Democrats' debt limit kabuki is just hurting their own agenda
By: Conn Carroll (MSN)
Stumble and fail?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Sometime later this week, the Senate will vote, yet again, on legislation to suspend enforcement of the federal government's borrowing limit.
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This vote has already failed twice thanks to Republican opposition, and everybody knows it will fail again. The only reason to stage this third vote, which everyone knows is doomed to fail, is pure political theater.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer knows he has the power to raise the debt limit through reconciliation using only Democratic votes. He already used this same power in March to pass $1.9 trillion in pure deficit spending without a single Republican vote. Democrats are also halfway through using this exact same process again to spend another $3.5 trillion.
If reconciliation was so easily used to spend $1.9 trillion in March and another $3.5 trillion now, then Democrats can easily take a week or two to use the exact same promise to borrow money.
The only reason Democrats don't want to use reconciliation to raise the debt limit is that they know any delay will make it harder for them to pass their own $3.5 trillion spending bill, which is rapidly declining in popularity.
Democrats are hoping they can bully Republicans into making it easier for them to pass their radical partisan agenda. That isn't going to happen.
Democrats are going to have to use reconciliation to raise the debt limit — the only question is when.
Every debt limit vote that Schumer schedules through the normal legislative process is just wasting the Democrats' own limited floor time.
If they are smart, they'll eat their vegetables now and get the Senate Budget Committee started on drafting a resolution to raise the debt ceiling.
If they don't, all they are doing is wasting more of their own time and further jeopardizing their own agenda.
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Jeopardize away!!
They've been wasting time for the past few decades and let them jeopardize their own agenda. Much of it does nothing productive for the country.
Democrats have done this to themselves.
With a slim majority in the House, and an even split in the Senate, they have the "We are going it alone, you are not needed" on everything they have passed. Now suddenly they need the Republicans for raising the debt ceiling. I don't blame McConnell for telling them to go pound sand. McConnell is still at risk if the reconciliation bill passes, as he gave Democrats the bipartisan infrastructure bill under the condition that the reconciliation bill would never make it out of the Senate.
So Democrats will have to decide between their massive porkulus reconciliation bill; or raising the debt ceiling. It is one or the other. They will not get both.