Dems face heavy lift on Biden agenda
WASHINGTON » Congress must fund the government in the next 10 days, or risk a federal shutdown.
Raise the nation’s borrowing limit, or default on its debt.
All this while Democratic lawmakers are laboring to shoulder President Joe Biden’s massive $3.5 trillion “build back better” agenda through the House and Senate with stark opposition from Republicans.
The magnitude of the challenges ahead and the speed required to accomplish the job are like nothing Congress has faced in recent memory, situating Biden’s entire domestic agenda and the political fate of his Democratic party at a crucial moment.
On Monday, the Democratic leaders backed by the White House announced they would push ahead on one front — with a vote to fund the government and raise the debt limit, all but daring Republicans to oppose the package and risk the crisis.
“The American people expect our Republican colleagues to live up to their responsibilities and make good on the debts they proudly helped incur,” wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in a joint statement.
The Republicans have made it clear they will not be helping with almost any of it. Instead, as the minority party in Congress hoping to regain control in the next election in 2022, Republicans plan to sit back, watching and waiting to see if Biden and his allies can succeed against the odds — or spectacularly fail.
The vote this week on funding to keep the government running past Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year and a built-in deadline, will force the political stalemate into the open.
The package is expected to keep most spending at its current levels on a stopgap basis to the end of the year and include supplemental funds for the aftermath of Hurricane Ida and other natural disasters, as well as money to help defray the evacuations from Afghanistan. Tacking on legislative language to allow more borrowing to cover the nation’s debt payments through 2022 sets the stage for a showdown.
The Treasury Department warned that it will soon run out of cash-onhand, and have to rely on incoming receipts to pay its obligations, now at $28.4 trillion. That could force the Treasury to delay or miss payments, a devastating situation.
“Doing so would likely precipitate a historic financial crisis,” wrote Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in the Wall Street Journal.
Once a routine matter, lifting the debt ceiling has become a political weapon of choice for Republicans ever since the 2011 arrival of tea party lawmakers who refused to lift it. At the time, they argued against more spending and the standoff triggered a fiscal crisis.
Echoing that strategy, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says he’s not about to help pay off debts when Biden is about to pile on more with a “reckless” tax and spending package. McConnell says if Democrats want to pass the Biden package on their own, they should use that same process to raise the debt ceiling alone.