I Have One Stone and I See Two Birds Named "The Filibuster" and "The Debt Ceiling"
With one toss Democrats could make America more economically secure and more democratic
With the eyes of the nation riveted on America’s top athletes as they compete for gold in the Games of the XXXII Olympiad, let us bask for a moment in the genius of the American political system, which has created for itself a mechanism that allows a congressional minority to prevent the United States government from paying its bills, a milestone many economists believe would set in motion a global economic meltdown. Surely, you say, the folks we’ve entrusted with promoting the general welfare would never let it come to that, but rest assured, we’re mere weeks away from finding out!
So, um, yeah… “USA! USA!”
The source of our looming catastrophe is the debt ceiling, which has played a leading role in a number of pointless high-stakes political dramas dating back to the mid-1990s. The debt ceiling is a limit on the amount of money the federal government can borrow. Until 1917, the United States did not have a debt ceiling; instead, Congress simply voted to authorize the government to borrow money whenever it needed the extra cash. During World War I, Congress changed that by granting the Treasury the discretion to take on debt up to a limit (or ceiling) specified by Congress. That arrangement worked fine until Nixon’s budget shenanigans in the 1970s compelled Congress to claw back its budgetary authority. With Congress reasserting control over the budgetary process, the debt ceiling was now a legislative relic.
It didn’t take long, though, for Congress to realize the vestigial debt ceiling was a political landmine since it added a politically inconvenient step to the congressional budgeting process, which ordinarily culminated in Congress authorizing the federal government to spend money on a range of programs. This spending was often done on credit. The debt ceiling, however, now required Congress to occasionally take another vote to authorize the Treasury to borrow the extra money needed to pay back creditors for everything the government had already spent money on. Or, to put it another way, the regular budget process was like Congress telling the government to use the credit card to buy a bunch of stuff, while raising the debt ceiling was like telling the Treasury Department to pay off the credit card bill. That arrangement is a recipe for disaster because it’s a lot more popular for members of Congress to tell their constituents they voted to build an aircraft carrier or a bridge or whatever other government program they were touting that costs money (like Social Security) than it is to tell their constituents they voted to raise the debt limit because the Treasury was close to exceeding its borrowing authority and needed to take on more debt to pay the bills.
This is where the accounting and politics gets all messed up. When people hear Congress is raising the debt ceiling, they assume Congress is raising it so Congress can spend more money. But that’s not how it works. Again, Congress already spent the money and incurred the debt way back in the first step of the budgeting process (which is really where debates about government spending priorities should be had.) Raising the debt ceiling only allows the government to pay its bills. Because that’s so easily misunderstood by the public, though, a member of Congress may decide to avoid the wrath of their budget-conscious constituents by voting against a debt ceiling increase and leave the heavy lifting on the budget up to their more conscientious colleagues.
If enough members of Congress balk at raising the debt ceiling and Congress fails to raise the limit, though, the US government could default on its debts. What would that entail? Nobody knows for sure since it’s never happened, but most economists assume that if the world’s largest economic entity suddenly decided not to pay its bills, that would be really bad. We’re talking the potential suspension of entitlement payments and government salaries, a long-term interest rate bump, the collapse of financial markets, a stock market crash, loss of economic confidence, ripple effects around the globe, and worldwide recession/depression. Again, no one’s certain that would happen, but most economists think the risk is far too great to find out for sure.
Congress devised a workaround for this two-step problem in 1979 with the so-called “Gephardt Rule,” which basically deemed the debt ceiling raised every time a budget resolution was passed. Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich realized, however, that he could exploit the public’s dislike of government spending and deficits by drawing voters’ attention to the debt ceiling. Therefore, when Republicans took over Congress in 1995 and Gingrich became Speaker of House, Gingrich eliminated the Gephardt Rule and initiated a showdown with Democratic President Bill Clinton over the debt ceiling by stating he would only raise the debt limit if Clinton agreed to major spending cuts. Gingrich had essentially taken the full faith and credit of the United States government hostage to force Clinton to accede to Republicans’ policy demands. Clinton, of course, did not want to breach the debt ceiling since the public would likely hold him accountable for the resulting economic meltdown, but he also didn’t want to cave to Gingrich’s terms. This all led to a prolonged government shutdown that ultimately backfired on Gingrich before any serious economic damage was done.
