Filibuster: Democrats seriously consider changing Senate rules to avoid default

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It’s a strategy Democratic leaders have been socializing in caucus since last week, but the idea got a big boost Tuesday night when President Joe Biden said it was “a real possibility” that the Democrats are establishing an exclusion from obstruction rules to let the debt ceiling be raised by a simple majority vote.
Bottom line: We are heading into uncharted territory after this vote on Wednesday, but Democrats are going to have to start making decisions. Republicans don’t blink. Democrats are making it clear that they will not give in and use reconciliation. If both sides hold fast to these promises, what are the options for the future? They are dark and narrow.

The procedural vote Wednesday afternoon on the debt ceiling. He is expected to fail. The Republicans will block it, but it is in the hours following this vote that things will really take off.

Small historical note

During the 2011 debt crisis, Congress finally acted. But even after spending an increase, the credit rating of the United States was lowered. The potential danger here doesn’t just start on October 18th and members and assistants are keenly aware that they are entering the danger zone quickly.

“The United States is already on the verge of debt degradation,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts. “We don’t have time to mess around anymore.”

The options (most likely to least likely at this point):

Democrats are changing the rules: This option is currently the most serious. CNN learned early Tuesday that it was on the table, raised at a private lunch last week, and was the subject of a conversation on Tuesday. This is essentially an exclusion of the systematic obstruction of the debt limit. The rationale for leadership here is that they don’t need Republicans to raise the debt ceiling through reconciliation.
So why do they need 60 votes to do otherwise? Some Democrats argue it wouldn’t amount to going nuclear or detonating the filibuster of the legislation, but you can imagine how that will be seen by Republicans as a slippery slope. The ability to use this tool, however, is only possible if every Democrat agrees to do so. Moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia threw in cold water on Monday. On Tuesday, he said he was not going to talk about it and that it was up to the leaders to find a deal. We’ll see if anything changes.

Arizona’s moderate Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema has also expressed deep concerns about the legislative filibuster change, but let’s keep an eye out for those two as this is a narrower change.

Democrats give in and reconcile: For weeks this seemed like the most obvious option, but time is really running out for it. The process is long and complicated. It forces Democrats to say exactly how much they are increasing the debt by and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer led his caucus by saying he was not going.

The process would require Democrats to pass a budget, put it on the floor, debate it for 15 hours, engage in a series of marathon votes known as the vote-a-rama, ask the finance committee to write the debt ceiling increase, return it to the floor for another 20 hours of debate, do another vote-a-rama and finish it. That’s a lot, and you can see why Democrats want to avoid it. But it is an option and until Tuesday it was perhaps the most likely.

It is now changed.

Republicans give in: This is what the Democrats hope. They bring the debt ceiling bill passed by the House to the ground. No Republican imposes a 60-vote threshold, and Democrats vote to raise the debt ceiling by simple majority. But, that does not happen on Wednesday. It won’t happen Thursday, and no, it won’t happen next week either.

Even if the GOP leaders got to a point where they let this slide slip, Roy Blunt, a Republican leader from Missouri, summed it up pretty well: “We really wouldn’t have the capacity to control all 50 of our members. about this question .”

See: Sens. Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, Ted Cruz from Texas, Josh Hawley from Missouri and Bill Hagerty from Tennessee (who have not been afraid in the past to delay things).

Biden does this using the 14th Amendment: There is no evidence that the White House is seriously considering the idea, but Senate Democrats have discussed it in private. In the 14th Amendment, there is a public debt clause which says that the “validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debt incurred for the payment of pensions and bonuses for service rendered in the repression of an insurrection or a rebellion should not be called into question. . “Some read this to mean that the president can just keep paying the country’s debts. The potential problem with this route is that it would likely end up in court. It has absolutely not been tested for this use, c that’s why he’s not really on the table right now.

Back to obstruction change

Opposition to the overhaul of the legislative filibuster has been steadfast, and it outweighed Sinema and Manchin. But the Democratic leaders’ argument that this is a one-time change just for the debt ceiling sinks. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, who has never supported removing legislative filibuster, told CNN on Tuesday evening that all options must be on the table for the debt ceiling.

“I’m open to anything about the debt ceiling,” she said when I asked her specifically about excluding the obstruction.

Why is it different?

For many moderate Democrats, protecting the sanctity of legislative obstruction has always concerned both the Senate as an institution and the country’s national progress from Congress to Congress. If you neutralize the legislative obstruction, you would have sharp swings in the country’s policies potentially every two years. As has been made clear by several Democratic aides over the past 24 hours, many Democrats view this debt ceiling exclusion as separate from nuclear as part of legislative filibuster. They argue that if Republicans used this two-year strategy to raise the debt ceiling on their own, it would not contribute to any drastic policy changes.

There is no guarantee, however, that if Democrats go down this route, Republicans will not tackle filibuster further. Look at what happened with the judges. Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took the first step in lowering the 60-vote threshold to 51 for most candidates. But the threshold of 60 votes for the choices of the Supreme Court has been maintained. In 2017, then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans lowered the voting threshold for Supreme Court candidates to 51. If that effort is used for the debt ceiling, it could have much greater implications in the future.

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