The recent devolvement into absurdity that is our US Congress has reached new lows. The usual "are we going to pay for the things we've already agreed to pay for" fiasco that has become a near annual tradition, has taken on new, fun for all of us, aspects. Will the repulitards blow up our economy or will the foolish dumbocrats do it instead?
Repulitards are butt hurt because they are almost irrelevant right now. They want to use their favorite and only tool they can wield at the moment to make the dumbocrats look bad. News flash, the dumbocrats do not need any help with that!
The republitards think if they can force the dumbocrats to waste even more time than they already have, by forcing them to use a time consuming process called reconciliation in order to pass something as simple to decide upon as it'd be for any of the rest of us to decide, if we are going to pay the mortgage or rent this month. If ever the term "duh" ever applied, it is to this decision. But by dragging it out, the dems would have less time to do all of the other things they are trying to get done before they lose the majority in the House and Senate in a little over a year. Plus it would give the repubs a talking point to help them take the majority in the 2022 elections.
The problem is the dems see this strategy for what it is and don't want to waste time or allow the repubs their talking point, so they've resisted.
Well here we are two weeks shy of the world economy getting blown up and there's not enough time left for the dems to use reconciliation in order to raise the "Debt Ceiling". The dems want to blame the repubs for being needlessly obstructionistic, which is true. The repubs want to blame the dems for failing to plan ahead and starting this process months ago when they would have needed to, in order to go around the repub obstruction, also true. It's important to point out, the decision to raise the debt is usually a "no brainer" and has traditionally been done in a bipartisan fashion. My read on this is the repubs are being assholes and the dems are being foolish in thinking they could guilt the repubs into not being assholes. That ship has sailed long ago! The repubs have demonstrated repeatedly in the last few years, exactly how comfortable they are being gigantic malodorous assholes! Look at their poster child: Ted Cruz... asshole! Don't stand downwind of that guy, you might get Cruz funk all over you.
It looks like the repubs are going to temporarily let the dems off the hook, maybe. The vote is taking place tonight, we'll see. Looks like McConnell is worried the dems might decide to carve out a hole in the filibuster and make an exception for the Debt Ceiling like the repubs did for Supreme Court justices and budget issues so they could pass the BS they did recently. The dems would be perfectly justified in doing so for this reason and many others like voter rights, police reform, Supreme Court revamping, etc.. But The republican masquerading as a democrat in the Senate AKA Joe Manchin would not go for it. Don't even ask him about it unless you want your head bitten off or if you're lucky he'll just adopt his condescending tone to lecture you about how he's being reasonable and you aren't. What the most likely result of tonight's vote will be is that the US Congress will kick this can down the road until December and then we can deal with all of this absurdity again then. The repubs are going to insist the dems use reconciliation at that point and will not let their foot off the dem's necks again.
If the repubs are going to force reconciliation, then the dems may as well get something for their trouble and effort. Eliminate the Debt Ceiling altogether. It's pointless. it serves no purpose other than to allow the minority in the Senate to hold the economy hostage in a pathetic attempt to maintain relevance and score political points. This would eliminate the need to create a "carve out" in the filibuster rules because the issue will no longer exist. Oh, wait, that would prevent the dems from using it in the same way when they are the minority party in the Senate!
What do you think? You think the dems will eliminate something that serves no purpose besides allowing one side to exert political pressure using an issue that should be sacrosanct? Yeah, me neither.