I mentioned the possibility of the Democrats and some swing district Republicans using the discharge petition as a way to get the debt ceiling raised against the will of the GOP House majority. It’s not a very promising route unfortunately. Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig explains(subscription only):
The discharge petition may be ill-suited to raise the debt ceiling, which carries a hard deadline before causing economic calamity. The process for forcing a vote is clunky and time-consuming and some experts believe House leadership could throw up additional roadblocks along the way.
“It’s kind of like trying to do open heart surgery with an ax,” Josh Huder, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, told Semafor. “It’s just a very blunt instrument that’s unwieldy and will take a lot of time to accomplish what you’re trying to do.”
The steps to get to a vote are laborious:
-The bill must first sit in committee for 30 days
-Supporters have to gather 218 signatures
-The measure must sit in the discharge calendar for 7 days
-The Speaker then sets a time for the vote within 2 legislative days after a petitioner says they intend to bring up the motionComplicated budget negotiations typically go to the last minute. So while a discharge petition might be able to get a bill past an unwilling speaker or a conservative-stacked Rules Committee that could otherwise halt it, the journey would require more time than they’re likely to have. And that assumes the Senate has the votes to follow through as well.
Even a brief default on Treasury debt could be an economic disaster, sending the markets into a panic while making it more expensive for Washington to borrow in the future as investors question the dependability of U.S. bonds.
“I would certainly not bet the faith and credit of the United States on that as plan A,” Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., the ranking member of the House Budget panel, told Semafor. He predicted the whole process “from beginning to end will take at least four months.”
Still, a discharge petition could potentially play some role in talks with enough foresight and coordination.
One option Democrats are likely to pursue is submitting “clean” bills early in the debate to raise the debt ceiling temporarily, or by a set amount, as a failsafe option.
Having a clean debt limit bill on deck could give moderate Republicans a way to pressure either side to reach a deal.
In this scenario, some Republican members might initially support their side in budget talks — but warn conservatives that they planned to join the petition if they determined the caucus was no longer working toward a realistic agreement or were keeping proposals with bipartisan backing from the floor.
If just five Republicans followed through on their threat and joined all Democrats, that would then get the petition to 218 signatures, enough to trigger a vote.
Conservatives, for their part, don’t seem too worried about an end-run around them. “It’s a bigger lift than you think on those things,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, one of the Republicans who initially resisted McCarthy, told Semafor.
Here’s Chip Roy on the debt ceiling today:
Fasten your seatbelts.