The Honey Badger Rises

With the House going nowhere, Harry Reid and Senate Democrats are going to try to pass a clean debt ceiling hike in order to call the GOP out, and they believe they have enough Republican votes to beat a filibuster.

Senate Democrats are planning to start the process this week for a Senate vote on a clean debt limit increase, sources tell me – a move that could call the bluff of Republicans in both chambers and force them to take a stand on whether they will allow default and economic destruction if Dems don’t accept their unilateral demands. 

The move has the backing of the White House, according to a source familiar with discussions. 

The idea is that Senate Dems will move their own clean debt limit bill, rather than wait for the House GOP to hold its own vote on either a clean CR funding the government (which Senate Dems have already passed with broad bipartisan support) or on a debt limit hike. Dems would be challenging Senate GOP moderates to vote for or against averting default and economic havoc outside of any set of conditions House Republicans insist must be attached to any measure raising the debt limit. 

Senator John Cornyn is claiming no clean debt limit hike can pass the Senate, but Dems believe there may be at least half a dozen GOP Senators who would be willing to support one. A vote would put that to the test.

So we'll soon see if indeed Harry Reid can pull this off.  He'll have to at some point for the Democrats to stop GOP extortion politics, but I'm getting more and more afraid that it's going to take a multi-trillion dollar economic catastrophe caused by a GOP default before this will all end.