Domestic Terrorist Mitch McConnell Threatens The GQP Will Vote To Default On The U.S. Debt, Plunge The World Into Economic Chaos

This is an actual headline in the New York Times, not from The Onion: As G.O.P. Digs In on Debt Ceiling, Democrats Try Shaming McConnell. I didn’t know The Times hired comedy writers to be copy editors.

I almost spit out my coffee this morning to laugh. The first thing that came to mind was the library scene in Ghost Busters:

Dr. Raymond Stantz: [about to capture their first ghost] Get her!

Dr. Peter Venkman: [later, when the ghost has scared them out of their wits] ‘Get her’? That was your whole plan? ‘Get her’? Tee hee.

Shame the “Grim Reaper of Democracy”? That’s your whole plan? McConnell is shameless. The man is incapable of feeling shame. How does anyone not know this?

As the body of the report makes clear:

With the government’s full faith and credit on the line, the Democratic leadership’s strategy for raising the federal borrowing limit seems to be this: Try to shame the impervious Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, into capitulating.

They unsuccessfully tried this strategy in 2016, when Mr. McConnell blockaded the nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garlandto the Supreme Court, maintaining that voters should decide who would name the next justice when they picked a president that November. They tried and failed again late last year, weeks before a presidential election, when the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opened a Supreme Court seat for Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill, no matter what voters had to say a month and a half later.

Now, with a potential government default weeks away, Democrats are again demanding that Mr. McConnell back down — this time from his vow to lead Republicans in opposition to raising the statutory limit on the Treasury Department’s authority to borrow.

“Let’s be clear,” Mr. McConnell wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “With a Democratic president, a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, Democrats have every tool they need to raise the debt limit. It is their sole responsibility. Republicans will not facilitate [it].”

It is true that the Democratic Party is now the only responsible governing party, but this is not an actual thing. This is McConnell taking the nation hostage – again – and demanding ransom. It is an act of domestic terrorism.

Members of Congress have a constitutional duty to honor the full faith and credit of the United States on the debts of the nation. They are violating their oath of office by putting the nation at risk of default on its debts. In 2011, House Republicans’ refusal to pass a debt ceiling increase led to a downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating for the first time that roiled the financial markets.

A default would be unprecedented, and it could lead to a far-reaching financial crisis — or at least a crisis in confidence for the governments, banks and other creditors that keep the federal government afloat by purchasing its bonds and notes.

This is for debts already incurred, this is not about any new spending currently being negotiated in Congress. This is for the $1.9 trillion GQP tax cut for corporations and the wealthy that never paid for itself, and three rounds of Covid-19 relief aid and economic stimulus – two of those bills passed when McConnell was majority leader in the Senate and Donald Trump was president. And much of that debt obligation is owed to American citizens and to the Social Security Trust Fund.

There are two problems with Mr. McConnell’s argument. First, the reason the government is crashing into its debt limit is the tax cutting and free spending of the Trump years. As Democrats note, raising the limit is equivalent to paying the nation’s credit card bill for past actions, not future spending.

Second, a debt ceiling increase will almost certainly need at least the acquiescence of Senate Republicans to overcome a filibuster and move to a vote. Mr. McConnell would like Democrats to add a debt ceiling increase to the social policy bill, which is being drafted under budget rules that would allow it to pass with 51 Senate votes.

But Democrats said weeks ago that they would not do that. Given the difficulty in reaching near-unanimous Democratic agreement on the measure — and a series of procedural obstacles they would have to clear — it would most likely be impossible to get it to the House and Senate floors in time to avoid a default.

Democrats say that they helped Mr. Trump and Republican leaders deal with the debt limit, and that fairness dictates bipartisanship now, especially on such a consequential matter. Hence, the shame campaign.

Fairness? I’m sorry, but were you people born yesterday? Mitch McConnell does not concern himself with such trivialities as fairness. The man long ago burned the rule book, he plays by his own rules, and he is only driven by his insatiable desire to wield power permanently.

Mitch McConnell is a domestic terrorist. He has spent his career as GQP leader in the Senate trying to destroy American democracy to replace it with a permanent tyranny of the minority of GQP authoritarianism. The man is a traitor to his county and the constitution. He has repeatedly shown us who he is, call him out for what he is. The media needs to stop legitimizing this domestic terrorist.

