They’re going to use the debt ceiling to hold senior citizens on Medicare hostage. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, prominent Senate Republican Bob Corker said Republicans plan to use the upcoming debt ceiling debate as leverage to force cuts to insurance programs like Medicare. Corker said, “The Republicans know they have the debt ceiling…The leverage is going to shift, to our side where hopefully we’ll do the same thing we did last time, and that is if the president wants to raise the debt limit by $2 trillion we get $2 trillion in spending reduction, and hopefully, this time it will be mostly oriented towards entitlement.”

Republicans have been purposefully misleading the American people about what the debt ceiling is – claiming that by raising it the President will have unlimited money to continue spending. In reality, raising the debt limit just gives the US Treasury the authority to pay off the debts that the nation has already racked up, like Bush’s two wars and his Medicare Part D prescription drug program, which were never paid for.

The debt-limit is about paying off the nation’s credit card; not spending more money on that credit card. By using the debt-limit as a political tool, Republicans are questioning the credit of the United States, and threatening to turn us into a dead-beat nation.