The Orlando Sentinel, Sunday, August 27, 2023

By: Senator Roy Blunt and Congresswoman Val Demings

Fitch’s recent lowering of America’s credit rating, combined with the coming spending battles this fall that could prompt a government shutdown, make it clear that we have reached a critical moment in our democracy.

In a sense, it’s the culmination of trends that have been growing for more than a decade. Since as far back as 2010, more new members have come to Congress after promising voters what they won’t do (e.g., raise the debt limit, cut entitlements) rather than what they will. That’s a recipe for more gridlock and less progress.

Our democracy works best when members of both parties come together, learn from one another, and find common ground on growing challenges – rather than retreat to their corners and reinforce their iron-clad pledges on the House and Senate floors, cable TV, and social media.

Throughout our history, leaders of different parties have joined forces at critical moments – enabling us to win two world wars and the Cold War, reach the moon, expand trade, protect constitutional rights, create a social safety net, achieve scientific and medical breakthroughs, build the interstate highway system, and invest in cutting-edge technologies.

Both of us have seen the fruits of inter-party collaboration up close. One of us was a Republican House member and senator from Missouri, while the other was a Democratic House member from Florida. In recent years, we were proud to join in as members of both parties voted overwhelmingly to provide major COVID-19 relief in 2020, strengthen the nation’s infrastructure in 2021, and position America to better compete with China in 2022.

At the same time, though, we shared the frustration of many of our colleagues that growing polarization in Congress was blocking action on major challenges and even basic tasks, like funding the government and paying its bills. Gridlock has real consequences, as we see with Fitch’s downgrade. 

What’s most striking is what Fitch wrote to explain its action. The downgrade – just the second in U.S. history, after Standard and Poor’s (S&P) in 2011 – did not arise from concerns that America lacked the economic wherewithal to pay its bills.

Quite the contrary. The nation, Fitch wrote, maintains a “large, advanced, well-diversified and high-income economy, supported by a dynamic business environment. Critically, the U.S. dollar is the world’s preeminent reserve currency, which gives the government extraordinary financing flexibility.”

Instead, the downgrade was driven by this year’s long battle to raise the debt limit – which lawmakers did, along with spending restraint, just days before a potential default – and what that battle says about the state of governance in Washington.

“The repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions,” Fitch wrote, “have eroded confidence in fiscal management.” And, as Fitch explained, its concerns come at a critical time in our fiscal history. In the coming years, deficits, debt, and interest payments on the debt all will rise as a share of the economy, while the Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust funds will face depletion. Gridlock has real victims, too. 

Moreover, S&P provided a similar justification when it downgraded America’s credit rating in 2011. That action also came in the aftermath of a long battle to raise the debt limit, prompting S&P’s concerns about the “effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions.”

As former lawmakers, we well remember our toughest political battles, whether campaigning or serving in Congress. We know from experience that democracy is messy and conflict is inevitable. After all, members of different parties, and even members of the same party, have different visions of where to take America in the future.

But, there’s a time to fight and a time to come together and, these days, Washington is doing far too much of the former and not enough of the latter. As Main Street and the world watch, we need to show that, just as we were able to meet those critical moments of the last two-plus centuries, we retain the capacity to govern. 

What would that take?

For the short term, lawmakers must avoid a government shutdown this fall by adopting a continuing resolution to keep the government running until they enact full-year appropriations bills for 2024.

Longer term, lawmakers should focus far more attention on the reality of rising debt. As economists and budget experts widely agree, the U.S. fiscal path is unsustainable. Lawmakers need to craft a comprehensive plan that, over time, would reduce deficits and lower the debt as a share of the economy.

Nothing would do more to restore confidence that America can still govern than a crisis-free appropriations process this fall and a serious plan to restore the nation’s fiscal health over the long term.