WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation to raise the U.S. federal borrowing authority by $480 billion and avoid possible catastrophic debt defaults later this month drew enough support in the Senate on Thursday -- including 11 Republican votes -- to advance toward passage.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Makini Brice, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
Reprinted with permission from Alternet
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to be almost intentionally making a mockery of the small number of Democratic senators who continue to defend the filibuster.
Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have vocally opposed any effort to change the chamber's rules that require 60 votes to proceed on most legislation. Many Democratic lawmakers and advocates have called for the filibuster to be abolished, which would make it easier for the party to enact various pillars of its agenda.
The filibuster issue has once again come into focus because the debt ceiling. The American government is approaching the statutory limit on the amount of money it can borrow to fund the spending that Congress has already mandated, and if the limit is reached sometime later in the month, the country may go into default. The actual consequences of default are unknown because it has never happened before, but many analysts believe it would be economically calamitous and a devastating blow to the United States' financial standing.
Few people seriously think default is a good idea. But McConnell has taken the firm position that every Republican in the Senate will refuse to vote to raise the debt ceiling, and will in fact use the filibuster to prevent Democrats from doing so. His intention appears to be to force Democrats to use the budget reconciliation process in order to waste time and make their lives more difficult — even though the Democrats consistently voted with the GOP to raise the debt ceiling when Donald Trump was president. Democrats have refused to play along with McConnell's threats, setting up an extraordinarily high-stakes game of legislative chicken.
The Democrats do have another option to raise the debt limit. They could unilaterally change the filibuster rules to allow for the debt ceiling to be easily raised with just 51 votes. Manchin has already ruled this out, however, and Sinema likely agrees, since she's shown no sign of wavering from her previous stance.
The problem for them is that McConnell's hostage-taking exposes the central argument both Sinema and Manchin have made for keeping the filibuster as a fraud.
In separate op-eds, they have claimed that the 60-vote filibuster threshold encourages bipartisanship. Sinema wrote:
I understand bipartisanship seems outdated to many pundits. But the difficult work of collaboration is what we expect in Arizona. And I still believe it is the best way to identify realistic solutions — instead of escalating all-or-nothing political battles that result in no action, or in whipsawing federal policy reversals.
Since I was elected to Congress, a bipartisan approach has produced laws curbing suicide among our troops and veterans, boosting American manufacturing, delivering for Native American communities, combating hate crimes, and protecting public lands.
It's no secret that I oppose eliminating the Senate's 60-vote threshold. I held the same view during three terms in the U.S. House, and said the same after I was elected to the Senate in 2018. If anyone expected me to reverse my position because my party now controls the Senate, they should know that my approach to legislating in Congress is the same whether in the minority or majority.
Once in a majority, it is tempting to believe you will stay in the majority. But a Democratic Senate minority used the 60-vote threshold just last year to filibuster a police reform proposal and a covid-relief bill that many Democrats viewed as inadequate. Those filibusters were mounted not as attempts to block progress, but to force continued negotiations toward better solutions.
And Manchin wrote:
The filibuster is a critical tool to protecting that input and our democratic form of government. That is why I have said it before and will say it again to remove any shred of doubt: There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster. The time has come to end these political games, and to usher a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground on the major policy debates facing our nation.
Many have already criticized these arguments, pointing out that the filibuster incentivizes inaction rather than compromise and that eliminating the 60-vote threshold might actually increase the amount of bipartisan legislation.
But the GOP's current use of the filibuster is the height of absurdity. It has nothing to do with bipartisanship. Even McConnell explicitly agrees that the debt ceiling must be raised. He is simply using the filibuster and the threat of economic disaster to force the Democrats to run through procedural hoops that will make it harder to achieve their policy agenda. It is exactly the kind of "political game" that Manchin said he wanted to end by keeping the filibuster.
It would be hard to invent a more clownish and ridiculous use of the filibuster if you tried. And it's entirely enabled by Sinema and Manchin's stubborn insistence that the filibuster is good for democracy.
On Tuesday night, President Biden told reporters that changing the filibuster to raise the debt ceiling is on the table, in his mind.
But even if most Senate Democrats agree, they need complete unanimity as a party for the plan to work. McConnell, for his part, doesn't seem to think Sinema or Manchin will be budging. As NBC News' Sahil Kapur reported on Tuesday, when McConnell was asked about the possibility of a change to the filibuster, he literally smiled.
Republican campaigns will harshly criticize Democratic lawmakers who vote to raise the debt ceiling in the 2022 midterm elections, the leader of the GOP's Senate campaign arm said.
"They're going to get held accountable for it," Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told NBC News' Sahil Kapur in an interview on Thursday.
When asked if the debt ceiling issue will be a subject of Republican campaign ads attacking Democrats, Scott responded, "Oh, you better believe it." He added that Republicans also plan to criticize Democrats if they succeed in passing the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill that's currently making its way through Congress.
Members of both political parties have voted to raise the debt ceiling in past years. Republicans in Congress voted to increase the debt limit three times during former President Donald Trump's tenure.
