Tell the President and your Members of Congress: Stop Republican Blackmail
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Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
During this "lame duck" session, we strongly urge you to use our current Democratic majorities to enact debt ceiling legislation to prevent Republicans from engaging in political hostage blackmail to ram through policies that they don't have the votes to enact through the normal legislative process. The best way to do that is to repeal or rewrite the debt ceiling law. If that is not feasible, then the current debt ceiling must be raised to a level that will not be reached until mid-2025 at the earliest.
Background
MAGA Republicans are not going to be able to enact their extreme right-wing agenda through normal legislative process because they don't control the Senate. Nor do they have the votes to override a Biden veto. So they've made it clear they intend to double down on their strategy of creating artificial crises to blackmail Democrats into accepting repugnant policies and provisions as the only way to forestall catastrophes.
Their two main crisis-creation tactics are refusing to increase the debt ceiling and threatening government shutdowns by refusing to enact appropriations or Continuing Resolutions (CRs).
The Debt Ceiling
In most years, the federal government spends more than it receives. That's been true ever since the 1930s. The difference between income and outgo is the “deficit.” To cover the income shortfall, the federal government borrows money by selling bonds to investors who earn interest while their money is safely protected.
Despite conservative orthodoxy, the modest deficit spending of recent decades has not caused runaway inflation nor any other economic calamity. Republicans, however, believe that “government is the problem” and their solution is to “starve the beast” (except when they control the White House). Whenever Democrats hold power, Republicans scaremonger the deficit by falsely claiming that since households and businesses cannot spend more than they earn, neither can a government. That's bunk: unlike our families and small businesses or even Megabucks Incorporated, governments have the power to create new money where none existed before – in fact, that's one of their main responsibilities. Falsely asserting that deficit spending causes inflation is the same sort of economic hokum as their claim that tax breaks and subsidies bestowed upon the already obscenely wealthy will "trickle down" to the rest of us.
Yes, if Washington were to foolishly borrow too much, they might run the risk of excessive inflation. And when they bow to Republican dogma and underfund the economy, they risk throwing it into recession. But between those two extremes is the sweet spot of sound economics. Around the world, most well-functioning national governments run modest deficits as a normal practice. And, in fact, some "Modern Monetary Theory" economists now argue for even greater deficit spending to provide essential services and finance the transition to renewable green energy.
During the Clinton administration in 1995, “balanced budget” and “small government” Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, overthrew the traditional interpretation of an old debt ceiling law limiting how much the feds could borrow. Since deficit spending is essential to preserving a sound economy, Congress and the President then had to frequently pass legislation suspending or raising the debt ceiling so that our economy wouldn't be thrown into potentially catastrophic crises. Republicans use these periodic "debt crisis" to leverage concessions that they cannot achieve through the democratic legislative process.
The smart move would be to simply repeal or revise the stupid debt ceiling law. Only one other nation in the world, Denmark, has a monetary debt cap like ours, but their ceiling is set so high that there's no chance of it being reached at any time in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, eliminating or revising the debt ceiling law violates Republican “balanced budget – small government” dogma and may not be politically feasible in this upcoming lame-duck session. But between now and mid-December, Democrats do have a small window of opportunity to raise the debt ceiling high enough so that there's no risk of hitting it until mid-2025. Doing that would prevent Republicans from engaging in debt-ceiling blackmail until after the 2024 elections.
The Politics
Appropriation bills and CRs, which Republicans use to create artificial government-shutdown crises, are subject to Republican filibuster. But raising the debt ceiling can be done through the reconciliation process which circumvents those filibusters. This means that the current Democratic majority in the House and the 50 Democratic senators (plus Vice President Harris) can raise the debt ceiling as high as they want without a single Republican vote. But once Republicans take control of the House next year, that won't be possible.
Senators Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (D-AZ) are the potential spoilers because their votes are needed to raise the debt ceiling. Sinema is unpredictable and Manchin has already shown his willingness to sabotage Democratic priorities or hold them hostage for his personal blackmail demands. If Manchin or Sinema refuse to vote for a multi-year increase in the debt ceiling, or if Democrats are unwilling to pay the political price they demand, then our last resort is to hope that one or two Republican senators who will no longer be in office in 2023 will find the courage to defy McConnell and the MAGA Trumpites and vote for responsible government by raising the debt ceiling.
References
The Debt Ceiling: An Explainer, Fact Sheet House Budget Committee
Yellen warns of need to lift debt ceiling, Reuters 11/12
The Window is Closing, the Iron is Hot, and Democrats Need to Get Busy, Charlie Pierce, Esquire, 11/14
Warren backs plan to eliminate debt ceiling in lame-duck session, The Hill, 11/13/22
Democrats have the chance to prevent an economic calamity, Vox, 10/25
Say it ain’t so: Reconciliation back on the table for raising debt limit, Roll Call, 11/1/22
Budget Reconciliation: The Basics, House Budget Committee
The Budget Reconciliation Process and the Statutory Limit on the Debt, Congressional Research Service, 11/8/22 (PDF)