Senate averts debt disaster — but not for long
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced Thursday a deal with Republicans to raise the federal debt limit. The world can breathe easy — for just a bit, and then it is back to worrying about whether national default is around the corner.
Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., did not sign a peace treaty so much as a cease-fire on the debt ceiling, and perilously close to Oct. 18, the date the Treasury Department indicated it would run out of cash. In the process, McConnell gave up some — but still very little — ground, and the two leaders managed only to agree to push off until December their conflict over who is responsible for preserving the full faith and credit of the United States.
Democrats may nevertheless feel as though they won this round, and that McConnell will cave if they push the nation close enough to default. That would be the wrong lesson. Like the rest of the world, Democrats and Republicans should be terrified at how close to ruin Congress brought the nation — and they should act now to head off another debt crisis in two months’ time.
Ideally, McConnell would drop entirely his blockade of Democrats’ efforts to raise the nation’s borrowing limit. Republicans need not vote to raise the debt ceiling, so long as they do not object to allowing Democrats to do so by a simple majority vote. McConnell’s insistence on objecting was an attempt to force Democrats to use complex parliamentary maneuvers, to waste precious Senate floor time and to complicate the majority’s legislative efforts. No historical precedent or compelling principle justified the minority leader’s obstruction. He simply knew the debt limit must be raised and that Republicans could make it maximally painful for Democrats to do so. This may be fair legislative play in many other realms of congressional business, but it should be off-limits when it comes to raising the debt limit.
Rather than concede to McConnell’s galling demands, Democrats refused to begin proceedings to raise the debt limit via the byzantine “reconciliation” parliamentary procedure even as the time to default ran critically short. Congressional observers, the business community and others who drew assurance from past borrowing-limit conflicts, in which lawmakers reliably struck a deal to raise the debt ceiling, began to worry that the two sides might walk off the cliff this time.
Though the Senate appears to have averted catastrophe this time, the episode was still traumatic. Confidence in the country’s government was once again shaken. Lawmakers encouraged doubts about the stability of the Treasurys, the dollar and bedrock financial institutions.
The nation should not have to endure another round. If McConnell refuses to do the right thing, Democrats should do the necessary thing and muscle through a debt limit increase over GOP objections. They have two options. They can use the reconciliation maneuver McConnell wanted to force them to employ all along. Or they can change Senate rules to allow straight up-or-down votes on all debt limit hikes. Democrats should choose one and get on with it.
The Washington Post (Oct. 7)