The Default Fault Halt

Senate Republicans are licking their chops at the prospect of cratering the US economy to score points by blocking a rise in the debt limit, and forcing the US into a recession-creating default, and as Greg Sargent reminds us, it'll be 100% the GOP's fault if it happens.

The current position held by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and most Republican senators is that this fall they will vote in favor of the United States defaulting on its debts, leading to economic Armageddon.

You don’t hear their position described this way in many press accounts, to be sure. But that is functionally their position: They are threatening to withhold all GOP support when Congress votes to suspend the debt limit, probably sometime in October.

If the debt limit is not suspended or raised, the United States will default, with horrible consequences, and Republicans are threatening to vote no.

McConnell spelled out his position in new detail in an interview with Punchbowl News. He says Democrats must suspend or raise the debt limit as part of their multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation bill, where they can do so by simple majority, without any Republicans.

If they do not, McConnell says, no Republicans will support suspending it or raising it as part of some other process, say, via a “clean” debt limit bill, or as part of a continuing resolution funding the government at the end of September (which would require 60 votes to overcome a GOP filibuster).

This is being widely portrayed as creating a dilemma for Democrats. And that’s true, if only in the sense that epic Republican bad faith is creating a dilemma for the more responsible party.

Democrats joined with Republicans to suspend the debt limit under President Donald Trump, and a good deal of debt was racked up during that period. Given this, Democrats are insisting that Republicans must join them to suspend the debt limit this time — suspending it would effectively render it inoperative until a future date — and they are daring Republicans to vote no.

One way Democrats might do this — which is favored by the White House — is to bundle the debt limit suspension with a government funding bill that would also include huge amounts of disaster aid, much of it for red states. The thinking is this disaster money should make it harder for Republicans to vote against it.

But Politico reports that Republicans are still threatening to withhold their votes, even if that disaster money is in that package, and blasting the White House and Democrats for even considering this approach.

Remarkably, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) insists not only that this won’t pass but also the mere fact that Democrats might do this shows they’re operating “in bad faith” and don’t actually have the “back” of disaster-sufferers.

Just try to fathom how deranged that position truly is. Republicans insist Democrats must deal with the debt limit themselves, with no Republican support, and if Democrats package this with other things that must be done — such as disaster aid or funding the government — that’s somehow placing unfair pressure on Republicans to join in raising it.

But Republicans themselves agree the debt limit must be suspended or raised. Kennedy agrees with this. So does McConnell! As McConnell puts it, “America should never and never will default.”

So why shouldn’t they feel obliged to actually vote to suspend or raise the debt limit for the good of the country, just as Democrats did under a Republican president, when this also had to be done for the good of the country?

 

So while I expect the Dems to indeed raise the debt limit through budget reconciliation, or at least suspend it, Republicans figure they can tie that around the necks of Dems for good. Thing is though, people like it when the government actually doesn't shut down, and the GOP has had so many shutdown tantrums in the last 25 years that nobody's going to buy they're arguing in good faith.

Bring it, I say.