By Robert B. Reich
Tribune Media Services

Who's more influential in the Republican Party — the so-called Tea Party, or Wall Street and big business? The answer will be critical in the weeks ahead as the House decides whether to raise the limit on the nation's debt.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner warns that if the limit isn't increased by Aug. 2, the federal government goes broke. It doesn't just close down. It stops making lots of payments.

To continue paying interest on the federal debt and avoiding a default, the government will have to cut spending by about 35 percent, or about $3.8 billion a day. Seniors expecting Social Security and Medicare checks will be in for a rude surprise, as will military personnel and other government workers expecting to be fully paid.

Meanwhile, America's creditors are likely to become spooked about the risk of not being repaid in the future. As a result, credit markets could go into free fall. Interest rates would skyrocket. The dollar would plummet.

This would be a nightmare for Wall Street and big business, which depend on smooth-functioning credit markets. They need to borrow all over the world. They and their customers depend on a relatively stable dollar.

But the Tea Party is winning.

Wall Street and big business hold the purse strings in the GOP, but the Tea Partiers are now the ground troops. House Republicans need those ground troops to get out the vote in 2012. And they figure Wall Street and big business will stake them regardless of what happens.

If the debt ceiling isn't raised and the financial system begins to collapse, the GOP loses not only Wall Street and big business. It loses everyone who's still sane.

Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future." He blogs at www.robertreich.org.