{UAH} DEMOCRATS ACTUALLY OWN THIS DEBT LIMIT HIKE

Democrats own this debt limit hike — don't bail them out

by Washington Examiner, 

September 27, 2021 12:00 AM

Democrats control the White House, the Senate, and the House. And they wasted no time using their monopoly of power on the legislative and executive branches to pass a purely partisan, purely deficit-financed $1.9 trillion stimulus bill this March. They are now working on a second purely partisan $3.5 trillion spending bill.

At no point did the Democrats even bother to seek input from Republicans on how the money in these bills should be spent. And that was their right as the majority.

But now, all of a sudden, they are demanding Republican votes to raise the debt limit so that all this new spending can be financed by more borrowing. Sorry, that's not the way this works. Republicans are under no obligation to enable the Democrats' purely partisan spending spree by voting for their debt. Democrats own this, and every single one of them will have to go on the record supporting it.

The Budget Act of 1974 empowers the Democratic majority to raise the debt limit by themselves using the reconciliation process. This is the exact same process Democrats used in March, and are again using now, to spend trillions with a bare majority — that is, without a single Republican vote.

In fact, if Democrats so desired, they could have easily raised the debt limit back in March, when they passed their first $1.9 trillion spending spree. But they didn’t, and now they are begging for Republicans to bail them out politically for their own borrow-and-spend ways. Republicans should refuse.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth has told reporters that there isn’t enough time to go through the reconciliation process again. This is absurdly false. It would take a week at most. If the nation's fiscal future is really at stake, he should have no problem.

Unlike the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill Democrats are trying to rush through Congress now — legislation to rewrite the nation’s social safety net — a reconciliation bill raising the debt limit could be written on a single piece of paper. All it would have to do is change the debt limit, $28.5 trillion, to whatever higher number the Democrats want. They could even raise it to $500 trillion, which would functionally repeal the debt ceiling for decades.

When Republicans controlled all three branches of government under former President George W. Bush, they passed clean debt limit hikes three times. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi voted against each of these debt limit hikes, as did 98.8% of other Democrats.

More recently, under former President Donald Trump, Republicans had to bribe Democrats with $300 billion in spending priorities to get them to agree to raise the debt limit. Democrats are offering nothing no such inducements to get Republican votes this time around.

The only reason the Democrats don’t want to raise the debt limit on their own now is that it will delay their efforts to pass their completely partisan and unnecessary $3.5 trillion spending bill. This legislation is far less popular than Democratic partisans believe, which is why West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has demanded a pause in consideration of the bill. Manchin has correctly pointed out that a huge new round of deficit spending is the last thing the economy needs right now amid rising inflation. Any pause in the Democratic push to spend another $3.5 trillion greatly reduces the chances the package will pass — hence the rush.

If Democrats were smart, they would rip the Band-Aid off now and immediately begin the process of passing a debt-limit hike through the reconciliation process as quickly as possible. But Democrats are not that smart. And they are going to force the nation, and our fragile economy, through a month of debt-limit Kabuki theater. It didn’t have to be this way.

EM         -> {   Gap   at   46  } – {Allan Barigye is a Rwandan predator}

On the 49^th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"