But the pattern was set. Members of Congress would now use the debt ceiling to grandstand on deficit spending even though raising the debt ceiling did not authorize new spending and was necessary to avoid a calamitous default. (Again—and I cannot emphasize this enough—raising the debt ceiling is not like using the credit card but rather paying off the credit card; the question at the heart of a debt ceiling hike is not “To spend or not to spend?” but rather “To default or not to default?” The answer to that latter question should be a no-brainer.) For example, with George W. Bush in the White House and Republicans in control of both houses of Congress in the early-to-mid 00s, Republicans had no problem raising the debt ceiling. Instead, in 2006, it was a cadre of Democrats—including Illinois Senator Barack Obama—who showboated over the government’s deficits by voting against a debt ceiling hike. (Obama would later admit it was all for show and that no harm came from it since Republicans had the votes to raise it, but still.) Things got dicey, though, in 2011, when Republicans riding the momentum of the Tea Party movement took control of the House while Obama was president and brinksmanship over the debt ceiling nearly pushed the government into default. A crisis was averted but not before the markets took a hit and Standard and Poor’s downgraded the US government’s credit score. Republicans triggered another debt ceiling showdown in 2013 in an attempt to get Obama to defund Obamacare, but this time the president refused to play along and Republican resolve to push the matter fizzled. Since then, drama over the debt ceiling has been minimal…
…until now. This past Friday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen informed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that the Treasury Department would need to take “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting on the national debt if Congress did not raise the debt ceiling by August 2, which is (check calendar) this coming Monday. The good news is that Yellen still has some measures in her back pocket she can deploy to avoid default. The bad news is that it’s difficult for the Treasury to pin down exactly when it will hit the debt ceiling beyond that date given the huge and irregular amount of money the government is spending during the pandemic. That means Yellen could find all her pockets empty of anti-default measures at some unknown point in August, which is when Congress is usually on recess.
Pelosi could get the House to increase the debt ceiling by practically snapping her fingers. The Senate, however, is a different story because that chamber has a tricky little rule called the filibuster which basically requires 60% of senators to support a bill for it to pass. With the Senate currently split 50-50 between the parties, Democrats would need the help of 10 Republican senators to raise the debt ceiling, but Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last Wednesday that he “can’t imagine there will be a single Republican voting to raise the debt ceiling” given the current “free-for-all for taxes and spending” (a lot of which occurred, by the way, during Trump’s time in office when McConnell was still Senate Majority Leader.) McConnell suggested Democrats use the pending reconciliation bill (which only requires a majority of senators to pass) to raise the debt ceiling. Problem is, that bill probably won’t be ready until September at the earliest.
So, yeah, as things currently stand, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will need to find ten Republicans to cast a vote to raise the debt ceiling and avoid economic catastrophe. Would Republicans—the party that brought us the 1/6 Capitol riot, that couldn’t find ten senators willing to hold Donald Trump accountable for that disgrace, that can’t say with a straight face that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, that continues to speak out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to vaccines, that asks “How high?” when Donald Trump tells them to jump, that’s pushed the country to the brink of economic collapse during past debt ceiling showdowns—oh never mind, I’m not banking on Republicans doing the responsible thing here.
So that leaves it up to the Democrats, who could suddenly find themselves with the opportunity to kill two legislative albatrosses—the debt ceiling and the filibuster—with one stone.
As far as ridiculous legislative rules go, the filibuster ranks right up there with the debt ceiling. The filibuster basically turns a Senate rule that grants every senator the privilege to speak for as long as they want on any issue of business before the Senate into a dilatory tactic that can bring the whole legislative body to a halt. As it is currently formulated, though, senators no longer actually need to engage in an endless monologue on the Senate floor to sustain a filibuster. Instead, a senator can merely raise an objection to force the majority to demonstrate through what is called a cloture motion that there are at least 60 senators who favor limiting the amount of time senators can speak on the floor and thus end the so-called “silent” filibuster. With time a precious commodity in the Senate (again, senatorial privilege grants single senators the ability to reduce the pace of the Senate’s business to a crawl) majorities have preferred to move past the silent filibuster and bring up the next order of business rather than linger on a doomed bill.
The filibuster might not be a big deal if senators used them rarely, but that is no longer the case. In the roughly fifty years prior to 1970, the filibuster was used about once per year. Between 1971 and 1990, though, an average of about 25 cloture motions were filed in the Senate during every two-year congressional session. During the 90s, that average rose to 51, and in the 00s the average rose again to about 73 per session. During the 2013-14 session of Congress (with Republicans in the Senate minority) 218 cloture motions were filed, while 298 cloture motions were filed in the 2019-2020 session (when Democrats were in the Senate minority.) Through the end of May 2021, 41 cloture motions had already been filed in the Senate.
The main problem with the filibuster is that it is anti-majoritarian. The filibuster allows a minority of between 41 and 49 members to block legislation a majority of senators supports. Some might think it shouldn’t be too hard for one party to amass a 60-vote majority, but that’s only happened twice since 1975: During the 1975-76 session (when Democrats held the Senate during Republican President Gerald Ford’s last two years in office and changed the rules concerning the filibuster) and for about six months during the 2009-10 session (when Democrats held the Senate during Obama’s first two years in office.) As the country has grown more polarized in that time—a trend the filibuster both reflects and accelerates—and parties increasingly emphasize party unity, the likelihood that a senate majority can press forward with its agenda diminishes significantly. While we claim the majority rules in America’s democracy, in the Senate, it’s actually the minority that holds a veto over the majority’s actions. That’s rather undemocratic.
