Last week, I asked what the Democrats should demand in return for providing some votes for raising the debt ceiling. I brought it up because it appears that there are enough Republicans who aren’t inclined to vote for the hike themselves that congressional Republican leadership is going to have to go hat-in-hand to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and request some assistance.
Several fiscal hawks said they wouldn’t support raising the debt ceiling without measures to reduce spending and the debt. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said he’d support a hike only “if there is a real path to balance … but we have typically not shown the intestinal fortitude to do just that.”
Meadows’ Freedom Caucus colleague Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) called the “debt ceiling is a leverage point in forcing conversation about where do we go from here” and said he wouldn’t vote for an increase without cuts.
“If our prescription is simply to keep on doing what we’ve been doing, I think that we’re going to see one heck of a financial storm coming,” Meadows said.
Everyone is talking about the draconian cuts in the White House budget blueprint, but they wouldn’t put a dent in the deficit.
Now, the Democrats generally see it as morally wrong and politically irresponsible to create doubt about the full faith and credit of the United States. Under Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” They recognize that both parties, when they’re in the minority, play the game of withholding votes for increased borrowing, but not to the point that there’s any serious threat of national default. Yet, they just spent eight years dealing with a Republican Party that used the creditworthiness of the United States as a hostage to exact a ransom of concessions. A refusal to do the same in return is a form of weakness. And if they’re not prepared to go to the wall the way the Republicans were, they can at least insist that they not be asked to make any further concessions in return for their votes.
Democrats have warned that Republicans shouldn’t count on their votes.
“We’re not going to get what we want. We understand that. But if they think they’re going to get everything they want, then they’re going to have to get it with their votes,” said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.)…
…With meager majorities in the House and Senate, the GOP can afford few defections to pass the debt limit increase on their own. Democratic leaders have warned Republicans not to attach unreasonable or unrelated measures to the debt ceiling, or they wouldn’t support it.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). “[But] we’re going to have to have some of our Republican colleagues step up to the plate on this issue.”
Hoyer said “if there is a clean debt limit extension, I think Democrats would be inclined not to vote against it. But that’s a big if.”
Agreeing to vote for a “clean” debt ceiling hike is a premature concession. It’s actually nothing different from what President Obama asked the Republicans to do. So, yes, it avoids hypocrisy. But it also avoids hardball. And the Freedom Caucus will still hold the rest of us hostage, demanding things that cannot otherwise pass Congress for lack of support.
The risk is that the Dems won’t ask for anything and then they’ll be asked to cast unpopular votes that spare their opponents from having to do the same. Their only reward is behaving responsibly on behalf of an irresponsible party so that they can take undeserved blame and receive very little credit from an ungrateful electorate.
It’s a sucker’s game and they should be tougher negotiators than this. If Trump wants more borrowing then he should come with a package of incentives, or he should ask his party (which is in the majority) to provide him his money.
Assuming that the Dems are patriotic Americans (and also upstanding citizens of the world and members of the human race) it is not at all clear that enabling the Republican Party and the Trumpinistas by voting for a debt ceiling increase is the best strategy.
Barring an intervention by Gort the robot, this country is going to be involved in some very bad things over the next few years. It is even possible that the tanking of American debt in the world financial markets would be something of a moderating influence.
Or not. How the hell should I know?
Not.
Nobody believes that the Dems won’t vote for a clean debt ceiling hike. I’ll be thrilled if they don’t vote for unreasonable or unrelated measures.
Even if the Dems intend to give in, they should at least pretend to play hardball to consume time and effort by the Republicans. The less they get done between now and when we take away the trifecta, the better.
Once the funding has been approved by congress, the money spent and bonds issued, it becomes a legal debt of the US. If we now say it is not our debt, that we somehow made a very bad mistake, the fourteenth amendment was bullshit, and decide to default, you should expect some ramifications in the world of finance, including international finance. I wouldn’t assume it would be a minor one. Do you suppose China or Japan, for example, would henceforth want your debt?
And wtf will the constitution mean after that?
The republican party controls most everything in this country, or so I am led to believe. They therefore bear the primary responsibility to ensure our bonds are paid.
The simple way to fix this is to repeal the stupid debt limit law. Failing that suck it up republicans and increase the debt ceiling. If you can’t do it then figure out how you make the financial blowback go away. Some countries have paid off cents on the dollar. I suppose we could too?
And once you do that consider never issuing another bond, after all who would want them at that point? Just print the money as you need it. (maybe not a bad idea anyway.) Whatever. Just leave me out of this. Trump is the genius here anyway.
Yes, they should.
I think playing to the common misunderstanding of sovereign debt would also be fair play, so demanding that there be no tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires while the country needs to borrow sounds reasonable.
NO. They should demand that the congress take back the war powers. Those powers they gave bush for the invasion of Afghanistan needs to end. We all need to hear the donald’s war plan with special attention to his exit plan from the ME.
I’m of two minds on this. Few people pay attention to insider political games. But there are those who do and for Republicans to pass a clean bill will be perceived as a huge loss among their base. Also, the Democrats have no credible fall-back. I mean we all know our party isn’t going to allow the country to default if a clean bill is sitting on the desk. Would we really want it to be otherwise?
