Republicans: Give us what we want, or we crash the U.S. economy

Republicans: Give us what we want, or we crash the U.S. economy

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) listen with other House Republicans at a news conference on Capitol Hill on Nov. 17. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

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By Paul Waldman

Columnist

Yesterday at 1:19 p.m. EST

These days, when you say that the Republican Party is reckless and irresponsible, the common response will be, “What else is new?” We’ve all just come to accept that regardless of your policy preferences, we have one party that tries to govern and has a reasonable degree of respect for rules and norms, and another party that is happy to set fire to the entire American system if it gets them what they want.

They don’t even try to hide it.

I’ve called this “chaos conservatism” and if there’s anything new about it, it’s that Republicans are now quite happy to explain how destructive they intend to be, whether the topic is the next election, the covid-19 pandemic, or the U.S. economy.

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But it’s still shocking to hear them say openly, as The Post reports, that should they take back the House after the 2022 election — which they almost certainly will — their plan is to provoke a debt ceiling crisis that will bring the United States to the brink of fiscal catastrophe to force President Biden and congressional Democrats to accept drastic cuts to domestic programs:

Conservative lawmakers, anticipating the GOP retaking one or both congressional majorities in next year’s midterm elections, are already calling for and strategizing around a fiscal clash in 2023, insisting on using the threat of federal default to place new curbs on government spending and reduce the $28 trillion national debt.

In other words, Republicans mean that they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling to cover the spending Congress has already authorized unless Biden meets radical demands they come up with. That will cause a crisis like the one they manufactured in 2011 after they took the House, which resulted in the United States’ credit rating being downgraded.

That crisis ended with an agreement to slash spending on domestic programs, one Barack Obama agreed to because unlike Republicans, he was not willing to allow the U.S. economy to plunge into the catastrophe of the government defaulting on its obligations.

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You can call it extortion, but hostage-taking may be a more accurate way to think about it, and the U.S. economy is the hostage. Just as a hostage negotiation depends on the mutual understanding that the hostage-taker is willing to kill the hostage but the other negotiator wants to save them, this strategy depends on the understanding that Republicans are willing to destroy the U.S. economy.

When you look at everything this party does, including the war it is waging on democracy itself, does anyone doubt that they would? When asked about the possibility of creating such a crisis, Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-Mo.), the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, said that he’ll “look at all options.” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) says, “I would hope that what we would want is [what] the debt ceiling was designed to do, and that’s actually change the trajectory of where we are with debt and deficit.”

But extortion is in no way what “the debt ceiling was designed to do.” (It has its roots in a World War I-era power struggle between Congress and the Treasury Department.) The size of the deficit and debt are determined by taxing and spending policies passed by Congress and signed into law by the president — not, after those taxing and spending policies are law, threatening economic cataclysm to impose a new set of policies.

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Now consider this additional wrinkle: Donald Trump will almost certainly demand that Republicans go this route — and we know how willing Republicans are to stand up to him.

Trump has already attacked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for making a deal that puts off the next debt ceiling crisis until after the 2022 election. Now imagine it’s 2023, Republicans have just taken over the House, and the debt ceiling has to be raised again.

Trump will probably be running for president by then, at which point his position as unquestioned leader of his party will resume being a daily reality in every Republican’s life, making it nearly impossible for them to go against his wishes.

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What will those wishes be? Chaos. Crisis. If necessary, even the collapse of the federal government, which will allow him to say that everything has gone to hell and only his return can restore order.

But there is a solution to this problem. If someone tells you that a year from now they’re going to kidnap your family and hold them for ransom, you’d take action right now to stop them.

Fortunately, Democrats have a vehicle through which they can take that action: The Build Back Better bill, which will pass (one hopes) through the reconciliation process, which requires no Republican votes. All that’s necessary is to include a provision in that bill raising the debt ceiling by enough to get past the next few years. They should make clear that Republicans have left them with no choice. The United States does not negotiate with terrorists, and we should not allow Republicans to take the economy hostage, now or a year from now.

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If not in the BBB, Democrats can do it in the reconciliation bill they’ll pass next year. But they have to do it. We absolutely must stop treating this as too much of the political media does — like just another gambit in the political game, where everything is morally neutral and the only question is whether it will work. Throw long on first down, steal third base, crash the U.S. economy? Interesting tactic, let’s see how it plays out.

No more of that. Republicans are making their intentions clear. The crisis is already here, and we have to treat it with the urgency it deserves.