Good News!

The debt ceiling is not being raised to 1.8 trillion dollars.

Bad News. It's being raised to 1.9 instead. A billion here, a billion there. Soon, Congress starts to talk about real money.

Republicans were caught off guard by the scale of the increase which follows a $290 billion short-term debt increase approved prior to Christmas. “That’s just escapism of the worst sort,” Sen. Judd Gregg (R.,N.H.) told POLITICO. But Democrats countered that their only alternative would be to give-in to a Republican strategy of forcing multiple smaller debt ceiling increases, designed to bleed them politically before November.

This perception was reinforced by a meeting Tuesday between Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). By going now with the higher $1.9 trillion target, Democrats are making a high-stakes gamble that the party can pull together once more to put the debt ceiling issue behind them for this election year.

“We have to do this. The alternative is worse,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D—Mont.) in a brief interview.

Because the alternative is. . . Not spending? Reigning in costs? Borrowing $800 billion from China?

The election in Massachusetts was somewhat of a wake up call for Congress due to their walk-back on the ill-named 'Health Care Reform'. Make sure they don't roll over and hit the snooze button anytime soon.