With another vote to raise the debt ceiling looming, what’s at stake on Capitol Hill this time around?
“[Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell has said to [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer he wants him to use reconciliation to pass the debt limit,” Guy Williams, president of Gulf Coast Bank and Trust, told Newell Normand on WWL Radio, and he went on to explain why.
“When the shoe was on the other foot and the Republicans were in the majority, Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer said, ‘We want to increase the debt limit, but we’re going to vote no, so you have to do it yourself. It’s up to you.’ So turnabout is fair play.”
So if the Senate uses one process as opposed to another, what difference does it make as long as necessary legislation is passed?
“Why is that a big deal? It’s a big deal because if you have to do it yourself, they have what’s called a Vote-A-Rama, where every senator can introduce a bill, and it has to be voted up or down,” Williams said.
Those bills could include proposals that are near and dear to a senator’s locality but don’t have enough support nationally to pass.
Williams said, with midterm elections coming in less than a year, Schumer doesn’t want senators on record making “tough votes” that could swing the pendulum in the opposing party’s favor in some areas of the country.
“Citizens might say, ‘That’s what we elected them for… to take tough votes,” Williams said. “But that’s what’s going on behind the scenes.”
Related
