Behind the high-stakes hostage standoff is a GOP desire to weaponize the issue politically.
WASHINGTON — When the Senate votes Monday afternoon on legislation to fund the government and avert a catastrophic default on the debt, it is likely to be blocked by a Republican-led filibuster.
But top Democrats emphatically reject that. They say the debt ceiling has historically been raised on a bipartisan basis, and they won't let Republicans off the hook this time.They want Democrats to tackle the debt ceiling in a separate filibuster-proof package because, under Senate budget rules, that would require endorsing a dollar figure on how much the U.S. can borrow. It’d be high due to the accumulation of debt over generations — $30 trillion or more.
For years, Congress has avoided putting a dollar figure on the debt limit. Under the regular process that is subject to a 60-vote filibuster, Congress can simply “extend” it to a date and enable the government to borrow as much money as it needs to pay bills during that time. That was done most recently, in 2019, under former President Donald Trump.Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
The White House pointed to McConnell’s inconsistency from 2017, when the GOP had unified control and used the filibuster-proof budget process to pass a tax cut that raised the debt. But they didn’t raise the debt limit in that bill; they leaned on Democrats for help and received it.
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