Congress on Tuesday raised the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion.
The Senate avoided a debt default on Tuesday — in a unique way.
Lawmakers voted 50-49 to raise the debt limit by $2.5 trillion, a figure that’s expected to tide the government over until after the midterm elections next fall. Every one to two years, it’s vital for the US to address the debt ceiling to cover past spending and make sure the government doesn’t default; if it did, it would likely have catastrophic economic consequences globally.
But this time around, interestingly, the resolution succeeded because it did not require 60 votes to clear a filibuster in the Senate; lawmakers passed a bill last Thursday granting a one-time exception to the rule.
The deal to suspend the filibuster was bipartisan; leaders of both parties have hesitated to make exceptions to the filibuster, a procedural rule requiring a Senate supermajority to pass legislation, if it gets blocked by the opposition. Senators were willing to make an exception in this case, for two reasons.
One, it enabled Democrats to approve the debt limit resolution on their own, with no Republican support. Republicans wanted to withhold their votes in hopes of weaponizing Democrats’ vote to take on more debt in future campaigns. Two, the deal allowed a vote to be held quickly, narrowly avoiding the December 15 default deadline calculated by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
This last- minute deal enabled lawmakers to avoid a debt default and massive economic crisis while overcoming a partisan impasse on the subject. For some Democrats, too, it revealed that exceptions to the filibuster are possible — and an option lawmakers should consider for other bills.
Republicans want Democrats to own the debt
Raising or suspending the debt limit, something lawmakers have to do to ensure the country has enough money to cover its past spending, has long been politicized.
In the past, both parties have used votes to raise or suspend the debt limit as opportunities to accuse the other party of irresponsible spending, with Republicans doing so more frequently in recent years. In reality, additions to the debt have taken place under both Democratic and Republican presidents. And during the Trump administration, as had generally been the case previously, debt limit increases received bipartisan backing: In that period, $8 trillion was added to the national debt, and lawmakers voted to suspend the debt limit three times.
This year, however, Republicans have been particularly eager to use the debt limit to send a political message, as midterm elections loom in 2022.
The fight over the debt limit took place as Democrats are attempting to pass a $1.85 trillion social and climate spending bill — the Build Back Better Act — on their own via budget reconciliation (a process that, like the filibuster exemption, allows bills to pass the Senate with a simple majority). Republican leaders have argued that Democrats should figure out how to raise the debt ceiling on their own, too. Republicans hope to use a Democratic party-line debt limit vote in campaigns to accuse the other party of adding to the debt. They plan to incorrectly imply that Democrats’ spending bills necessitated the debt limit increase, even though the spending covered by the increase has already happened, with much of it taking place under President Trump.
The parties have already had one major debt limit fight earlier this year. The debt default date was originally in October, and Republicans initially refused to help raise the debt limit. They ultimately caved as the default deadline approached. At that time, lawmakers raised the limit by $480 billion, enough to push the default date back a few months, bringing the national debt to roughly $29 trillion.
This particular vote ends this fight, at least temporarily. It raises the debt limit by enough to cover expenses until roughly next fall, at which point this battle will be repeated. Since raising or suspending the debt ceiling is must-pass legislation, it should be a routine issue that Congress checks off, not a controversial one. Because it has to pass, however, it’s increasingly used as an opportunity for the minority party to extract policy concessions or make a political point (for example, that their opposition spends too freely). So there will likely be a similar battle next fall, regardless of which party wins the midterms.
A precedent for a filibuster exception
The debt ceiling vote has opened the door to questions of whether Democrats would consider filibuster exceptions for other bills like voting rights protections. Activists, and some Democratic lawmakers, have called for this in recent months amid failures to advance voting rights protections, police reform, and a $15 minimum wage due to GOP opposition in the Senate. But a filibuster exemption for policy changes is likely to be difficult to secure.
This time around, Democrats were only able to get an exception because it was for something Republicans actually wanted. Though there was enough GOP opposition to raising the debt limit that getting 60 Senate votes was in doubt, Republican leaders like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell did not want the US to default. Those leaders made sure the exception passed for the good of the domestic and global economy Republican support; Democrats likely wouldn’t be able to approve another exception in this same way.
That leaves Democrats with another challenging option: banding together for a rules change; those sorts of modifications can be done by majority vote. But that would require the support of all 50 Democratic caucus members, which party leaders don’t currently have. Moderate Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have staunchly opposed such changes thus far.
