Retail leaders could certainly add their voices, but I’m not sure it will help. The leaders of the political parties full-well understand the potential catastrophic impact of default — the country has been here many times in the past. There is no economic or rational business argument that can dissuade governmental leaders from this path they are on. A default anytime is bad; a default in today’s environment would be catastrophic and leave permanent damage to the U.S. economy – including retailers and everyone else.

Everyone should voice their opinions to their representatives. Many — if not most — Congresspeople have forgotten that they represent over 300 million people and seem to voice only their personal opinion and push their personal agenda.

Retail leaders should urge people in Congress to cooperate, but their words will likely fall on stony ground! Failure to reach an agreement would be very chaotic and, if prolonged, would likely cause a slowdown in the economy if federal wages and other bills go unpaid. That’s unhelpful for everyone, especially during this more fragile economic period.

Any sane person or entity would encourage allowing the debt ceiling to rise without preconditions. The relationship between the debt ceiling and future spending is somewhere between slim and none. But the thing has a political life of its own, and the entire populace and every entity in the country could ask Congress to knock it off and it wouldn’t happen. Everything is weaponized these days.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start, as a country, to have some rational discussions around where we are headed and how future spending should look–but in the current environment, that would also be unlikely.

I really wish we could return to an era of rational debate and discourse, but we sure as heck aren’t there. It’s a pity, really.

Should they? Absolutely. Will it help? Congress isn’t listening to their constituents at the moment, nor to the economists or any other experts who are all pretty aligned on this issue. I wish them well.

No — retail leaders should stay out of this. There is too much risk of angering one side or the other and they have little to add to the conversation.

Functioning democracy should not be an oxymoron.

Retailers can remind the Congress that the debt ceiling isn’t about new spending — it’s about paying for what we already bought. And they can remind them that deliberately crashing the economy would cost them dearly at the polls.

Retailers have been lobbying Congress as long as I can remember and for centuries before. What they advocate for or against is up to them. Whether getting spending cuts is more important than destroying America’s credit rating is, I suppose, a matter of individual choice, although the worst case scenario — essentially letting the country go into default on its debts — would wreak havoc with the entire economy, including retailing. Default would send consumer loan rates sky high, cut off access to credit at anything but usurious rates, and cause radical contractions in the labor market which in turn would impact housing and every other industry. And that’s just for starters. What comes next: decreases in R&D spend, collapse of social safety nets and Social Security, etc. would just make things worse and drive many, many businesses into bankruptcy and beyond. The current situation puts Republican retailers in a tough position. Towing the party line on the debt ceiling could cost a retailer her/his business. It will, as it always is, be a circus… Read more »

Retailers, like lobbying interests from other industries, can speak up all they want but this drama plays out on a regular basis with (hopefully) predictable results. Playing games with the debt ceiling to gain leverage on future spending hasn’t done much to curb the deficit so far, because both parties enjoy spending when it’s their turn to do so. I hope forecasts of catastrophe are not examples of “crying wolf” because the two parties haven’t jumped off that cliff–yet.

Retail leaders and every constituent in the country should provide input. Our republic and constitution are founded on the principles of checks and balances but, over the last 30 years, it seems our administrations have lost sight of this and now we’re in a real pickle. Our political leaders need to come to the negotiating table and act as adults, not squabbling buffoons, and make tough decisions that put our country’s finances on the right track.