It is a not solely a two party game with the only outcome a win. It's connected to the economic health of the entire country and likely the rest of the world. Businesses make plans based on future expectations; when Congressional idiot posturing creates uncertainty, this requires planning for volatility, which imposes a cost on every transaction, lending rate, and plan.
The incentive is showing up here. Lose a little rating, it's harder to rotate national debt, and suddenly the ~10% of the budget used to service the debt balloons to 50% as borrowing rates increase. This would be a catastrophe.
That is the "game" being played.
The reason the public isn't outraged is because they don't understand these connections
The game congressmen are playing is getting re-elected. They don't care about
> the economic health of the entire country and likely the rest of the world
Our political system in the US is set up in such a way that those who acquire political power are going to spend as much time and effort as possible keeping it or acquiring more power. Any improvement that comes is secondary compared to getting re-elected
It's demonstrably wrong to put all Congress people into such a simplistic bucket. Plenty of people on both sides understand the economic issues and act accordingly. The belief that all politicians are the simpletons you describe leads to current bad outcomes, and continuing to spread it only deepens the divide.
This basic principle is true in any political system, from communist one party states to corporate ladders.
The more specific problem is that the incentives aren’t aligned, because voters aren’t capable of seeing the relevant causes and effects. When the only thing voters react to is immediate economic conditions, of course politicians fight tooth and nail for more spending when they are in power and cuts when they are not.
Ironic, considering they literally had the power to raise the debt ceiling for two years while they were in Congress. But it's too much to ask that they have less than a year of foresight.
Raising the debt ceiling isn't righteous. The dollar is almost exclusively backed by two things: the petrodollar and the subsequent ability to open the gates of hell in order to defend it.
We are right to consider why we are a primarily export-based economy with a dollar tied so tenuously to oil. Blaming Republicans, when in fact it's a problem of crony-capitalism, is somewhat shortsighted. Some of the richest, filthiest, congresspeople are Democrats. To assert it's one-sided is very sound-bite politics of you. I would go to open secrets and see just how equal congresspeople are in exploiting the national debt for political and financial gain.
The debt ceiling needs increasing when the budget that was already approved needs money. If the contentious part is not spending so much then those Republicans shouldn't have approved the fucking budget at first.
This line of reasoning makes no sense... Holding the debt ceiling hostage is just posturing, and from your comment and some others it really seems to work even in seemingly intelligent people, imagine with the rest of the voters?
It's also a democrat problem in that when dems get power they haven't just decided to eliminate the debt ceiling all together.
But then, that's because moderate/conservative democrats have decided it's to scary to eliminate the debt ceiling (there's not enough votes for that). So maybe still a conservative problem but not entirely a republican problem.
The last few times this particular form of terrorism has been tried, it has achieved little. If the people threatening us had won major victories then maybe the strategy would make a sick kind of sense. Instead they won token policy concessions at best. Causing real harm to the people whose vote you need in exchange for make-believe gains is not generally a good strategy.
But there are actually people deluded enough to say Biden was responsible for the most recent hostage-taking, so hell if know what's going on. Maybe the GOP could actually blow up the US economy without consequences.
From a game theoretic perspective, waiting until the last moment is the most optimal.
Therefore, it will continue to happen until the voters find it so unpopular they begin voting out politicians that behave like this.