As Greg Sargent says, Mitch McConnell’s debt limit game-playing is lunacy, and we should say so:

The current position held by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and most Republican senators is that this fall they will vote in favor of the United States defaulting on its debts, leading to economic Armageddon.

You don’t hear their position described this way in many press accounts, to be sure. But that is functionally their position: They are threatening to withhold all GOP support when Congress votes to suspend the debt limit, probably sometime in October.

If the debt limit is not suspended or raised, the United States will default, with horrible consequences, and Republicans are threatening to vote no.

McConnell spelled out his position in new detail in an interview with Punchbowl News. He says Democrats must suspend or raise the debt limit as part of their multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation bill, where they can do so by simple majority, without any Republicans.

If they do not, McConnell says, no Republicans will support suspending it or raising it as part of some other process, say, via a “clean” debt limit bill, or as part of a continuing resolution funding the government at the end of September (which would require 60 votes to overcome a GOP filibuster).

This is being widely portrayed as creating a dilemma for Democrats. And that’s true, if only in the sense that epic Republican bad faith is creating a dilemma for the more responsible party.

Democrats joined with Republicans to suspend the debt limit under President Donald Trump, and a good deal of debt was racked up during that period. Given this, Democrats are insisting that Republicans must join them to suspend the debt limit this time — suspending it would effectively render it inoperative until a future date — and they are daring Republicans to vote no.

One way Democrats might do this — which is favored by the White House — is to bundle the debt limit suspension with a government funding bill that would also include huge amounts of disaster aid, much of it for red states. The thinking is this disaster money should make it harder for Republicans to vote against it.

But Politico reports that Republicans are still threatening to withhold their votes, even if that disaster money is in that package, and blasting the White House and Democrats for even considering this approach.

Remarkably, [folksy hillbilly] Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) insists not only that this won’t pass but also the mere fact that Democrats might do this shows they’re operating “in bad faith” and don’t actually have the “back” of disaster-sufferers. [A classic example of projection.]

Just try to fathom how deranged that position truly is. Republicans insist Democrats must deal with the debt limit themselves, with no Republican support, and if Democrats package this with other things that must be done — such as disaster aid or funding the government — that’s somehow placing unfair pressure on Republicans to join in raising it.

But Republicans themselves agree the debt limit must be suspended or raised. Kennedy agrees with this. So does McConnell! As McConnell puts it, “America should never and never will default.”

So why shouldn’t they feel obliged to actually vote to suspend or raise the debt limit for the good of the country, just as Democrats did under a Republican president, when this also had to be done for the good of the country?

Pressed on this by Punchbowl News, McConnell offered an invented principle: When Democrats are in the majority, it is solely their responsibility to deal with this. “They’re in charge of this government,” McConnell said.

Of course, Republicans will be creating the need for this to clear a 60-vote threshold by filibustering; [Traitor] Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is already threatening exactly this.

One might argue that precisely because Republicans are stooping to such depths, Democrats should indeed dispense with the debt limit by simple majority in the reconciliation process, rather than gamble on whether Republicans really will withhold their votes in the end.

But it’s not clear that the reconciliation bill will be done by the time the debt limit must be dealt with. What’s more, accepting this argument essentially accepts that Republican bad faith must triumph.

This would also enshrine the principle that GOP filibusters and bad faith are simply natural, inevitable features of our governing order and political life, ones in which Republicans have no agency and which Democrats are singlehandly responsible for overcoming. There is a reasonable case for forcing them to actually take that vote, rather than accepting those things, though it certainly does seem risky.

But all that aside, what keeps getting lost in all the discussion, as one Democrat correctly pointed out to me, is that the Republican position is essentially to threaten to vote to default. That’s insane and reckless, and media accounts should find a way to communicate this to viewers and readers.

Punchbowl News reports that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Called McConnell on Wednesday:

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday to discuss the debt-limit situation, according to multiple sources familiar with the conversation. But it doesn’t sound like much progress was made, the latest sign of how dug in both sides are on this issue with potentially just weeks before the federal government exhausts its borrowing capacity.

