CNN reports, Senate Republicans block bill to suspend debt limit and avert shutdown in key vote:
Senate Republicans [filibustered] a House-passed bill to suspend the debt limit and avert a government shutdown from advancing in the Senate on Monday.
Republicans have abandoned governance and their constitutional duty to honor the full faith and credit of U.S. debt which has already been incurred, mostly under Donald Trump and McConnell’s Republican Senate.
The move comes after Republicans had insisted that Democrats must act alone to address the debt limit and leaves Congress without a clear plan to keep the government open with the threat of a potential shutdown looming by the end of the week.
Government funding is set to expire on September 30, and the stopgap bill the House approved last week would extend funding and keep the government open through December 3. In addition, the measure includes a debt limit suspension through December 16, 2022. The clock is ticking to address the debt limit and Congress may only have until mid-October to act before the federal government can no longer pay its bills.
The Senate voted on a procedural motion to advance the legislation, which needed 60 votes to succeed. Since Democrats control only 50 seats in the chamber, they would have needed 10 Senate Republicans to vote in favor.
With the measure failing to advance in the Senate, congressional Democratic leaders will now have to scramble to determine a plan B. As of now, Congress does not yet have a plan announced by Democratic leadership in both chambers about how they will keep the government operating perilously close to the date when funding will run dry and a shutdown could be triggered.
It’s possible Democrats could move to strip out the debt limit suspension from the funding bill and attempt to pass a clean stop-gap spending measure quickly through both chambers ahead of the deadline, which Senate Republicans have said they would support, but it’s not yet clear what will happen.
Democrats do have options to raise the debt limit on their own to prevent the US from defaulting on its debts, but they argue that the vote should be a bipartisan shared responsibility – [as it always has been for over a century.]
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Republicans ahead of the vote, saying, “after today there will be no doubt about which party in this chamber is working to solve the problems that face our country, and which party is accelerating us towards unnecessary, avoidable disaster.”
* * *
McConnell said on Monday ahead of the vote that Republicans are ready to support a bill to avert a shutdown as long as it does not have the debt limit attached.
“Let me make it abundantly clear one more time: We will support a clean continuing resolution that will prevent a government shutdown … We will not provide Republican votes for raising the debt limit,” he said.
“Republicans are not rooting for a shutdown or a debt limit breach,” he added.
Lying sack of shit: you just said Republicans will filibuster raising the debt limit, and just did so, so you are not only rooting fora debt limit breach, but you are the cause of it.
Prior to the Senate vote, McConnell attempted to bring up a clean stopgap bill to keep the government open that would not include the debt limit provision as an alternative to what Democrats wanted to pass. Senate Democrats objected to a unanimous consent request to advance that proposal.
By attaching the debt limit suspension to the must-pass funding bill, Democrats are essentially daring Republicans to vote no and spark a shutdown.
The stakes are extremely high. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on Congress to raise the debt ceiling in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, warning that if the US defaults on its debt, it “could trigger a spike in interest rates, a steep drop in stock prices and other financial turmoil.”
As the Washington Post editorializes, The nation faces financial calamity. Republicans will be to blame.
The White House on Thursday instructed federal agencies to prepare for an imminent government shutdown, in case Congress fails to pass a stopgap funding bill by Sept. 30.
[T]he nation faces an epochal financial disaster if Congress fails to raise the debt limit, forcing the country to default on its obligations and inviting a global financial panic.
If that happens, there will be no doubt about who is at fault: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his Republican [Sedition Caucus], who are playing games with the full faith and credit of the United States.
Democrats joined with Republicans to suspend the debt ceiling during the Trump administration. But Mr. McConnell suddenly declares that the majority is solely responsible for performing this unattractive task, even though he pioneered the routine use of the filibuster to force any and all Senate legislation to overcome a 60-vote threshold. With only 50 votes, and Republicans unwilling to lift a finger to avoid financial calamity, Democrats’ only option would be to use the arcane “reconciliation” procedure. Senate experts believe this would be possible, but it would require a couple of weeks of complex parliamentary maneuvering and some Republican cooperation in the Senate Budget Committee. Meanwhile, the treasury is on the verge of running out of money.
Other than sticking it to Democrats, what is the point? Using reconciliation, Democrats would have to raise the debt limit by a specific dollar amount, not just suspend it for a time, as Republicans did under President Donald Trump. This would enable Republicans to run attack ads blasting Democrats for expanding the debt by some large, specific number. Never mind that raising the debt limit does not approve any new spending; it merely permits the treasury to finance the spending Congress already has incurred.