“Would we really want it to be otherwise?’
Many would. I venture to say most on this board.
I commend your patriotism. It is truly disgusting to see others morph into yesterday’s Republicans, putting partisanship above country, willing to see massive harm to innocent people, just to gain power. No wonder they supported enemy-of-the-people HRC so strongly.
Polite, civil words fail. And this is Booman’s shop, not mine to sully with the white-hot fury you deserve.
You know I understand why there were people who didn’t trust Secretary Clinton’s more progressive positions but that is a far cry from casting her as an “enemy of the people.”
For example no “enemy of the people” would have supported the minimum wage law she supported before Senator Sanders ever entered the race which was $12 nationally but putting pressure for $15 in urban areas. That approach is the law the state of New York passed because a $15 minimum wage would have been hardship on smaller businesses in update.
You want an enemy of the people – look no further than both Paul Ryan & Donald Trump. One just wrote a bill that will rip away long term care from millions of elderly Americans (Medicaid is the largest funder of LTC by far) and the other just submitted a budget that takes away critical funding for Meals on Wheels.
I know it’s tempting, but please don’t take the bait again. We all know what road this leads on this forum…
Thanking all the commenters who proved my point.
Weak? Democrats perceived as weak you say?
So far they have avoided that. This will be a good test of their backbone.
Playing a sucker’s game? Surprising no one.
My position is the same as the last post on this, fuck the GOP. Debt ceiling is unconstitutional.
The answer is very simple I think: No infrastructure package, no debt ceiling increase. The GOP will cobble the votes on their own in the end – so the best tact I think is to unite behind an idea that is popular and highlights a key broken promise.
Shaun King said this (via Gin and Tacos)
I think King (not someone I agree with very much) is mostly right here. It is actually refreshing to say they don’t know what the answer is. But one of the few ideas I think Democrats are FOR is increased infrastructure spending.
I don’t think it’s all that hard to sum up what the party stands for. I’m not sure why this is such a widespread idea. We stand for making incremental improvements to the economic, environmental, educational, health care, and national security realities of the country, to the extent that that’s possible without alienating any powerful stakeholders.
Touche.
I’ll just add from Digsby: “In response to a student’s question about whether Democrats might follow younger voters in moving left on economics, Rep. Nancy Pelosi quipped, “We’re capitalists. That’s just the way it is.”
It occurred to me last night that what the Democrats should do is not demand concessions on this or that policy, which has the problem of legitimizing governing by terrorism, but instead should demand that this is the last nonsense vote Congress takes on the national debt. The Republicans created this problem of Congress constantly having to vote on increasing the debt limit solely for the purpose of demagoguing the national debt and deficit.
The Democrats should say that this whole business is illegitimate, that the national debt should never be questioned and it simply wastes Congress’ time and risks economic calamity, so they will only provide votes for ending this nonsense once and for all by passing a bill which automatically raises the debt limit, just like we used to have. Then let the Republican leadership choose.
So, presumably, they won’t.
“Sucker’s Game”
So now our national dysfunction extends even to a situation where one party controls the entire gub’mint, eh? How much worse can the paralysis get? Why not operate to make the nation’s absolute governmental collapse apparent to all? How is (yet again) enabling the addict the proper approach?
Repubs were able to hold DC hostage 2010-2016 because there was a Dem prez (and for a time a Dem senate) which would be blamed for the tsunami in financial markets if the debt was effectively repudiated. So Dems had to play ball with the crying Boner, getting nothing for their patriotic votes.
But after the catastrophic failed election of 2016, who exactly is required to save the country from itself? Presumably the American rubes watched the (numerous) debt hostage negotiations when they occurred over the past 6 years. That’s the democratic theory. They continued happily to vote Repub, and finally gave the entire gub’mint over to the radical party that took the debt hostage. So the role of the remaining hapless Dems is to give the Repubs the rope to hang themse…, er, let them “govern”. The Repubs are the government, Trump is the government. He has been entrusted with the government by our failed constitution and incompetent white electorate. Elections should have consequences.
The interesting question is why the Repubs cannot simply assuage the extremists in their party and enact the debt ceiling with the cuts they supposedly want. It’s entirely possible to do, and it conforms with the policy prescriptions of the “conservative” movement for decades.
Or why they do not force their genius prez to have the patriotic radicals over for ketchup pizza and tell them that he wants them to vote for whatever the leadership demands to protect his young administration. Is he the leader of his party or not? Why should the hapless Dems be expected to be the ones to save the bacon of the rising American fascist movement two months into the Trumpite revolution?
The Repubs now control the purse. They have been given more than enough seats to run the show. So make them run it. If it looks like they can’t, then start deploying the language of apocalypse. It will have the added benefit of being the truth. Make the nation’s stomach churn on a daily basis. That’s what it means to have an irresponsible, radical, government-hating party in control. Perhaps at some point the rubes will start listening. But I sincerely doubt it.
As the Germans lamented of their Austrian ally in the Great War: “We are shackled to a corpse…”