End the debt-ceiling standoff by nuking the filibuster

Instead, McConnell and the GOP want Democrats to hike the debt ceiling using the budget-reconciliation process, which the party is relying on to pass much of Joe Biden’s social-spending agenda without Republican support. This approach would be a massive pain in the ass that would require procedural moves that haven’t been tried in about 40 years, while burning precious legislative time and possibly further derailing the party’s stuttering efforts to enact its platform, which is why it appeals to McConnell and not to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

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In a sane world, there would be a simple solution to this problem: Democrats would eliminate the filibuster on debt-ceiling votes (which they can do with a simple majority), suspend the borrowing limit, and move on. After all, there is absolutely no credible argument left for keeping it in place in these circumstances. Both Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, the Senate’s most vocal defenders of the 60-vote rule, have said they think it is worth keeping in place because it fosters bipartisanship. But when it comes to the debt limit, McConnell and his conference are now insisting that the votes must be partisan. There will be no across-the-aisle negotiation for anybody to cluck about. By Manchin and Sinema’s own logic, the filibuster is doing absolutely nothing here, except making Democrats’ lives a bit more miserable, which might personally give them some weird jolt of pleasure but does nothing for America’s long-term political stability. There isn’t even the implicit dynamic where they’re using the supposed sanctity of the filibuster as a fig leaf to avoid taking a vote they actually just want to avoid, such as on an issue like immigration reform. The only possible argument they could resort to is a slippery-slope case, that opening a crack on the filibuster here would create an incentive to completely nuke it down the line. But that’s not especially compelling, given that they themselves would have the power to block any such action (and considering that the filibuster has been weakened before and yet we’re still having these torturous debates). The only thing potentially crashing down a slope right now is the full faith and credit of the United States.

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