[N]ational default should be unthinkable, and the need to avoid default should not be viewed as a political opportunity. Even if Democrats manage to force through a debt limit hike this time, Mr. McConnell’s out-of-nowhere standard placing all the responsibility on the majority party will make it much harder to lift the debt ceiling going forward, and correspondingly more likely that the nation will one day walk off the cliff even if it manages to step back now.
Time’s up. It’s hard to see how anyone professing patriotism could willfully risk inflicting this kind of harm on the nation. Republicans with any sense of responsibility should band together and help pass a clean debt limit increase.
Have the editors already forgotten that the Sedition Caucus engaged in a violent insurrection against the U.S. government on January 6? And that they are still engaged in a slow-motion insurrection? Failure to raise the debt ceiling is not just a failure of their constitutional duty, it is yet another act of domestic terrorism. There is not a patriot among these seditious insurrectionists. They are domestic terrorists, call them what they are.
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Rep John Yarmuth: There’s a way to increase the debt ceiling without any Republican votes that`s pretty easy. They could just say, OK, we’re going to let it come to a vote 50, Democrats plus one, the Vice President can raise the debt limit, and every Republican can vote to default on the debt of the United States.
Schumer is running with this plan today. “Democrats To Save The US Economy Alone As Schumer Moves For Majority Vote On Debt Limit”, https://www.politicususa.com/2021/09/28/democrats-majority-vote-debt-limit.html
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will seek to pass an increase of the debt limit by a majority vote on Tuesday afternoon.
By Senate rules, Majority Leader Schumer needs unanimous consent to proceed with a majority-only vote on raising the debt limit.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have stated that they want Democrats to raise the debt limit on their own with no Republican votes, so if Republicans block the unanimous consent request, it will be the same as the Senate GOP declaring their support of trashing the economy with a default.
If Republicans don’t block the unanimous consent request, Democrats will vote to raise the debt limit, and there will be no default.
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I’m sorry, but cue domestic terrorists Rand Paul and Ted Cruz who live for moments like this.
Domestic terrorist Mitch McConnell shut down Schumer’s request, arguing that Republicans wouldn’t help Democrats raise the debt ceiling outside of reconciliation, the budget process Democrats are using to try to pass a sweeping social spending bill, because it forces Democrats to adopt a spending cap limit rather than merely suspend the spending cap. Domestic terrorist Mitch McConnell doesn’t care how much he harms the country, all he cares about are partisan political games.
“McConnell blocks Schumer attempt to bypass filibuster on debt hike”, https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/574332-mcconnell-blocks-schumer-attempt-to-bypass-filibuster-on-debt-hike
Schumer is correct: “”Simply allow for a simple majority threshold to raise the debt ceiling and avoid this needless catastrophe that Republicans have steered us toward.” “”We’re just asking Republicans to get out of the way. Get out of the way, when you are risking the full faith and credit of the United States to play a nasty political game.”
Just as I predicted, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), immediately pledged that Republicans would object to unanimous consent. “It is the same as the Senate GOP declaring their support of trashing the economy with a default.” They are domestic terrorists.
Patrick Murphy. Another Schumer pick that lost bigly against a pathetic worm like Marco Rubio. Another “ex-Republican” of the type that seems to infatuate Schumer. Alan Grayson is not perfect by any means but after running and supporting multiple conservative Democrats over the years that go on to lose isn’t it about time to test the waters with a more progressive candidate?
You’re right about the bug. I’m sick to death of the way Schumer sticks to his losing strategy by trying to remake the Senate in his preferred conservative image instead of letting local parties determine their candidates.
Jennifer Rubin writes, “Republicans’ trail of destruction may haunt them”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/28/republicans-trail-destruction-may-haunt-them/
I vociferously disagree. Republicans have never been held accountable for the harm they have done to this country, and have frequently been rewarded for it. Geezus, they just engaged in a coup d’etat against the government and not one of these criminals has yet been held accountable. The ringleader is still holding insurrection rallies.
Congressman John Yarmuth (D-KY), chair of the House Budget Committee, was the interview on All In With Chris Hayes. Transcript, https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/transcript-all-chris-hayes-9-27-21-n1280223
Just keeping the government funded and having the U.S. government not have its first default in history triggering an enormous crisis. Everyone on the Democratic side is on board in doing that. Every single Republican unanimously just voted to shut the government down and default on U.S. debt. What happens now?
You know, my senator, Mitch McConnell, is at the — he`s kind of the leader in this effort.