The other problem with the filibuster is that it makes it hard for citizens to assess who is responsible for governing. It isn’t hard for most attentive Americans to determine which party holds the majority in the Senate. Since it falls on the majority to govern, voters can hold the majority party in the legislature accountable for the successes and failures of government. Yet when a minority can prevent the majority from governing (as it can in the Senate) the minority can effectively make the majority look incompetent. When there’s a problem and the Senate doesn’t act, it may not be because the majority lacks the will to do so. It may be that the minority is using the filibuster to prevent them from taking action. Angry voters may then take out their frustration on the majority at the ballot box only to place a minority party in power that has no intention of addressing the issue. It’s much better for democratic accountability if a legislative majority can act on its electoral mandate so voters can then assess and either reward or reject their actions come Election Day. (And let’s face it: It’s already hard enough in a system of separated powers, 50 state governments, and bicameral legislatures for citizens to identify who is responsible for a failure of governance. The filibuster only adds to this confusion.)
Defenders of the filibuster along with die-hard Senate groupies argue that ending the filibuster would upend the Senate’s reputation as the world’s “greatest deliberative body” by stripping senators of their ability to speak at length on any issue before the Senate. The problem with that argument is that the filibuster—particularly the “silent” type—has actually discouraged deliberation, since the mere threat of a filibuster is enough for the majority to move on to another bill. (I would also like these individuals to identify at least five moments in the past 20 years when a senator based a vote on an extended deliberation they listened to in the Senate chamber.)
Others claim the filibuster is central to the character and traditions of the Senate and that ending it would only turn the upper chamber of Congress into another version of the more procedurally-streamlined House. Yet the Constitution—the document that defines the nature of both houses of Congress—makes no mention of the filibuster and instead distinguishes the Senate from the House by giving it different duties (ratifying treaties, confirming judges, etc.,) different lengths of term (six years), and a different method of apportionment (two members from every state.) Furthermore, if something “central to the character of the Senate” ultimately tarnishes the democratic character of the Senate by turning it into an anti-majoritarian institution, it may be time to reform that feature. As for the idea that the filibuster is a cherished tradition of the Senate, just note the Senate has made a number of changes to the filibuster over the past 100+ years and has recently carved out exceptions to it when it comes to confirming federal judges and other presidential appointments as well as budget resolutions. (It’s pretty clear the reconciliation process is on the verge of becoming the Senate’s major way to work around the filibuster.)
Finally, some argue the filibuster promotes bipartisanship since it encourages both parties to cooperate with one another to pass legislation. The problem today, though, is that the filibuster prevents all types of legislation—both partisan and bipartisan—from getting passed. In many ways, it reinforces partisanship by motivating partisans to stay loyal to their ranks in order to deny the opposition a legislative victory. It may even be that eliminating the filibuster so the majority can more easily pass legislation might lead to more bipartisan legislation, since members of the opposition may find it more electorally beneficial to weigh in on and support a bill destined to pass through the chamber than it is to oppose such a bill when a nay vote will do nothing to help their party block its enactment.
There are ways to reform the filibuster without getting rid of it entirely. Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute has recommended shifting the burden of the filibuster from the majority back onto the minority by compelling them to demonstrate at any moment that they have at least 41 senators present to sustain a filibuster. Former Iowa Senator Tom Harkin has suggested that if the filibuster really is intended to allow extended debate on a bill, the number of senators needed to break a filibuster could gradually be reduced over the course of a filibuster as more members of the minority are granted the opportunity to speak. Or we could just get rid of the filibuster and reform the rules of the Senate so congressional minorities and individual members can’t hijack the legislative process.
There would be no better reason to eliminate the filibuster than to save the country from an entirely avoidable economic meltdown. If Republicans are so consumed by symbolic politics that they would rather risk economic collapse than support a necessary increase in the debt ceiling that is now required in large part because of policies they voted for, then Democrats could certainly justify eliminating the tool (the filibuster) Republicans are using to prevent Congress from acting responsibly. And once Democrats have jettisoned the filibuster, they should just jettison the whole idea of the debt ceiling as well and simply authorize the Treasury to pay any bills that come due. And with the filibuster gone, Democrats can get moving on the rest of their agenda as well. McConnell is practically asking for it.
If the eleven Republicans currently working on the infrastructure bill don’t come to the rescue on the debt ceiling, my guess is Democrats won’t eliminate but only carve out an exception to the filibuster in order to raise (rather than eliminate) the debt ceiling. (The filibuster still serves a useful but cynical purpose for a majority: It allows them to blame the opposition for obstructing bills some members of the majority may be reluctant to get behind.) McConnell will get as apoplectic about it as he gets but no one will really care Democrats eliminated the filibuster for the debt ceiling because dealing with the debt ceiling is something that needs to be done (even though no one wants to do it.)
But then wait until Republicans take over a house of Congress following the 2022 elections and decide to take the debt ceiling hostage for some ridiculous demand Biden won’t entertain. Given the current trajectory of the Republican Party, it’s easy to imagine them refusing to raise the debt ceiling, which would likely be disastrous. Again, all the more reason for Democrats to just get rid of the debt ceiling now before the vandals can wreak any more havoc on this country. And while they’re at it, let’s clean house and get rid of the filibuster, too.
Two birds.
One stone.
“USA! USA!”
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Photo credit: CallisonRTKL
Exit music: “If I Had No Loot” by Tony! Toni! Toné! (1993, Sons of Soul)