Republicans plot blackmail in 2023
When MAGA Republicans tell you they plan blackmail, believe them the first time. Better yet, keep them from doing it.
Greg Sargent writes that Democratic House member led by Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) are pushing to prevent the hostage-taking:
A small group of Democrats has begun a new push to get the party to eliminate the prospect of future GOP blackmail. The thinking: Republicans are already threatening to use a potential default on the nation’s debt limit as a weapon in fiscal negotiations, so if the GOP wins the House, protecting the country from this looming disaster before the next Congress beginsis imperative.
Odds are that the next Republican House caucus will be the most radical yet. They may not have actually defaulted on U.S. debt in 2011, but that dosen’t mean they were not prepared to. Then-congressman Jason Chaffetz said at the time, “We weren’t kidding around. We would have taken it down.”
Nevertheless, writes Norm Ornstein at The Atlantic:
The Dow fell 2,000 points in the months that followed, and borrowing costs for the federal government increased by an estimated $18.9 billion over 10 years, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Republicans will follow Liz Truss right over the cliff if they can. Don’t think they won’t. They’ll play chicken with the debt limit again, too, says Sargent.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) made it plain this week: A GOP-controlled House would use the debt ceiling to force draconian spending cuts. McCarthy, who is likely the next speaker, declared that unless Democrats “eliminate some waste,” Republicans will not “keep lifting your credit card limit.”
For good measure, McCarthy would not rule out using the debt limit to leverage cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
They might not shoot the hostages, but ransoming them is on the table. Mitch McConnell said so in 2011.
What can Democrats do to stop them? Ornstien offers a suggestion:
What to do? One thing is clear. If the Republicans prevail in November, the lame-duck session becomes an opportunity to take this threat off the table once and for all. The way to do so is by making permanent, perhaps via reconciliation, the ironically named “McConnell Rule.” The rule was raised by the Senate Republican leader a decade ago to allow the president to raise the debt ceiling. It allows Congress to pass a joint resolution blocking the action, but contains a provision where the president is able to veto that resolution—meaning, in this instance, that a president would need only one-third of support plus one of the two houses of Congress to avoid default.
The ideas Ornstein and Boyle float may not be workable. They might, started soon enough ahead of January, have the advantage of publicizing coming Republican sabotage of people’s Medicare and Security just as recipents are anticipating an extra 8.7% in the latter and cuts to premiums in the former. Giving the public time to raise plenty of hell might not stop the GOP, but leave them with instructive bruising. The less-engaged might be too busy with holiday preparations to notice otherwise.
That is, unless we’re spending the lame duck session litigating elections in dozens of Republican-controlled states.