone think that what they're doing is an effort to lower the budget deficit. Of course, if it were so critical to lower the deficit, they'd be willing to raise taxes from their current lowest-since-WWII levels. Instead, they just want to chop off critical parts of the government, and in the process, they're willing to take the economy to the edge—and maybe over—the cliff.