McConnnell, who backed Yellen for Treasury secretary, repeated what he told us in an interview on Tuesday — Democrats have control of the White House and Congress, so this is a problem for them, not Republicans.

[In] a recent letter to congressional leaders, Yelled warned that the Treasury Department will hit the debt limit sometime in October, but noted there remains “considerable uncertainty” when the actual deadline will occur. In fact, Yellen used the word “uncertainty” four times in that letter, which shows just how difficult predictions are right now even for experienced government analysts.

The House returns to town Monday for the first time in a month, and the showdown over government funding and the debt ceiling is quickly emerging as the top issue for the White House and Congress. Democratic leaders are currently planning to attach a debt-limit increase to a continuing resolution needed to keep federal agencies open beyond Sept. 30. The House is expected to take up that measure early next week. McConnell and Senate Republicans have said they will block this proposal.

The federal government runs out of money on Sept. 30.

Ed Kilgore writes, Mitch McConnell Prefers Calamitous Debt Default to Helping Democrats (excerpt):

Congressional Democrats (and implicitly President Biden, who may soon have to publicly become more engaged in the absurd “stare-down”) unsurprisingly want bipartisan “cover” for a debt-limit increase or suspension, like the one they offered Republicans when the Trump administration was joyfully piling up debt.

Indeed, it’s the expiration of a two-year deal in which both parties refused to play games with threatened debt defaults and government shutdowns that brought Washington to this juncture. Now both calamities are possible (a government shutdown at the end of the fiscal year on September 30 and a debt default at some inexact point in October, according to warnings from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen).

Democrats want to attach a debt-limit measure to the stopgap spending bill needed to keep the federal government operating. Mitch McConnell, who can kill either expedient with a Senate filibuster, is saying this is a problem for Democrats, which they must solve themselves, presumably by attaching the debt-limit fix to the budget-reconciliation bill that will at some point presumably clear Congress on a strict party-line vote.

Punchbowl News interviewed McConnell today to probe any weakness in McConnell’s commitment to threatening the stability of the national and global financial system (which would be in big trouble if the current debt limit stays in place), and the laconic Kentuckian did his hammer-headed best to stay tough: “That’s their problem. I’m not voting [for a debt limit increase]. How many different ways do I need to say this?”

Debt limit increases, you see, are as unpopular as they are necessary. And it fits in neatly with latter-day Republican austerity messaging to combine attacks on Democrats’ socialistic Big Government spending with refusals to provide for the wherewithal to finance it. That Republicans were uninterested in fiscal discipline or the alleged economic and moral dangers of debt when Trump was in the White House and they controlled Congress is never addressed. Mitch McConnell has no problem with exhibiting hypocrisy, as Merrick Garland could tell you.

So this leaves Democrats with some bad choices. They can call McConnell’s bluff and pass a combined stopgap spending bill and debt limit measure. If he filibusters it anyway a government shutdown on October 1 is probably going to happen (they may still have a week or two to deal with the debt limit after the end of the fiscal year, whether or not the federal government is open). Maybe McConnell will relent and all will be well. Or maybe (either at the last minute or after a filibuster) Democrats will themselves relent and attach a debt-limit resolution to their reconciliation bill as McConnell has helpfully suggested from the beginning. But that’s easier said than done at this late date. With Democrats still working on the reconciliation bill and exhibiting a lot of problems reaching an agreement between the House and the Senate, and between moderates and progressives in both chambers, it’s not clear the reconciliation bill can pass in time to stave off a debt default.

Arguably that possibility could be used by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to whip their fellow Democrats into line, but at that point you’d be talking about the high-stakes risk to end all high-stakes risks: a single bill needed to head off a debt default and to enact much of Joe Biden’s agenda, with no Republican votes available to help get them over the hump. To put it another way, the leverage Mitch McConnell enjoys now over a stopgap spending bill and a debt limit measure could shift to any congressional Democrat willing to plunge the party and the country hellwards to win some concession or make some political point. It’s no exaggeration to say that whoever wins the current “staredown,” everyone could wind up losing.