During Trump's time in office, the United States added $7.8 trillion to the national debt. The GOP's 2017 tax cuts, which largely benefited the wealthiest Americans, will add roughly $1.9 trillion to federal deficits over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Since President Joe Biden assumed office, however, Republicans lawmakers have started using what was once a routine procedural vote as a cudgel to hold the U.S. economy hostage for their short-term political gains.
The federal government will hit its so-called "debt ceiling" sometime in October. If Congress doesn't act to raise the debt ceiling, funding for U.S. government agencies, programs and services will lapse. Further, the Treasury Department would default on the United States' debt, sending the country into an immediate recession that could wipe out 6 million American jobs and trillions of dollars in household wealth.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — who voted to raise the debt ceiling just two years ago — has said Republicans won't vote to continue funding the government this time around.
But when Trump was president, McConnell argued that not raising the debt ceiling would be catastrophic for the country.
"I certainly don't think any Senators are rooting for a debt limit crisis that could put our full faith and credit at risk," McConnell said in 2019. "That means every one of our colleagues should actually vote for it."
McConnell is now going so far as to block the debt ceiling bill from an up-or-down vote and has vowed to filibuster the vote. He also wants Democrats to use a more complicated Senate procedure called budget reconciliation to raise the borrowing limit just with Democratic votes.
This decision has little to do with actual governance, and everything to do with scoring political points against Democrats — no matter the cost to Americans. Scott himself said this will be the GOP's playbook ahead of 2022: to hammer Democrats in ads for increasing the debt.
Still, it's unclear how effective Scott's strategy will be.
Polls have shown that 52 percent of Americans support Democrats' wide-ranging spending plan, which would make child care more affordable; give American workers 12 weeks of paid parental leave; lower the eligibility age for Medicare recipients; and add dental, vision, and hearing benefits to existing Medicare plans.
The debt limit, by contrast, is not a top concern among American voters.
An Axios/Ipsos poll from August found that "government budget and debt" ranked sixth among the most important issues for voters, behind the COVID-19 pandemic, political extremism, climate change, crime, and health care.
And a Gallup poll from August found just two percent of Americans saying that the "federal budget deficit/federal debt" is the "most important problem facing the country today."
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
Washington (AFP) - The chairman of the US Federal Reserve called on lawmakers to raise the nation's borrowing limit urgently on Wednesday, warning that failure to pay government debts would do "severe damage" to the economy.
"It's just very important that the debt ceiling be raised in a timely fashion so the United States can pay its bills when it comes due," Jerome Powell said as the central bank concluded its September meeting. Failure to pay, he added, is "just not something we can contemplate."
Powell's admonition came after six former US Treasury secretaries also urged the Senate to overcome the impasse "without delay" to avoid the harmful fallout should Washington default on its debt.
However, the plea for quick action looks set to fall on deaf ears, as the opposition leader in the Senate has steadfastly refused to cooperate with the ruling Democrats to increase the debt ceiling.
That could lead to chaos in financial markets, officials have warned.
The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a measure that would suspend the debt limit until after next year's midterm elections and fund government operations until December 3.
But it is now stuck in the Senate, which has until September 30 to take action to avoid a shutdown and a second deadline of mid-to-late October to suspend the debt ceiling.
Powell warned that "no one should assume that the Fed or anyone else can protect the markets or the economy in the event of a failure" by the United States to service its debts.
And the group of former finance ministers -- who served under presidents Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama -- said in a letter to congressional leaders of both parties that even a short-lived default could threaten economic growth.
"It creates the risk of roiling markets, and of sapping economic confidence, and it would prevent Americans from receiving vital services," they warned.
"It would be very damaging to undermine trust in the full faith and credit of the United States, and this damage would be hard to repair," according to the officials.
They said protecting the "unshakeable creditworthiness" of the United States "is a sacrosanct responsibility."
But Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell continues to use the debt limit as a political bludgeon to protest President Joe Biden's spending plans -- although he argued in favor of increasing the cap under former president Donald Trump.
"If Washington Democrats want to jam through trillions of dollars and reckless spending all by themselves, they can raise the debt limit, all by themselves," he said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
Under Trump, the ceiling was suspended for two years, but was reinstated on August 1 with debt at $28.4 trillion.
The debt deadline looms as Democrats are hoping to secure a sweeping $3.5 trillion social policy package on a party-line vote, without dealing with Republicans.
That bill is itself bogged down in the usual morass of internal rivalries, however, with moderates nervous about the high ticket price, and progressives demanding the deal is in the bag before they will consider other spending priorities, such as infrastructure.
Biden invited two dozen lawmakers from the warring center and left wings to the White House Wednesday in a bid to forge a united front on the package, which would make for the largest single federal spending spree in US history.
"People wonder why is it different this time, given the fact that over the last 80 years the debt ceiling has been raised 98 times," Senate Republican Conference chairman John Barrasso told a news conference.
"Well, it's different this time because the Democrats are doing all of the spending. They're proposing trillions and trillions of additional spending without a single Republican vote."
Senator Mike Lee accused the Democrats of trying to "have their cake and eat it, too" by demanding a bipartisan debt ceiling increase rather than just going it alone.
"They've got the votes to raise the debt ceiling, if that's what they want to do. They don't want to do it without Republican votes," he said.
"Interestingly, however, they're just fine dumping three and a half trillion dollars on the American economy without a single Republican vote."
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