Senator Mitch McConnell says Republicans will not support raising the federal borrowing limit. Weeks before a potential default, Democrats do not appear to have a strategy for doing so.
With the government’s full faith and credit on the line, the Democratic leadership’s strategy for raising the federal borrowing limit seems to be this: Try to shame the impervious Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, into capitulating. They unsuccessfully tried this strategy in 2016, when Mr. McConnell blockaded the nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland to the Supreme Court, maintaining that voters should decide who would name the next justice when they picked a president that November. They tried and failed again late last year, weeks before a presidential election, when the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opened a Supreme Court seat for Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill, no matter what voters had to say a month and a half later. Now, with a potential government default weeks away, Democrats are again demanding that Mr. McConnell back down — this time from his vow to lead Republicans in opposition to raising the statutory limit on the Treasury Department’s authority to borrow. “Let’s be clear,” Mr. McConnell wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “With a Democratic president, a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, Democrats have every tool they need to raise the debt limit. It is their sole responsibility. Republicans will not facilitate another reckless, partisan taxing and spending spree.” While Democratic attention is largely focused on passing a sprawling,10-year, $3.5 trillion social policy bill, a potentially more consequential deadline is rapidly approaching: Sometime in October, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen has told Congress, her ability to shuffle money from government account to government account will be exhausted. The Treasury will no longer be able to pay all the nation’s creditors, unless Congress raises or suspends the limit on issuing debt. A default would be unprecedented, and it could lead to a far-reaching financial crisis — or at least a crisis in confidence for the governments, banks and other creditors that keep the federal government afloat by purchasing its bonds and notes. But Mr. McConnell is adamant that if Democrats insist on spending trillions of dollars on infrastructure, climate change and social welfare, they must bear exclusive responsibility for raising the borrowing limit.