Still, this development has made it clear that lawmakers do have another option to consider for bills that can’t pass via budget reconciliation, and has set a recent precedent for such carveouts. Now that it’s been done once, expect to hear calls to do it again. In fact, this filibuster carveout has sparked new conversation about how else this tactic could be used.
“If we can make an exception to the filibuster for the debt ceiling, we should absolutely do it to protect our democracy,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) has previously said.
The controversy is putting pressure on Prime Minister Boris Johnson — and now he’s facing a Conservative rebellion.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson may have finally encountered a crisis that could seriously threaten his leadership. The crisis is a Christmas party.
Or an alleged Christmas party. In December 2020 — when a deadly coronavirus surge led to lockdowns so strict in parts of England that indoor meetings with people from other households were forbidden — a few dozen of the prime minister’s staffers reportedly hosted a festive gathering at 10 Downing Street. “Officials knocked back glasses of wine during a Christmas quiz and a Secret Santa while the rest of the country was forced to stay home,” the Daily Mirror claimed in a report in late November.
“Partygate” has only gotten messier since. Last week, iTV published a leaked video of Downing Street staffers laughing about the party, just a few days after the get-together supposedly took place. In a press conference dress rehearsal, now-former press secretary Allegra Stratton jokes with staffers that “this fictional party was a business meeting and it was not socially distanced.”
Then, over the weekend, the Sunday Mirror published photos that showed Johnson hosting a Zoom quiz on December 15, a few days before the party in question. Johnson was next to aides who were decked out in festive gear, and according to the report, staffers were still in the office, “huddled by computers, conferring on questions and knocking back fizz, wine and beer from a local Tesco Metro.” On Tuesday, the Daily Mirror followed up with a report that said emails showed staffers were planning to participate in the “virtual” quiz in the office; after the quiz wrapped up, one staff member instructed attendees in a message to “Go out the back.”
Johnson has denied that there were any parties, and he told the House of Commons last week that he was “repeatedly assured” that “no Covid rules have been broken.” (He’s since started to say that he broke no rules.) But since the initial Partygate reports, multiple allegations of illicit holiday gatherings hosted by those in or associated with the government have emerged. Right now, a top civil servant is investigating at least three events, including the shindig that sparked this whole thing.
That this possible party has exploded into a major political scandal is maybe not that surprising. On the day of the alleged Christmas party, more than 480 people in the United Kingdom died of Covid-19, with the country seeing the biggest peak of cases and deaths since the start of the pandemic. The UK’s Covid-19 regulations were extremely strict, and the British public’s compliance was pretty high. And that meant 2020 Christmas gatherings were canceled for many Brits — while, it turns out, government staffers may have flouted the very rules they imposed on everyone else.
Of course, plenty of politicians around the world have become embroiled in the “do as I say, not as I do” pandemic hypocrisy — including Johnson’s government even before this. But the drip-drip developments of Partygate are also coming as Johnson and his government are still dealing with the fallout from recent corruption scandals. Not to mention that Johnson’s government just moved to impose new Covid rules with the arrival of the omicron variant, just weeks before this Christmas.
That’s all building up at once, and it’s having real consequences for Johnson’s government. On Tuesday, about 100 Conservative members of Parliament (MPs) voted against Johnson’s efforts to require proof of Covid-19 vaccination to enter certain venues. It was the worst rebellion Johnson has experienced as prime minister. The measures ultimately passed with support from the opposition parties, but for Johnson — who delivered that historic Conservative majority just two years ago — this is a newly precarious place to be.
Why Partygate became such a big deal
“A smaller Christmas is going to be a safer Christmas, and shorter Christmas is a safer Christmas,” Johnson told reporters on December 16, 2020. He initially included a carveout from England’s restrictions for the five days around Christmas, allowing up to three households to meet, but he urged people to be cautious and not to travel long distances.
A few days later, on December 19, Johnson said the situation had deteriorated so much that some areas — including London — had to go under “Tier 4” restrictions, the “Stay At Home” level. “Given the early evidence we have on this new variant of the virus, and the potential risk it poses, it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you we cannot continue with Christmas as planned,” Johnson said. The prime minister’s office said “the Christmas bubble policy” no longer applied to those in Tier 4, and for everyone else, up to three households could only gather on Christmas Day itself.
Amid all this, staffers at 10 Downing Street were allegedly knocking back booze and giving each other gifts, and then, according to the leaked video, laughing about it a few days later. According to the BBC, at least three members of the public who held or went to “unlawful gatherings” on December 18 — the same day of the alleged party — were fined by the courts. The hypocrisy has rankled Brits.
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