Here’s what’s going on. They are, of course, being assholes:
Republicans are standing firm that they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling, claiming that they are driven by fiscal responsibility while threatening to let the United States default on its debts. Okay.
Their real goal here is transparent: force Democrats to include the ceiling hike in the reconciliation package and, in so doing, manufacture another tension point over which chaos-happy moderates can kill the package.
But Democrats are still planning to force Republicans to publicly abdicate their responsibility with a vote.
“Since 2011, every time the debt limit has needed to be raised, Congress has addressed it on a bipartisan basis, including three times during the last Administration,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wrote in a Dear Colleague letter on Sunday. “When we take up the debt limit this month, we expect it to be bipartisan once more.”
It remains to be seen if enough sober Republicans will recognize the danger of the fire they’re playing with and back off — or if Democrats will have to go it alone.
The latest:
Democrats are refusing to capitulate to Republican demands on the debt ceiling, and trying to add a bitter pill into the equation.
By wrapping funding the government and suspending the debt limit into one continuing resolution, they’re daring Republicans to risk a government shutdown should they try to force Democrats to deal with the debt ceiling alone.
Republicans’ optimal situation here is to help pass a “clean” continuing resolution to keep the government funded, then force Democrats to deal with the debt ceiling in reconciliation — which would balloon the package’s topline, and increase the chances that centrists will sink the whole thing.
Democrats aren’t caving to that — yet. If Republicans vote against the continuing resolution, blithely threatening both a government shutdown and catastrophic debt default out of their desire to make Democrats’ lives harder, Democrats may have no choice. Republicans have the safety net of knowing that the Democrats have historically not matched their party’s comfort in playing chicken with the debt ceiling and its risk of global economic catastrophe.
You can click the link to TPM to see the “live-blogging” of the legislative sausage-making as it unfolds. Or not. It’s nervewracking. You don’t know how much is kabuki, how much is tactics and strategy and how much is plain old negotiation. But if you’re into that sort of hting, I recommend checking it out. They do a good job.