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The debt limit fight is drawing to a close.
For now, at least.
In the end, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) persuaded 14 members of his caucus to support the debt limit procedural deal he and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) agreed to Thursday afternoon.
Per Fox News:
McConnell, R-Ky., voted for the deal along with fellow members of the Senate Republican leadership team, including Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., John Barasso, R-Wyo., Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.
The leadership was joined by Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Richard Burr, R-N.C., John Cornyn, R-Texas, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Shelley Moore Capito, R-WVa., Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Susan Collins, R-Maine, Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Mitt Romney, R-Utah.
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For months Republicans called for Schumer to raise the debt ceiling using reconciliation, which would allow him to do so with a simple majority vote. However, Schumer stubbornly refused to do so, leaving the country days away, in two cases, from debt default.
McConnell has reiterated that his deal accomplishes what Republicans want, forcing Senate Democrats to increase the debt limit without GOP support, which they will have to vote on separately.
However, getting there required overcoming the Senate's cloture rule, prompting McConnell to find at least ten fellow Republicans to push the debt limit vote further.
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Ultimately, the maneuver will allow every Republican to vote “no” when it comes to the vote on the debt limit increase.
Not everyone agreed with McConnell's tactics, however. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told Fox News that Schumer and the Democrats were responsible alone for raising the debt ceiling via reconciliation or having the U.S. government experience an unprecedented default.
All the same predictable suspects, all worthless RINOs. And we all supposed to donate and put McConnell back as majority leader? Is there any difference between Democrats and these freaking RINOs?
Most of the time, No, there is no difference. So now they can pay for the money we didn’t ask them to spend in the first place.
Yes. If it weren’t for Sen. McConnell, we would have had Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court for the past 5+ years. There were strategic reasons for the vote to allow cloture on the debt ceiling vote. I would have probably voted the other way. However, I understand why McConnell went forward with the plan that he followed. He anticipated that if the debt ceiling precluded the federal government from funding all of the programs for which appropriations had been made, the leftstream media would hammer the Republicans as responsible for (supposedly) jeopardizing the credit standing of the federal government. This way, the Democrat party will have sole responsibility for the additional borrowing required to fund their insane schemes. No Republican will actually join Schumer and the Democrats in approving the debt ceiling increase.
This is not as black and white as it may appear. If it weren’t handled the way Sen. McConnell worked out, the Democrats could have changed the rule to allow a debt ceiling increase to occur within the ambit of reconciliation as a matter of course – i.e,. with only 51 votes. Then any leverage the minority might have in the future would be forfeited. By getting some other Republicans to vote for cloture, there will be a vote on the merits, which the Democrats will own.
I understand Sen. Turberville’s point, but I don’t think he appreciates the depth of the corruption of the leftstream media. If our side insisted on having 60 votes to consider the increase, and then refused to stop debate, with the result that the nation defaulted on its debt payments, the media would blame Republicans for that almost exclusively. They would characterize the spendthrift Democrats who got us to this point faster than anyone could have imagined two years ago as the “responsible” ones. (And to be fair, Pres. Trump and most if not all Republicans went along with the wild “Covid relief” spending in 2020, even if they have come to their senses about the reckless Build Back Boondoggle etc. more recently.)
The bottom line is that once you appropriate the monies to be spent, and pass out the checks for payments way beyond what the Treasury is receiving in tax revenue, it actually IS irresponsible to say, “No, we won’t let the federal government borrow the money to cover those checks.” The correct place to staunch the bleeding is at the appropriation stage, not the debt limit vote.
What are you guys talking about? They’re not RINOs. Trump, for all the good he did (and there was a lot) spent more money in four years than Obama did in EIGHT! McConnell is an operator. He got Trump’s judges appointed at a record rate. He understands that the liberal media will blame him IF Schumer defaults, so he’s giving him just enough rope to politically do himself in! We NEED McConnell as the majority leader!