For years, Republicans in Congress have repeatedly used one threat to gain concessions from Democratic presidents, and now they’re about to get a taste of their own medicine as they try to get Felon-in-chief Donald Trump’s legislative priorities passed.
As both the House and Senate prepare to consider budget cuts and other fiscal issues that are high on the Trump administration’s agenda, Democrats are looking to use the threat of a national default as a way to force major concessions from the White House, according to a report from the Washington Post.
“The days of Democrats just voting to raise the debt ceiling under a Republican president, they need to be over, period,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA), the top-ranking member on the House Budget Committee. “We need to make sure that Democratic priorities are met if we are in any way going to vote to increase the debt ceiling. But at the very least, we need to make sure there’s a permanent resolution to the perennial debt ceiling dysfunction.”
Boyle will introduce legislation that would authorize the Treasury Department to continue borrowing money to pay the federal government’s obligations. But it would also contain guarantees that would protect both Medicare and Social Security, which some Republicans have suggested should be slashed to offset the cost of massive tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. The same bill would also permanently eliminate the debt ceiling, something Trump has been advocating.
“He brings it up every time and all the time,” Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) remarked after attending a meeting at the White House last week.
Not surprisingly, the obstacle to any real debt limit reform can be found among the GOP. Many in the House Republican caucus are saying they cannot support an end to the borrowing limit unless they get massive cuts in federal spending.
But Republicans are also having to face the reality that their majority in the House is so small that they can’t pass anything without crossover votes from their Democratic colleagues, some of whom are unwilling to cooperate with the GOP.
“I am against these ideas to raise the debt ceiling in order to provide more tax breaks for billionaires — the end,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). “That is my prism and my test for getting into this issue.”
And that means Democrats have major leverage over the GOP, according to Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
“I think trying to trade their votes on suspending the debt ceiling for something like ‘don’t cut Medicaid or don’t cut food stamps,’ that’d be a wasted opportunity. That would just be kind of fiddling around the edges of these programs when they could do something more meaningful and lasting.”
In other words, Elon Musk and his superrich friends may not be getting any tax cuts after all, and there’s not a damn thing they or their handpicked president can do about it other than whine.