> Default isn't even on the table...both McCarthy and Biden have both said that

Neither controls the process. They have strong influence over it. But not enough to definitively stave off chaos.

This is a problem the Republicans created. They want to roll back some of his accomplishments and collapse the economy and have it blamed on Biden so of course they’re not going to _say_ they’ll force a default, but that doesn’t mean one won’t happen.

The only guarantee will be them voting to end their hostage crisis.

Blaming one party vs the other in this case seems shortsighted. Either party could have completely removed the debt ceiling. Let's face it, there isn't one already.

The "debt ceiling" as we see it is always going to be increased as needed.

Horseshit. The republican party recently added 3 trillion to the debt. They don't care about the debt. This is just an attempt to be destructive so they can blame it on Biden. You cannot "both sides" one party trying to run the country semi-functionally against the other party hell bent on making things dysfunctional.

I'm not blaming both sides, I am saying there aren't any sides. It's a systemic issue that in recent history has transcended whichever party controls congress or the executive branch.

I think it’s entirely reasonable to blame the only party which threatens to stop paying the bills when they can’t get what they want through the normal legislative process. The Republicans do this because they don’t want to take the heat for actually cutting popular services which they’d have to do if they made changes to the budget. Most of the debt we have now was added by them adding things their voters wanted to the budget, so it’s basically trying to skip out on the check after enjoying dinner.

If Democrats start doing that, I’ll criticize them as well but they don’t.

This is an issue you can truly blame one party for. The Democrats have never threatened to default via it and the Republicans have only done so when a Democrat holds the White House.

It’s hypocritical political brinksmanship of the worst sort that hurts the average American worse than basically any other decision congress can make.

By trying to let the Republicans in Congress off the hook for this you enable them to keep doing it until the idiot faction of their party truly runs us over the cliff one day.