Joshua Green is correct that the Senate has passed the point of no return and that a single determined senator has the power, by repeatedly refusing to grant their consent to motions, to push us past the Thursday day of default. However, there is a solution to this problem.
The reason that a single senator can cause this much delay is because the rules say that there shall be 30 hours of post-cloture debate unless there is unanimous consent to waive those 30 hours. But it only takes 67 votes to change the rules.
If Ted Cruz tries to take us into default and his cohorts in the Senate don’t want to go along, they can just change the rules for this one vote and the disaster is averted.
Don’t panic.
