How to make Trump's next shutdown even worse? Lindsey Graham knows: take the debt ceiling hostage

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday January 29, 2019 · 11:11 AM PST

2019/01/29 · 11:11

Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) shouts while questioning Judge Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill September 27, 2018 in Washington, DC. - University professor Christine Blasey Ford, 51, told a tense Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that could make or break Kavanaugh's nomination she was "100 percent" certain he was the assailant and it was "absolutely not" a case of mistaken identify. (Photo by MICHAEL REYNOLDS / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read MICHAEL REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images) — Thanks for all the help, Lindsey.

Sen. Lindsey Graham is working hard to cement his place as Sycophant 1 to Individual 1, apparently because holding government workers hostage for the next three weeks isn't enough of a threat. Graham is trying to put another bomb in Trump's hands: the debt ceiling. Because THAT will go over just great with the public.

Graham told CNN that he had dinner with Trump Monday evening and talked with him about "what would a good deal look like" in getting his wall. Do it, he says, by taking the debt ceiling hostage. But he doesn't put it like that. He says he told Trump that he's "hopeful we can solve more than one problem," adding "I think the President understands we need to raise the debt ceiling. It comes due in March, so why not just expedite things."

Note: Raising the debt ceiling isn't a problem unless Trump and Senate Republicans choose to make it one. The House under Nancy Pelosi isn't going to have any problems getting it done. In fact, it already passed the Gephardt rule—a parliamentary rule from 1980—that automatically raises the debt ceiling when the House passes a budget. The Senate would have to pass it, too, is the thing. And it's looking like right now at least one of its members isn't going to go along with that.

"His wall money is necessary. His barrier money," Graham told CNN. "We've got to raise the debt ceiling in March. So [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin was there telling us about that. We've got to come up with a budget agreement. If you want to continue to get the military refurbished and rebuild it, then we need to end the last two years of sequestration." Because now military funding is wrapped into border security?

So, anyway, thanks for that wrecking ball, Huckleberry. The only thing we've got going for us and the global economy is that the rest of the Senate Republicans don't want to go there.

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