How to Solve for the Debt Ceiling? Make it Trump’s Problem
Trump is back at it with his sharpie, trying to violate federal law by freezing grants and loans at whim. Meanwhile, the March deadline looms for the nation's debt...and he's not paying attention
What should congressional Democrats do about the debt ceiling?
There are many things on the Democrats’ wish list as Trump takes office, including protecting key programs across foreign aid, health research, and climate change reform and preventing the social safety net from unraveling. That has become infinitely more challenging with Trump flouting the clear law in the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act, unilaterally stopping funding for all these areas and more. While that needs urgently to be confronted, at least through an injunction blocking this reckless lawlessness, it adds to the need to prevent a Trump-driven default.
Something that might be easier to check off is to deal with the debt ceiling once and for all. Democrats have the upper hand on this fiasco for the moment; there is no way Republican lawmakers alone can raise the ceiling enough to cover their desired tax cuts for the rich, given how the radical right feels about increased debt. While it may seem satisfying for Democrats to step back and let Republicans blunder into economic catastrophe, the stakes are too high to let that happen. A one-time rule set by none other than Mitch McConnell could be a long-term solution—and a term-long headache for Trump.
Democrats and Republicans, after painstaking negotiations, had agreed in December on a temporary spending bill into March, seemingly accepted by Trump, when Elon Musk tweeted out his total opposition. When a large share of MAGA erupted, Trump went along, and the bill was scuttled. Trump then demanded that a revised bill include an extension of the debt ceiling, to pin the blame on an increase in the debt on Joe Biden. He didn’t get his way: instead Trump reluctantly went along with a stripped down funding extension, sans debt ceiling, to avoid an embarrassing government shutdown as his inauguration neared.
Now, with the March deadline looming, the stage is set for a new round of brinksmanship.
United States law has required raising the debt ceiling every time the debt comes close to bumping up against it since 1917, when the First World War precipitated the Second Liberty Bond Act. This feature is nearly unique to the US, and has often created mini-crises when political maneuvers threaten to create a breach, which would devastate the full faith and credit of the United States. Until recent decades, however, the controversies over raising the debt ceiling were largely performative. Members of the president’s party called for increasing the debt ceiling as the responsible thing to do; members of the opposite party put on their cloaks of fiscal responsibility. Leaders of both parties knew they had enough votes in reserve to keep from having an actual breach and default.
That changed in 2011, when a new Republican majority in the House, driven by the Tea Party, credibly threatened to go over the cliff unless Barack Obama gave in to their extreme budget demands. Then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, along with firebrands like Jason Chaffetz, were prepared to do it, but Speaker John Boehner, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, realizing that a default would be blamed on the GOP, headed it off. They did so in a deal brokered by Vice President Joe Biden and McConnell by doing a one-off fix that became known as the McConnell Rule.
The McConnell Rule enables the president to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally, with Congress having the power to block him or her via a joint resolution. What made this work, avoiding a breach that could easily have been blamed on congressional Republicans, is that a president can veto a joint resolution—meaning all he or she needs to prevail via a veto override is one-third plus one vote in either of the two houses. During the 2011 crisis, the rule enabled lawmakers to posture as fiscal conservatives without having to face any consequences, and streamlined the budget process without further drama or extended and bitter negotiations.
After the end of that showdown, McConnell said, “I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this—it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming.” That is why McConnell made sure his rule only applied once, so he and his allies could apply the cudgel to Obama in subsequent years.
Since 2011, we have had regular showdowns on the debt ceiling, and our tribal politics have both made a default a real possibility and made lawmaking and budgeting more difficult. Republicans were never going to agree either to eliminate the need to vote to increase the debt ceiling or to take away their useful hostage when the president was a Democrat, but the reelection of Trump has changed that calculus. For Democrats, knowing that it is the radical right willing to deploy the weapon to bludgeon them if and when they recapture the White House, a permanent fix is highly desirable.
The answer: Democrats should demand the permanent installation of the McConnell Rule. In the short term this will mean bolstering Trump’s executive authority, yes—but only on terms by which he’s already boxed in.
Trump is now desperate to get a fix on the debt ceiling for three reasons. In the short term, he will need a big increase in debt to accommodate the ginormous tax cuts that are his, and his billionaire buddies’, top priority. In a broader sense, with Republicans in charge, it would be embarrassing to keep voting to add to the debt for the self-proclaimed party of fiscal responsibility. And Trump knows that even with him in the saddle, there are more than enough Freedom Caucus radicals to block any increase with Republican votes alone, meaning a requirement to get Democrats on board—requiring compromise.
That will be the reality when we hit the ceiling in early spring. And there is an easy answer for Democrats to ensure that the Freedom Caucus won’t send us into the economic tailspin of a default that would have consequences far into the future. Demand the permanent installation of the McConnell Rule. This would solve the problem, with a nice twist. It would require Donald Trump to be the one raising the debt ceiling, the one having to acknowledge that he was responsible for adding over and over to our debt. A win-win, in other words.
Norman Ornstein is a political scientist, co-host of the podcast “Words Matter,” and author of books including It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism
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Of course, your solution - which pins responsibility for raising the ceiling on the Felon - assumes the Felon won’t simply lie and blame the Democrats. Look at how his “press secretary” lied about the military turning on the water in California AND how Fox et al repeated the obvious lie.
Sorry. We need a solution that does not transfer Constitutional authority for spending to a narcissistic, demented, authoritarian convicted Felon.
Mr. Ornstein, you mention "he or she" and "him or her' in your great explanation of the budget ceiling votes in Congress.
You do realize that as long as so many white women in this country continue to vote against their own interests, there will never be a woman president, don't you?
A huge number of US voters are simply not enlightened enough to vote for a woman president, or even to let women make their own decisions regarding their bodies.