Democrats are considering a proposal to flip the script on the debt limit to block president Donald Trump's sweeping plan to remake the U.S. government and economy, according to a new report.
Republicans have for decades used the threat of a national default to force Democrats to cave on their agenda, but the Washington Post reported that some liberal lawmakers are pushing to weaponize upcoming negotiations on the debt ceiling in what the newspaper calls a "stark role reversal."
“The days of Democrats just voting to raise the debt ceiling under a Republican president, they need to be over, period,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA), the top ranking member on the House Budget Committee. “We need to make sure that Democratic priorities are met, if we are in any way going to vote to increase the debt ceiling. But at the very least, we need to make sure there’s a permanent resolution to the perennial debt ceiling dysfunction.”
Boyle intends to introduce legislation authorizing the Treasury Department to continue borrowing to pay the bills even if Congress doesn't raise the debt limit, and his bill would also seek guarantees to protect safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security, as well as the permanent end to the debt ceiling – which Trump has been demanding.
“He brings it up every time and all the time,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) last week after returning from a White House meeting with the newly inaugurated president.
However, some House Republicans are refusing to suspend the borrowing limit without spending cuts, and rank-and-file members are telling House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and GOP leadership they probably don't have the votes to raise the limit without help from the Democrats, who are hoping to leverage the issue to extract concessions.
“I am against these ideas to raise the debt ceiling in order to provide more tax breaks for billionaires — the end,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). “That is my prism and my test for getting into this issue.”
Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said Democrats can exploit the exceedingly thin GOP majority to fight cuts Social Security and other popular programs.
“I think trying to trade their votes on suspending the debt ceiling for something like ‘don’t cut Medicaid or don’t cut food stamps,’ that’d be a wasted opportunity,” Strain said. “That would just be kind of fiddling around the edges of these programs when they could do something more meaningful and lasting.”