Thread by @jbendery

Schumer to Dems, in new Dear Colleague letter:

"Let me be clear about the task ahead of us: we must get a bill to the President’s desk dealing with the debt limit by the end of the week. Period."

For anyone bored by talk about the debt limit: yeah, it sounds boring.

What is not boring is that Congress has until Oct. 18 to raise the debt limit, at the very latest, before the U.S. govt runs out of money. That's never happened before and would be an economic disaster.

Define economic disaster? Per a Moody’s Analytics analysis, failing to raise the debt limit in time could...

Plunge the U.S. into an immediate recession.

Cost the economy ~6M jobs.

Erase $15T -- with a T -- in household wealth.

Boost unemployment to 9%.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that even waiting until it's close to Oct. 18 to raise the debt limit could cause economic damage, like raising borrowing costs for taxpayers + negatively impacting the credit rating of the U.S. "for years to come."

So what's the problem?

Mitch McConnell and his bogus argument that it is totally normal for Republicans to block Democrats from raising the debt limit.
huffpost.com/entry/mitch-mc…

McConnell keeps saying that because Dems voted against raising the debt limit in 2006, when Republicans controlled all of government, it’s no different than Republicans forcing Dems to raise the debt limit by themselves this time around.

This is wildly misleading.

In 2006, Dems did vote against raising the debt limit.

But that was *after* they agreed to a Republican request to increase the debt limit by a majority vote, or 51 votes, instead of requiring 60 votes to break a filibuster.

That ensured the GOP had the votes to get it done.

This is not the same thing that Republicans are doing right now, which is far more dangerous.

They are actively blocking Democrats from raising the debt ceiling on their own, with 51 votes.

Democrats tried to raise the debt ceiling -- twice -- last week.

Republicans blocked them both times.

Last Monday, Republicans denied Democrats the 60 votes needed to *advance* a bill to raise the debt limit.

That was not a GOP vote against raising the debt limit; that was a GOP vote blocking Dems from *advancing* a bill to then vote on to raise the debt limit.

Last Tuesday, Republicans denied Democrats' request to increase the debt limit by a simple majority vote.

That would have let Democrats raise the debt ceiling by themselves, with every GOPer voting no.

Denied.

In other words, Republicans denied Democrats the same request -- to raise the debt ceiling on their own -- that Democrats granted to Republicans in 2006.

So what is happening right now in the debt limit fight is not normal or tit-for-tat.

It is Republicans blocking Democrats from raising the debt limit at all.

That is very different from voting no on raising the debt limit and letting Dems carry to vote to raise it.

Today is Oct. 4.

The government runs outta money on Oct. 18.

There is no plan for how to get this done if Republicans keep blocking every vote. huffpost.com/entry/mitch-mc…

Schumer said today that if the GOP keeps blocking this vote, "the Senate will likely be forced to remain in session over this weekend, and possibly through the recess, to finish our work."

I don't see how that changes anything tho. The GOP simply has to stop blocking this vote.

A thing not highlighted enough about the raising the debt limit is that it is about paying for things you already bought in the past, not the future.

It's like making a credit card payment.

A really, really big credit card payment.

The national debt went up by ~$7.8 trillion during Trump's four years in office.

A vote to raise the debt ceiling now is a vote to give the U.S. government the ability to pay that back.