WASHINGTON — The level of cynicism driving the politics of the Republican party could harden the heart and petrify the hopes of even the most optimistic observer. For the latest evidence, just look at the current debate over raising the U.S. debt ceiling.
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke in the hall of the Capitol building Wednesday morning, her words were as uncontroversial as they were urgent. “We have a responsibility to uphold the full faith and credit of the U.S. government,” she said. “It has to get done.”
Her political opponents don’t argue with that. Here was Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell last week: “America must never default. We never have and we never will,” McConnell said. “The debt ceiling will be raised, as it always should be.”
There is no policy debate on this. Failing to raise the limit would catastrophically tank the U.S. economy. A recent study by Moody’s analytics estimates a default would cost six million American jobs and destroy $15 trillion in household wealth.
Everyone agrees that’s bad.
And it would be pointless, too. The debt ceiling doesn’t constrain new government spending measures, it just allows the government to pay bills already incurred, including those racked up by past governments (roughly a third of the existing debt was racked up under the presidency of Donald Trump).
That’s why everyone on all sides agrees not just that the limit should be raised, but that it must be.
Yet Washington has been consumed this week with the prospect of a government shutdown followed by a debt default. Democrats tried on Monday and Tuesday to pass a measure in the Senate that would provide continued funding to the government to avoid its shutdown Friday morning, and raise the debt limit to avoid a default on Oct. 18. Republicans, led by McConnell, have blocked those measures using the filibuster.
Why the heck would they do that?
The answer is among the most cynical statements you could make about the state of partisan politics in the United States: Republicans are prepared to torch their country’s economy to own the liberals.
The debt ceiling must be raised, McConnell said last week. “But it will be raised by the Democrats.”
Republicans insist Democrats should use the upcoming budget reconciliation bill, which is exempt from the filibuster, to raise the debt ceiling on their own. It is possible for Democrats to do so — and they will likely wind up doing so — although there’s some doubt about whether they could do it in time, and the process is much slower and carries more risk of economic damage on the way.
But McConnell wants the Democrats to have to take political responsibility for doing it, so that he and his party can use it in ads during next year’s congressional elections.
But wait: since everyone agrees raising the debt limit is good and necessary, shouldn’t this backfire?
Well, people aren’t very sophisticated in their understanding of these things. As Reuters reported last week, “A Sept. 18-20 Morning Consult poll showed that 42 per cent of registered voters would blame both parties equally for any default, with another 33 per cent blaming Democrats but only 16 per cent blaming Republicans.”
See, if the bad thing happens and ruins both the lives of millions of Americans and the world economy, twice as many Americans will blame Biden and the Democrats as will blame the Republicans. Meanwhile, if Democrats do it alone, Republicans can pretend Biden’s agenda and his party are to blame for the size of the debt.
See, for example, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz saying Democratic attempts to raise the debt limit are a way to get Republicans “to vote for the Democrats’ massively irresponsible spending,” which is blatantly false. That falsehood is the party line. McConnell says his party raising the limit would enable Democrats “ramming through partisan socialism as fast as possible.”
To recap: Republicans say the debt limit has to be raised. They say it will be raised. But they also say voting to raise it will enable “irresponsible spending” and “partisan socialism,” so only Democrats should do the thing that needs to be done — so Republicans can blame them for doing it.
Notably, in July 2020, when Trump was still president and Republicans controlled the Senate, Democrats quietly voted with Republicans to extend the debt ceiling until this year, setting up the current showdown. Readers with long memories will recall that confrontations over the debt limit have arisen before in the 1990s, and in 2006, 2011 and 2013. But in those earlier showdowns, as the New York Times put it Tuesday, the vote was being used as a “bargaining chip” — there was a policy concession the opposition was asking for in exchange for its votes.
There’s no bargaining going on this time, just pure and openly acknowledged partisan jockeying for advantage, with the American people and the world economy held hostage.
When observers claim that Republicans opposing Biden’s presidency are, say, allowing the coronavirus to run wild because they want Biden to be seen to fail to solve the problem, they can seem to be envisioning a conspiracy every bit as wild and fantastical as Trump’s foolish QAnon followers.
How cynical do you have to be to think a political party would intentionally allow that kind of harm to their own country to gain partisan advantage?
And yet here, McConnell and Republicans are refusing to help prevent what they acknowledge will be a catastrophe, even though they acknowledge preventing it is a good and necessary thing. And the only reason is that they want to blame Democrats if it happens or, alternately, blame Democrats for the actions needed to prevent it.
The question here isn’t how cynical you have to be to believe a party would do this — it is very clearly what they are doing. The question is, how much more cynical is it possible to get?
Republicans are ready to torch the U.S. economy — and drag the world down — to own the Democrats - Toronto Star
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