There’s an absolutely outstanding idea being floated right now by Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley and Tim Kaine about how to effectively neuter Republican opposition to raising the country’s debt ceiling. It’s a beautiful concept—not only in its raw simplicity but in its ease of execution—and lack of any notable drawbacks.
The only problem is, it’s too late to implement it.
Merkley and Kaine propose implementing the so-called “McConnell Rule,” an idea that the authors describe as “a simple solution that, conveniently, already exists.” Indeed it does. It draws upon negotiations between then-President Obama and then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2011, when House Republicans first seriously threatened to renege on the country’s full faith and credit. As the authors explain in an op-ed for Tuesday’s Washington Post:
When talks between House Republicans and the president faltered, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) proposed a plan for the debt ceiling.
His proposal, which was later included in the Budget Control Act of 2011, allowed President Barack Obama to increase the debt ceiling, subject to a potential override by Congress. If lawmakers wanted to stop it, Congress could pass a joint resolution of congressional disapproval. Congress still had oversight, but the McConnell plan took the weaponization of the debt ceiling off the table.
While the broader Budget Control Act had numerous flaws, the McConnell plan itself was a good solution then, and it remains a good solution today.
That proposal not only had the benefit of being “doable,” it also had the imprimatur of the Grim Reaper—McConnell—himself. Because McConnell at least is smart enough to know that his donor base doesn’t relish the unseemly prospect of pitchforks in the street angrily wielded by the unwashed hordes, threatening their pristine gated communities over the complete collapse and destruction of their 401ks, 529s, and personal savings. Not that I’m praising McConnell, but let’s be real: It’s nothing personal with him, mind you. It’s only business.
And lo and behold, this course of action was recommended here not very long ago by—oh wait, it was me—and about 365 Daily Kos members! With a title like “Whoever wins control of the House, there's one thing Democrats absolutely must do,” could I have been any more click-baity on that one? Even now I’m a little embarrassed. Did you notice when it was written? Oct. 13, 2022. Well before the midterms, and more importantly, before the “lame-duck” session. While we still had a Democratic House, when such a provision could have been passed, well before the clown crew we’re now stuck with took power. Did any of our esteemed Democratic senators or their staff bother to read it? Maybe they should have.
After the midterms we had a month to enact this provision via Reconciliation with 50 Senate votes and a Democratic House majority. Yes, it would have taken a little budgeted time and work and maybe infringed a few days off the Senate’s enormous “winter break.” It probably would have taken about 75 words tacked on to a reconciliation bill and lots of tricky timing. Hard stuff, vacations and all, I know.
Let’s see, what exactly was written here, on this site, about this very proposal? Oh yes, here I am again, quoting Norman Ornstein, in The Atlantic, because that’s what I do sometimes: I see a really good idea and amplify it, hoping that maybe, just maybe, someone will pay attention.
Fortunately, there is a way of dispensing with this farce and neutering the MAGA base’s ability to inflict their ignorance and nihilism on the rest of us, one not involving dubious gimmicks such as the minting of a trillion-dollar coin to cover our nation’s debts, or risking a constitutional crisis by President Joe Biden invoking the 14th Amendment to unilaterally suspend the debt ceiling. As Ornstein explains:
“If the Republicans prevail in November, the lame-duck session becomes an opportunity to take this threat off the table once and for all. The way to do so is by making permanent, perhaps via reconciliation, the ironically named “McConnell Rule.” The rule was raised by the Senate Republican leader a decade ago to allow the president to raise the debt ceiling. It allows Congress to pass a joint resolution blocking the action, but contains a provision where the president is able to veto that resolution—meaning, in this instance, that a president would need only one-third of support plus one of the two houses of Congress to avoid default.”
Since such a provision is quite literally tied to the budget it should pass muster with the parliamentarian for reconciliation in the lame-duck Congress, even in the event Republicans take control of the House. All Democrats—even ones like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema—would vote for it because their donors know what havoc a default would wreak on their own prospects, even if the MAGA base does not (Manchin has already expressed his support for such a procedure). House Republicans would scream and howl (and fundraise of course) about “tyranny and “executive overreach,” but they’re going to do that anyway.
Except the measure, by its very nature, needed a Democratic House to pass it. And with apologies to Merkley and Kaine, we ain’t got that now. The beauty of fair use is that it doesn’t apply when you quote something you yourself wrote! So here is more, from that same October 2022 post:
Assuming an unctuous political invertebrate like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy advances to the speakership, he will have next to no control over the actions of his caucus, and no capacity or authority to negotiate a resolution to such a crisis.
...
This would effectively leave the fate of American people at the mercy of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and others of the House’s bomb-throwing caucus, all of whom (as Ornstein notes) would be perfectly willing to march off the ledge and plunge the nation into a fiscal catastrophe, if only to solicit the ersatz applause of their thousands of Russian Twitter-bot followers. These people have already amply demonstrated they live in a hermetically sealed bubble of partisan rancor and fantasy that brooks no dissent, far less any inclination to fiscal reason.
As it turns out, that’s exactly what we’re facing. But apparently there was “a lack of political urgency” for such a measure in the Senate during the very time frame in which it could have been accomplished:
“Oh, I wish — I don’t think so,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat. “We let this issue and this challenge do everything possible to slow us down, and even to stop the business of our government, and it’s just unacceptable. If I had my way, we’d change it tomorrow.”
The reality is that Durbin wanted to focus on judges, a worthy goal in itself, except that the Democrats’ 51-49 majority ensures that the judges are still going to pass through Senate muster. But the debt ceiling issue was, for all intents and purposes, essentially punted during the lame duck.
Okay fine, we’re just bloggers here. But the fact that something clearly proposed here—on what is, in reality, the most influential Democratic blog—apparently didn’t get the slightest consideration when it would have mattered just irks me. I’m sorry if I offend or put off anyone by that sentiment, and I’m sorry if I’m talking out of school. I’m just a little irritated by this, as you might be able to tell.
The bottom line is that this site has a lot—a lot—of really, really good ideas. (I can’t even count how many times Joan McCarter has written on the exact same issue.) Some may be practical, some are not. But for the ones that are, it would be helpful if the people we support paid more attention to them when it actually mattered, as opposed to authoring a nice, aspirational piece in The Washington Post when it’s too late, and such a measure is never going to to pass in the current House.
Admittedly, it’s only the fate of the entire world economy that we’re talking about here.