What’s Wrong With This Picture? –

A view of the U.S. Capitol over the reflecting pool: Glynn Wilson

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In this continuing fantasyland of two realities we find ourselves living in these days in the United States of America, no controversy sheds more light on the absurdity of it all than the battle to keep the government open and to raise the level of debt legally allowed by the federal government to keep the doors open.

The good news is that Congress this month managed to find a way to resolve both issues by keeping the government funded and open, and on Tuesday night, by raising the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion from its current level of $28.9 trillion.

But to see just how insane this partisan battle has become, just look at the public position taken by former President Donald J. Trump and the toady Republicans who continue to side with him in the biggest threat to our democracy since the Civil War.

After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky made a back room deal with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to let Democrats in the majority vote to resolve the debt ceiling without facing a filibuster, Trump railed against McConnell in a series of statements urging Republicans to remove McConnell from his leadership role. Even without Facebook or Twitter, platforms from which he is banned because of making false statements leading to violence like what happened on Jan. 6, Trump found a way to get his statements covered by the press and on TV, charging that the senator “didn’t have the guts to play the debt ceiling card, which would have given the Republicans a complete victory on virtually everything.”

A victory on what? Shutting down the government and bankrupting the country? Some victory.

Look at what economic experts say would happen if the U.S. were to default on its debts. This is not from the “liberal media” either, mind you, but serious, non-partisan economists.

“If Congress doesn’t suspend or raise the debt ceiling, the government would not be able to borrow additional funds to meet its obligations, including interest payments to bondholders. That would most likely trigger a default. The knock-on effect of the U.S. defaulting would be catastrophic,” economists say.

Investors such as pension funds and banks holding U.S. debt could fail. Tens of millions of Americans and thousands of companies that depend on government support could suffer. The dollar’s value could collapse, and the U.S. economy would most likely sink back into recession.

“And that’s just the start,” they say.

The U.S. dollar could also lose its unique place in the world as its primary “unit of account,” which means that it is widely used in global finance and trade.

“Without this status, Americans simply wouldn’t be able to maintain their current standard of living,” they say. “A U.S. default would set off a series of events, including a depreciating dollar and surging inflation.”

The combination of all this would make it a lot harder for the U.S. to afford all the stuff it imports from abroad, and with it Americans’ standard of living would fall.

So if you are any kind of real American patriot, standing up for the statement — true or not — that America is the “greatest country in the world,” why would you support a party that wants to destroy it?

In spite of your party affiliation or ideological bent, there is no escaping the actual fact that Democrats were united in support of keeping the U.S. government open and raising the debt ceiling, while the vast majority of Republicans were against it.

The measure to raise the debt ceiling passed the Senate 50 to 49 along party lines on Tuesday afternoon and then cleared the House in a 221-to-209 vote shortly after midnight on Wednesday. Republicans opposed the legislation en masse, with only one, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, voting in favor of it. The bill now heads to President Joe Biden for his signature before Christmas.

Every true American should be celebrating this, even if it is a short term victory, because a default right before Christmas would have been more catastrophic than the massive tornado that flattened a huge swath of McConnell’s home state of Kentucky this week. He knows this, so he made a back room deal, then took to the Senate floor and just lied to the American people to try to avoid more of Trump’s wrath.

In his floor speech on Tuesday, McConnell made no mention of the deal he struck with Schumer to allow the increase to occur, making note that the debt ceiling would be raised solely with Democratic votes in the Senate. He also denounced Biden’s social safety net, climate and tax package, warning that it would exacerbate inflation and lead to the accumulation of more debt.

“If they jam through another reckless taxing and spending spree, this massive debt increase will just be the beginning,” McConnell said. “More printing and borrowing to set up more reckless spending to cause more inflation, to hurt working families even more.”

But wait. The economists say a default would cause more inflation. Who are you going to believe? A politician trying to have it both ways? To find a way to keep the country running while claiming he was against keeping the country running?

The deal party leaders made was to establish a one-time fast-track process to increase the debt ceiling with a simple majority vote, instead of the 60 votes needed to move most legislation through the Senate. If the deal had not been made, the country’s economy would have collapsed on Christmas Eve because of a Republican filibuster.

This is not the filibuster of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

This is a pretend filibuster by the very corrupt forces Mr. Smith went to Washington to fight.

The Treasury Department had warned that it would be unable to pay the nation’s bills soon after Wednesday, and the agency is currently using so-called “extraordinary measures,” a series of fiscal tools to delay the threat of a default.

“The full faith and credit of the United States should never be questioned,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said before the House vote. “The health of our economy should never be threatened. The financial security of our families must never be gambled.”

Senator Schumer said on Tuesday that the $2.5 trillion figure would be enough to punt the threat of a default past the midterm elections next year, an assessment shared by the Treasury Department, according to a person familiar with its internal estimates, as reported by The Times.

“The American people can breathe easy and rest assured there will not be a default,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor. He thanked Republicans, including McConnell, for their help in setting up the process and resolving a must-pass piece of fiscal legislation before the end of the year.

A handful of Republicans, while opposed to the debt limit increase, ended their party’s monthslong blockade of debt limit legislation by voting last week to create the expedited process. Republicans had spent months refusing to allow Democrats to take action on long-term legislation raising the debt ceiling, using the filibuster to stall any action.

“The way this Congress has been polarized, I don’t know if I expect Republican votes for lunch, never mind on something like this,” said House Rules Committee Chair Jim McGovern of Massachusetts.

For Democrats, addressing the debt limit gives senators more time to focus directly on muscling their marquee $2.2 trillion social safety net, climate and tax package through the Senate before Christmas, even as some senators acknowledged that such a timeline might not be feasible.

But even as they eyed other legislative ambitions, some Democrats argued that the contortions to raise the debt ceiling demonstrated why Congress should dispose of the process altogether, rather than periodically running up against potentially catastrophic fiscal cliffs, only to set up new ones in the future.

“I think it’s very clear that this debt ceiling process has got to go,” said Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. “It is now a tool for politicians for political purposes, and it just defies common sense.”

Other Democrats suggested that the convoluted workaround was further evidence that the filibuster itself should be scrapped, or that similar exceptions should be made for other priorities.

“We have decided that we must do it for the economy, but not for the democracy,” said Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, in a speech on the Senate floor. Warnock argued that a similar special process should be created for passing voting rights legislation that has been filibustered by Republicans.

But creating such a process would take the support of at least 10 Republicans, and only one has been willing to join Democrats in support of taking up a voting rights measure. By contrast, 14 Republicans joined Democrats last week in voting to allow the Senate to take up a bill permitting the debt limit to be raised with a simple majority vote.

To see just how the partisan lies have escalated because of Trump, Republicans seemed eager on Tuesday to have Democrats go on the record in support of the debt ceiling increase, something they can cite in their reelection campaigns back home to their crazy, pro-Trump, anti-government constituencies.

They will criticize Democrats for “excessive spending” and “adding to the national debt,” even though it had to be done or we could forget about a visit from Santa Klaus.

“Since taking control of the House, the Senate and the White House at the beginning of this year, the majority has made repeated decisions to spend massive amounts of taxpayer dollars with only Democratic votes,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma. “With that power also comes responsibility to effectively govern, and the majority has failed to do so.”

Wait. Who is failing to govern? The Democrats passed the bills. The president signed them. The Republicans voted no. That is not governing. That is standing in the way of governing.

As George W. Bush once said:

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

Don’t be fooled again.