Obama Advisor: Not Raising the Debt Ceiling is Insanity or Something

Sure, let's remain sane by spending ourselves into oblivion.

Top White House economic advisor Austan Goolsbee warned Sunday that a congressional failure to rise the nation's debt limit early this year would be "catastrophic."

"It pains me that we would even be talking about this," Goolsbee told ABC's "This Week."

"This is not a game. You know, the debt ceiling is not something to toy with. … If we hit the debt ceiling, that's essentially defaulting on our obligations, which is totally unprecedented in American history. The impact on the economy would be catastrophic. I mean, that would be a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in 2008."

Yet another unprecedented milestone for our golfer-in-chief. I could swear his boss just said we all have to work together now. Calling critics insane is a funny way of going about it.

The current debt limit is $14.3 trillion, which Washington is expected to hit in February. A failure to raise the ceiling would prevent Congress from borrowing funds to pay the country's obligations. Some conservatives — notably many in the incoming class of Tea Party-backed Republicans — are threatening to vote against raising the cap, arguing that the U.S. simply can't afford to rely so heavily on borrowing.

Goolsbee argued Sunday the country can't afford not to.

"If we get to the point where you've damaged the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity," he said.

I suppose cutting spending is also insane?