Republicans Like to Defund the Government & the Economy
And why can't Democrats and the rest of us just say that's what's happening?
Publisher’s Riff
After using a weekend to deploy Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) to falsely suggest that Democrats torpedoed their own George Floyd Justice in Policing Act because they wanted to “defund the police,” Republicans are now actively defunding the federal government and the entire global economy along with it. This is rich.
Congressional Democrats and President Biden, have not yet figured out an aggressive or bold counter to any of this. In the meanwhile, as of this writing, as the Washington Post reports …
Senate Republicans on Monday blocked a bill that would fund the government, provide billions of dollars in hurricane relief and stave off a default in U.S. debts, part of the party’s renewed campaign to undermine President Biden’s broader economic agenda.
The GOP’s opposition dealt a death blow to the measure, which had passed the House last week, and now adds to the pressure on Democrats to devise their own path forward ahead of urgent fiscal deadlines. A failure to address the issues could cause severe financial calamity, the White House has warned, potentially plunging the United States into another recession.
It’s not really clear why Democrats waited all this time for it to reach this point as opposed to just ending the debt ceiling fight with a few go-it-alone options that didn’t necessarily require bipartisanship or attempting to publicly shame Republicans. The first question, before even that, is: who even determined that the debt ceiling was a major political fight? How did Democrats even allow Republicans to dictate the terms of that discussion by even allowing the zeitgeist to suggest that this is something American voters really cared about? In Forbes …
There are, however, questions about the debt generally. An Axios/Ipsos Hard Truth Higher Education poll from August, for example, asked people to name issues that worried them the most, and government budget and debt tied with immigration for sixth place behind coronavirus, political extremism, climate, crime, and health care. In Gallup’s mid-August question that asks people to volunteer what they think is the most important problem facing the country, 2% spontaneously mentioned the federal deficit and debt. In the abstract, Americans have long wanted the country to live within its means, but at the same time, they want government to do a lot. Most recent polls show solid support for the $1 trillion infrastructure legislation and slightly less enthusiastic support for the $3.5 trillion social infrastructure package.
The debate, for weeks, pretty much centered around 1) Democrats begging Republicans to act responsibly and offer the votes to raise the debt ceiling as if Republicans are in the habit, these days, of acting responsibly and 2) the debt ceiling being the sole responsibility of Democrats when we could clearly see that Republicans want to blow up the government and the economy so that the broader public blames it on Congressional Democrats and the Biden White House in 2022.
More confounding is that Democrats failed to come up with a counter to this. All this summer - since the debt ceiling was reached in July - spent being on vacation for 7 weeks and playing chicken with Republicans and assuming they’d listen to reason: when that could’ve been spent just simply using Democratic majorities to include the debt ceiling hike through budget reconciliation, a process that doesn’t require the Senate filibuster’s 60 votes (but it is full of painful twists and turns that need more time to do). Or, instead of waiting for a magical bi-partisan moment, the president could have simply - or can do so now - called the political bluff of Republicans and directed the Treasury Department to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin. Or, instead of, as Politico reports “… try and make clear that Republicans would be solely responsible for a debt debacle and a government shutdown,” why not just focus on avoiding shutdown altogether? …
Democrats have several options to move forward to avoid a shutdown. They can pass a short-term two- or three-week stopgap spending bill and try and line up the projecting late October date for potential default. Republicans say this option will not move them.
Or, as DeLauro noted, they can simply remove the debt limit provision and put forward legislation to fund the government for two months, which is the easiest path forward. That would also probably require Democrats to begin laying the groundwork to raise the debt ceiling on their own.
Bottom line: while Democrats are not the ones responsible for taking us all to the cliff, they could have played ample defense and kept us from going in that direction in the first place. In terms of messaging, why not also, simply say, Republicans are trying to blow up the government and the economy just like they attempted to do on January 6th? Where’s the counter?