National Review Online
Thursday, October 07, 2021
Whether the statutory limit on federal debt serves
any useful purpose is a good question — it does not seem to have exerted any
downward pressure at all on the size of that debt, even as it occasionally
risks an economically harmful default — but it’s not the question before
Congress now. Neither party wants to end the limit, and a clear majority
including members of both parties think that, given the trajectory of federal
spending, it should be raised. The division concerns how it should be
raised.
Democrats say that both parties should cooperate in
raising it, as they did when President Trump was in office. It’s a convenient
version of the history that leaves out the fact that they got Republicans to
concede some of their spending priorities in return. When Congress raised the
limit in 2019, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer started their joint statement thus:
“Today, a bipartisan agreement has been reached. . . .” They were “pleased to
have secured robust funding for critical domestic priorities in this
agreement.”
In this Congress, Democrats want to pass a gigantic
increase in spending and taxes on a party-line vote, using the “budget
reconciliation” process that avoids filibusters. No negotiations with
Republicans are taking place. There is nothing improper in a party’s using the
budget rules to get its way. But since Democrats have decided to pursue this
option, it is entirely reasonable for Republicans to respond that they should
use those rules to raise the debt limit, too.
Which brings us to the real crux of the matter. Democrats
don’t want a party-line vote to raise the debt ceiling by an eye-grabbing
number because they fear it will be used against them in attack
ads. They also don’t want to have to spend time voting on amendments, some
of them potentially politically damaging. It’s for these reasons that Democrats
chose not to put a debt-limit increase in their reconciliation bill.
Republicans, naturally, want the attack-ad opportunities and the votes.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has made the
Democratic bind a little tighter by offering
Republican help in passing a short-term extension of the debt limit. Democrats
took it, and some of them are even saying that Republicans blinked. But the
extension into December advances McConnell’s goals. It reduces the odds of
default, takes away a Democratic excuse for not taking the time to pass their
own long-term debt-limit increase, and pops the Democratic trial balloon of
weakening the filibuster to pass a debt-limit increase. But the short-term
increase in the debt limit that McConnell will expedite would not accommodate
the major increase in the debt that the Democrats’ spending plans would
require.
The debate over a long-term extension has been pushed two
months closer to the midterms. It is a purely political scuffle. Democrats
have several options for avoiding default. The Republicans have precedent on
their side and, more important, the numbers to make them choose one.
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