In the days since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Nancy PelosiPelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' On The Money: Anxious Democrats push for vote on COVID-19 aid | Pelosi, Mnuchin ready to restart talks | Weekly jobless claims increase | Senate treads close to shutdown deadline Trump signs largely symbolic pre-existing conditions order amid lawsuit MORE turned the world of fiscal discipline on its head with her threat to throw the federal government into default if her demands for budget busting new spending were not met, what is truly remarkable about this development is not her threat, but the silence of the public commentariat in failing to properly respond to it. Do none of the usual suspects recognize the significance of her declaration?

If Pelosi has her way, federal spending will never go down, the budget deficit will never be closed, and our children and grandchildren could spend their entire lives paying off the tens of trillions of dollars worth of public debt that we leave behind to them. Unless demographic trends reverse themselves, that means more and more of our children and grandchildren will be enjoying less and less of the American dream.

Speaking to reporters about the need to raise the legal borrowing limit of the federal government, Pelosi said, “When we lift the caps then we can talk about lifting the debt ceiling, that would have to come second or simultaneous, but not before lifting the caps.” The caps she refers to are the spending limits enacted into law as a result of the Budget Control Act. Pelosi will allow the House to vote to increase the debt ceiling only after her negotiating adversaries, Senate Republicans and President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE, succumb to her demand for tens of billions of dollars in new spending.

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What is remarkable is that in doing so, Pelosi has turned the world of fiscal discipline upside down. The vote to increase the debt ceiling is a vote no member of Congress wants to take because it is embarrassing. It is even humiliating for some because it reveals the failure of Congress to maintain its fiscal house in order. If Congress would stick with a budget and spend no more than it takes in, it would not need to raise the debt ceiling, and it therefore would not need to vote to raise the debt ceiling.

But we make them do it anyway, on a regular basis, just to remind them of their unwillingness or inability to make the hard choices necessary to keep spending within budget limits. In that sense, the regular vote to raise the debt ceiling is not a wall that prevents excess spending. It is really nothing more than a speed bump on the road to excess spending. But at least it is a speed bump, and that is better than nothing against reckless spending.

Over the last four decades, lawmakers have bitten the bullet about half the time and voted to increase the debt ceiling with some form of paired legislation that showed Congress acknowledging it needed to do a better job of maintaining fiscal discipline. The Budget Control Act, for instance, was signed into law in 2011. This raised the debt ceiling even as it set in place a complicated set of guidelines to achieve significant spending and debt reductions in the coming years. In fact, spending in future years was actually reduced by a larger amount than the debt ceiling was increased.

It was a bill no one liked, but the leaders of both parties in both chambers voted for it, including Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Now comes Pelosi, who apparently believes that if she just pretends not to have voted for the Budget Control Act, then no one will recall that she did. Perlosi not only refuses to adhere to the traditional rules of the game, but instead demands that the order be reversed and that we should first go beyond the current law, the one that she voted for, and enact new higher spending limits before we can actually consider the embarrassing vote necessary to ensure the United States can avoid a government default.

Pelosi is gambling that she can get away with her spending maneuver because public concern over growing deficits has fallen in recent years. That is indeed a risky gamble. Even with lower public concern than five years ago, 48 percent of respondents in a Pew Research Center survey this year believe that reducing the budget deficit should be a priority for our leaders in Washington. In other words, Pelosi just gave Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Trump a really big cudgel in their spending negotiations. Now we wait to see if they pick it up and use it.

Jenny Beth Martin is the honorary chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.