You know, he tries to make this case that this is all about passing the ability to incur future debts. This is all about paying for what we have already committed ourselves to.
So, he`s blatantly lying to his — the American people. And this is kind of what — one of the biggest problems right now is nobody pays a price for lying. Nobody is held accountable.
You know, right now, we`re playing with fire. Again, as you said, nobody has ever defaulted on the national debt. The constitution actually prescribes in the 14th Amendment that you never question the debt of the United States. But the Republicans are playing games.
And here’s the other thing. They say they want Democrats to raise the debt ceiling by themselves. There’s a way to do that that`s pretty easy and that would have been tonight not filibustering the bill.
HAYES: That`s right.
YARMUTH: They could just say, OK, we’re going to let it come to a vote 50, Democrats plus one, the Vice President can raise the debt limit, and every Republican can vote to default on the debt of the United States as you — as you mentioned. And — but they what they’re trying to do is play games. They want us to use reconciliation because then under reconciliation, we actually have to specify an amount. And you know —
HAYES: Right.
YARMUTH: Yes. So, you know, my suggestion — and I’ve only half-heartedly told — suggested to Speaker Pelosi, why don’t we just say OK, we’re going to raise it to a gazillion dollars, and we’ll be finished with this charade forever.
But — so, you know, we’re at $28, $29 trillion now, so we’ll say OK, let’s raise it to 31 trillion. So, now, in a — in six months or so, we’re back in the same game which allows the same kind of hostage-taking and brinkmanship. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just a silly, silly game that we`re playing but unfortunately it could have real world consequences.
[Just repeal the debt ceiling provision which was enacted prior to World War I by isolationist Republicans trying to keep the U.S. out of the war with this ridiculous restriction on federal debt, which has never been effective, except for hostage taking by domestic terrorist Mitch McConnell.]
HAYES: OK, quickly, final question here is about the — about the reconciliation package. That’s going to have to get figured out one way or the other. The big question on the reconciliation package is Democrats coming to agreement. John Tester is saying this today and our own Sahil Kapur is saying that hes potentially the most optimistic human on Capitol Hill. Our reconciliation deal is attainable by Thursday.
Here’s my question to you. The frustration has been that most of the c1aucus, the Biden folks, the House Democratic Caucus across the span mostly ideologically and almost all the Senate are all on the same page. There’s a few holdouts in Manchin and Sinema. And the frustration is they have not been offering counters so that you can negotiate. Has that progressed such that you now know what objections are so you can work towards a deal?
YARMUTH: The best I can tell, no, it hasn’t. And it’s really unfortunate. It’s like you have a couple of musicians in the orchestra who want to play but they don’t know what piece the orchestra is playing. So, they’re on their own and they don’t understand the overall objective. And it’s really sad because it sounds to me like what they’re engaged in both Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema, is brand management. They’re only concerned about their own brand. They’re not thinking about the objective of not just the Democratic Party but what`s a good policy for the country.
[Narcissistic prima donna divas.]
And I have not heard one word yet from either Senator Sinema or Senator Manchin about why any of the things that is — that are proposed in the Build Back Better Act are bad for the country. I’ve not heard one word. Not any of them have said that. And they’re playing with numbers. The numbers don`t matter. You know, the question is what does the country need us to do.
HAYES: Yes.
YARMUTH: And I think this this package is something that demonstrably is something that the American people need and that is something that`s perfectly appropriate for the federal government to try to provide for them.
Well, perhaps if Schumer hadn’t interfered in the Kentucky Senate primary, promoting Amy McGrath the way he did Sinema & let Kentucky Democrats pick their own nominee, there’s a good chance Moscow Mitch wouldn’t be able to pull these shenanigans.
Seriously, what is wrong with Schumer? After interfering in Democratic Senate primaries for the past few cycles, promoting conservative candidates that mostly go on to lose, is he incapable from learning from his mistakes? Now he’s getting ready to keep Marco Rubio in the Senate by pushing conservative Val Demings over Alan Grayson who’s an accomplished progressive.
You really have a bug up your ass about this. Alan Grayson is not the savior you imagine. In 2016, Grayson decided not to run for re-election to his House seat in order to run for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat in 2016. He was defeated 59%–18% in the Democratic primary by fellow Representative Patrick Murphy, who went on to lose the general election to incumbent Marco Rubio. In 2018, Grayson entered the race for the 9th congressional district. He was defeated in the Democratic primary by his successor Darren Soto, 66%–34%. The voters have spoken.