The Looming Catastrophe

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It's not like it hasn't been discussed before, particularly in 2011. The reason why it hasn't been done is that the only way it would be successful would be to go through a long-extended court process, and meanwhile the default would happen. Shortcuts don't work.

[N.E. Brigand]

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, says she's voting against the deal and registers this complaint:

"Washington is broken. Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants."

[River]

Um...who did she think she was burning in that tweet?

[N.E. Brigand]

Brian Beutler makes the progressive argument that, although Democrats must sign the deal, it is a loss for them and a win for Republicans because it legitimizes their hostage-taking process. After the last such deal in 2011, Democrats said they'd never give in to this extortion again. By doing so now, they make it harder to argue next time Republicans try to use default as a weapon that there's anything wrong with what they're doing, which ultimately, in Beutler's view, is to force a situation where Democrats have to agree to cuts on Medicare and Social Security. Republicans want such cuts, but they know that such cuts are politically poisonous, so they need them to be bipartisan. To his credit, President Biden seems to have foreseen this in February, when he used his State of the Union address to get Republicans to publicly disavow any such cuts.

[Dave_LF]

Every Democrat on the committee voted against allowing the bill to move to the floor, which means it's only making it there thanks to the GOP. But it's Democrats who are (hopefully!) going to ensure it passes once it arrives. Weird, but also legitimately bipartisan!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm pretty sure that there is some procedural reason why the Democrats on the Rules committee voted no, though I could be wrong about that. I'm not even sure who the Democratic members of that committee are (or why there are so few).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

The House today voted 314-117 to approve the deal.

Democrats would have voted unanimously for a clean debt ceiling increase.

In order to avoid the default that Republicans were threatening, Democrats agreed to a whole bunch of concessions that Republicans demanded.

And then those same Republicans didn't even support the bill as strongly as Democrats did:

Democrats: 165 Yea - 46 Nay (2 not voting)

Republicans: 149 Yea - 71 Nay (2 not voting)

On to the Senate.

[N.E. Brigand]

Olivia Beavers of Politico notes that while Donald Trump himself has been relatively quiet about the debt ceiling, his associate Steve Bannon has posted to Trump's social media network calling for two Republicans, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia Jim Jordan of Ohio, to face primary challenges after they worked to help Kevin McCarthy get the deal passed.

McCarthy meanwhile had promised Hakeem Jeffries that 150 of his Republicans would vote for the deal, but he fell four votes short of that number. Jeffries got some "earmark" concessions from McCarthy in exchange for providing enough votes, to the dismay of some other Republicans, like Dan Bishop of North Carolina -- but really this is all pretty normal Congressional dealmaking. It's just that "compromise" is a bad word to many people (especially but not exclusively on the right). I'm all for the horse-trading; it just shouldn't have happened under the threat of default.

[Sunsilver]

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, says she's voting against the deal and registers this complaint:

"Washington is broken. Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants."

I think this cartoon sums it up nicely...

[RoseMorninStar]

That cartoon fits in well with N.E.'s earlier post:

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, says she's voting against the deal and registers this complaint:

"Washington is broken. Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants."

Heh.

[Sunsilver]

Which is why I quoted him in my post...

[RoseMorninStar]

Which is why I quoted him in my post...

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Forty-six Democrats and 17 Republicans voted yes.

Five Democrats voted no. They are:
Sen. John Fetterman
Sen. Bernie Sanders
Sen. Jeff Merkley
Sen. Ed Markey
Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Thirty-one Republicans voted no. They are:
Sen. John Barrasso
Sen. Marsha Blackburn
Sen. Mike Braun
Sen. Katie Britt
Sen. Ted Budd
Sen. Bill Cassidy
Sen. Tom Cotton
Sen. Mike Crapo
Sen. Ted Cruz
Sen. Steve Daines
Sen. Deb Fischer
Sen. Lindsey Graham
Sen. Josh Hawley
Sen. Roger Wicker
Sen. J.D. Vance
Sen. Tommy Tuberville
Sen. Dan Sullivan
Sen. Tim Scott
Sen. Rick Scott
Sen. Eric Schmitt
Sen. Marco Rubio
Sen. Jim Risch
Sen. Pete Ricketts
Sen. Rand Paul
Sen. Roger Marshall
Sen. Cynthia Lummis
Sen. Mike Lee
Sen. James Lankford
Sen. John Kennedy
Sen. Ron Johnson
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith

[N.E. Brigand]

Sen. Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, was very upset that he was not consulted about one element in the debt ceiling package: the deal approves completion of the long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline that would deliver natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia. This was very much a project desired by Sen. Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia (and his former chief of staff now works for the pipeline company), and doubtless was included in order to help Manchin's prospects for reelection (and to keep him in the Democratic party). Kaine even tried unsuccessfully to introduce an amendment to the bill yesterday that would have removed the pipeline approval from the deal. Nonetheless he did vote for the deal.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Whereas, the inclusion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline provision was a prime reason why Fetterman, Merkley, Markey, Sanders and Warren voted against the deal (though their votes were largely symbolic, as the waited to make sure that there were enough votes for it to pass without them).

[N.E. Brigand]

Writing in New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait presents a sceptic's view: "Centrist Fanatics Go Wild Over Debt-Ceiling Deal."

Here's how Chait starts:

There are plausible defenses to be made of the Biden administration’s negotiating strategy on the debt ceiling. I happen to believe Kevin McCarthy’s default threat was a bluff, and if not, Biden could have used executive action to avoid that outcome. But if you believe Republicans really would have triggered a global economic meltdown if Biden had refused to pay a ransom, and that the Supreme Court would have let them, then this ransom was about as painless as he could have gotten. And you could argue that, in the face of a likely challenge by Donald Trump, Biden was correct to worry first about avoiding a hit to the economy and can fret about the long-run costs of rewarding hostage-takers later.

But there is a small coterie of fanatical centrists who believe Biden did not merely manage to contain the damage. They see his deal as a shimmering triumph of bipartisan brilliance, not an exercise in harm reduction but something close to perfection itself.

By “fanatical,” I am trying to describe a thought system that is impervious to facts and wishes to make reality conform to their ideological archetype, regardless of whether it fits. They see the debt-ceiling deal as Good because it is supported by a coalition in the center and opposed by the extremes, which to their way of thinking demonstrates its virtue.

And here's how he ends:

The argument appears to be that Biden’s other bipartisan legislative wins don’t matter because the media ignored them, but lifting the debt ceiling matters enormously. Raising the debt ceiling has happened 78 times since 1960. Every president has done it multiple times. “He raised the debt ceiling” is a legislative triumph roughly on par with “he successfully booked passage on Air Force One.”

Previous presidents have managed to raise the debt ceiling either as a stand-alone bill or as part of a larger deal with benefits for both sides. Biden — along with Barack Obama in 2011, who regretted it — stands out for having had to give unrequited concessions to the opposing party to accomplish this historically routine task. You can talk yourself into believing he didn’t have a better choice. But if you think this represents some kind of thematic high point for the administration and a fulfillment of Biden’s grandest promises, your commitment to centrist ideology has grown so dogmatic that you have lost all touch with reality.

It may be worth noting that Chait himself is often painted by progressives as hopelessly centrist.

[N.E. Brigand]

As an act of revenge against Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Republican leadership who allowed the House to vote last week to prevent the U.S. from defaulting debt ceiling, a group of extremist Republicans today joined all Democrats in voting against a Republican bill that would have limited the government's ability to regulate gas stoves.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I was just coming to post about that, though I was going to post it in the Chaos in the House thread.