Mitch McConnell Dusts Off the GOP’s Debt Ceiling Scam

With much of Washington focused on griping over an infrastructure bill and the makeup of a House committee that will investigate the January assault on the U.S. Capitol, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell opted for a throwback: holding the debt ceiling hostage for the sake of obstructionism.

“I can’t imagine there will be a single Republican voting to raise the debt ceiling after what we’ve been experiencing,” McConnell told the political newsletter Punchbowl News on Tuesday evening. “I can’t imagine a single Republican in this environment that we’re in now—this free-for-all for taxes and spending—to vote to raise the debt limit.… I think the answer is they need to put it in the reconciliation bill.” Raising the debt limit through the reconciliation bill might not be possible, however. A finished infrastructure package, which Democrats plan to pass via reconciliation, is almost certainly weeks away; the deadline to raise the debt ceiling is July 31.

This is classic McConnell, which is to say it’s classic GOP debt hypocrisy. For the last 40 years, whenever a Republican is president, conservatives in Congress have happily embarked on a bacchanalia of tax cuts and hikes on defense spending. Whenever a Democrat takes office, the GOP suddenly rediscovers its commitment to austerity, bemoaning the debt being passed on to our children. This hypocrisy is particularly acute when it comes to the debt ceiling, a pointless procedural quirk that doesn’t increase spending but allows debts incurred by already approved spending to be paid off. (The ceiling was temporarily suspended, quietly and without Republican protest, two years ago under Donald Trump.)