President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are hopping mad at Republicans over the debt ceiling. Or at least they're pretending to be. As Spencer noted yesterday, the president delivered remarks on the subject, attacking "hypocritical, dangerous, and disgraceful" Republicans for "playing Russian roulette with the American economy." He demanded that the GOP "get out of our way" on the task of raising the debt ceiling, which is arguably what Republicans are already doing. Mitch McConnell has been stating openly for months that his members would not lift a finger to help Democrats achieve this goal -- warning repeatedly that if Democrats were going to proceed with a massive, partisan spending bill with zero Republican input, the Senate GOP would force the majority party to push through a debt ceiling hike entirely on their own. The Republican position has not changed, but the level of Democratic desperation has.
Make no mistake: Democrats, who control all of Washington, have the power to raise the debt ceiling with zero opposition party votes. Nancy Pelosi has a simple majority in the House, which is all that's required, and Chuck Schumer can use budget reconciliation to bypass a filibuster on this front. That has been the case throughout the current set of skirmishes, and it remains the case right now. This has created a political headache for Democratic leaders, however, because they're reluctant to insert the debt ceiling item into their current reconciliation discussions, which are already tenuous. So they're resorting to assailing the out-of-power party for not helping them clear the decks for their unaffordable and deeply irresponsible agenda. Schumer, amusingly, is reportedly "sick of" McConnell and thinks this maneuver will 'break' the Kentuckian, or whatever:
SCHUMER is sick of McConnell and is trying to break him. he believes McConnell is a phony who comes up with a BS standard for every situation when it fits his political needs.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 5, 2021
Wed cloture vote puts all Rs on the record pic.twitter.com/7eoUeENFxO
Spoiler: Republicans will not grant cloture, the vote will fall short of 60 votes, and Schumer will be back to square one -- facing the exact same circumstances he's known about for months. McConnell will not be "broken." Schumer whispering to reporters about McConnell being a "phony," but he's just frustrated that McConnell is a savvy and disciplined legislator who has frequently gotten the better of his New York counterpart. And Schumer's leaked anger over Mitch's supposed 'BS standards' is really a serious case of self loathing. Why? Let's start by recalling that McConnell's move (intensely despised by Democrats) to prevent President Barack Obama from replacing Justice Antonin Scalia during the 2016 election was inspired and justified by a standard previously laid out by...Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer (Biden, for what it's worth, has also publicly inveighed against ending the filibuster and court-packing).
In today's episode, these same two top Democrats are blasting the GOP for playing dangerous games with the debt ceiling, fulminating in a coordinated way against the minority party. These people have cut Republicans out of the governing process in pursuit of a multi-trillion-dollar leftist agenda, but they're expecting those same opponents to help grease the skids on this sticky issue and smooth the legislative path for the other big ticket items. Democrats are struggling to line up votes for various bills within their own party, of course, and they evidently believe they can shame Republicans into bailing them out. Who, in good conscience, would mess around with the debt ceiling, and the good faith and credit of the United States government? And for political reasons, to boot. How grotesque! I'll tell you who:
“The tsunami of debt created by the policies of this administration has to go somewhere...the roots of that threat lie in the disastrous policies of this administration. Because this massive accumulation of debt was predicted, because it was foreseeable, because it was unnecessary, because it was the result of willful and reckless disregard for the warnings that were given and for the fundamentals of economic management, I am voting against the debt limit increase. In the 5 years he has been in office, President Bush has added more to our foreign debt that the 42 Presidents before him. … But he refused to take responsibility for his policies. He refused to admit that a changed world demanded a change of course. His refusal has pushed us deeper and deeper into the hole. … My vote against the debt limit increase cannot change the fact that we have incurred this debt already, and will no doubt incur more. It is a statement that I refuse to be associated with the policies that brought us to this point.”
That was Senator Joe Biden in 2006, explaining his vote against hiking the debt ceiling when Republicans were in full control of DC. He gave another speech in 2004 laying out the same stance, calling Democratic votes in opposition to raising the debt ceiling under GOP governance "a protest of the policies that have brought us to this point, and a demand that we change course." That was different, you see, because argle bargle. As for Schumer, here's a fun flashback via a Politico report published a decade ago:
With Obama's recently-expressed regrets about a vote against raising the federal debt limit, and Chuck Schumer's warning that those who oppose it are playing with fire, a source reminds me that Schumer was one of the 44 Democrats who, in a party-line vote, voted against raising the debt limit in 2006. That year, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee -- which Schumer chaired -- aired the attack above on Ohio's Mike DeWine. "Did you know Mike DeWine voted to raise the national debt to $9 trillion?" the ad's narrator asks puzzled and alarmed Cincinnatians. "Did you know that we're borrowing $2 billion a day from China and other countries to pay for that?" It is, safe to say, an ad the DSCC likely won't be running this year.
Schumer voted with Biden against raising the debt ceiling in 2006, when Washington was under full Republican control -- and as chairman of the DSCC, he used GOP votes in favor of raising the debt ceiling in attack ads against them. As an aside, shout-out to Obama here, who routinely spoke passionately and voted one way when doing so was in his immediate political interests, often packaging his fleeting opportunism as deeply-held principles, only to express feigned and reflective regret when his own alleged principles were used to stymie his new immediate political interests. True leadership. I'm especially struck by his multiple flip-flops on the filibuster, for example. Impressive levels of faux-high-minded hackery. Biden and Schumer, meanwhile, will no doubt cook up reasons why their votes and posturing over the debt ceiling just weren't quite the same, or something. Insert justifications here. Perhaps their preferred talking point on this front will be that they were merely preening and trying to win elections back then, whereas Republicans are messing around with live fire today. Good luck with that:
The party in power gets the blame when things go bad; get credit when things go well. Doesn’t mean they always deserve either. But, voters don’t care about process. https://t.co/ffASTGYcfH
— Amy Walter (@amyewalter) October 4, 2021
But as mentioned above, Joe and Chuck's party have the power, right now, to entirely bypass the nasty Republicans and increase the debt limit through the reconciliation process. They don't want to, though, thanks to various political calculations. Will they condemn themselves for (again) playing reckless games on this subject? The reality, you see, is that Chuck Schumer is not actually "sick of" McConnell for inventing "BS" standards, designed to fit his political needs. No, Schumer is seething because in several major battles, including this one, McConnell's "phony" and "BS" standards are previously-held Biden/Schumer standards. And if there's one thing Democrats absolutely loathe, it's being held accountable for their own power-hungry, short-sighted stunts and power plays. That painful accountability is precisely what Cocaine Mitch is delivering, yet again, and they absolutely hate him for it. I'll leave you with McConnell opening his floor remarks on this fight by quoting Uncle Joe right out of the gate:
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