Ari Melber Nails McConnell’s “Debt Limit” Hypocrisy To The Barn Door

If my uterus fired bullets, the GOP would never regulate it!   Austin TX pro abortion protester on Saturday

The more I see this ridiculous and pathetic “Debt Ceiling Showdown” farce play out, the more apparent Senate Minority Mitch McConnell’s strategy becomes. And that strategy is to lie his Turtle ass off about long established facts, and then hope that nobody calls him out on his bullshit. Unlike reconciliation, most Americans at least know what the debt Ceiling is, even if they don’t understand it. He is hoping that they just won’t tune in and care.

His strategy isn’t working out so well. Earlier today, a MSNBC anchor pointed out that in the course of his career, McConnell has voted 32 times to raise the debt ceiling. Then it was pointed out that during the Bush Lite and Trump years, the Democrats regularly joined the GOP in voting to raise the limit, but also stood silent on Unanimous Consent votes that allowed the GOP to raise the debt ceiling with their majority without having to fight the filibuster. McConnell’s arguments are invalid on their face.

But Melber tackled the far more pernicious and damaging McConnell argument for the GOP not helping to raise the debt ceiling. McConnell is claiming for the sheeple that the reason that the Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling is to pay for their massive $3.5 trillion human infrastructure bill. This is unutterable bullshit. The debt ceiling is raised to continue to cover money that the government has already spent! The country is going to blow through the debt ceiling whether the Democrats pass the bill or not. The argument is meant for idiots, which is why it will play so well for the GOP base.

But then Melber nailed McConnell’s hypocritical hide to the barn door. Ari pointed out that after being coronated President in 2001 by the Supreme Court, one of the first things that Bush Lite and the GOP did was to ram home a $1.2 trillion tax cut, that went largely to the uber rich and corporations. They rammed it through on purely partisan lines, and then months later, without even a sheepish blink, they voted to raise the debt ceiling, with the Democrats joining in.

In 2017, once the Peach Pompadour was inaugurated, the first major accomplishment of the Trump autocracy was to ram home a $1.9 trillion tax cut, again aimed at the uber rich and corporations. And once again, they voted in lock step to raise the debt limit less than a year later, with the Democrats refusing to obstruct.

McConnell’s thinking is simple. If something bad economically happens, especially if it’s avoidable, the public blames the party in power, in this case the Democrats. But in order for this to work, you have to let them fuck it up on their own.

In order to force the Democrats to use budget reconciliation to raise the debt limit, and in doing so name a specific number, which the GOP can use to hammer the Democrats in the midterms, McConnell is refusing to allow a unanimous consent vote, which would allow the united Democrats to do it. And in doing so, he is giving the Democrats a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hang this on the GOP.

In his remarks today, Biden slammed McConnell and his caucus for their obstruction, and Schumer has repeatedly done the same over the past week. The argument is simple, You want us to do this by ourselves to protect the American people? Fine! Then just get the fuck out of the way and let us do it! Stop using procedural gimmicks to keep us from tumbling into a financial catastrophe!

The Democrats need to hammer home two monolithic messages right now. First, Biden has to hit the road, as he is going to do, and hammer home the benefits of the programs that his bill have for everyday Americans, people don’t care about numbers, they care about personal benefits. Let popular pressure through the polls force the two sides together to an agreement.

And second, the Democrats have to keep hammering home the undeniable message that it is the Republicans that are forcing this debt ceiling, not the Democrats. Because the longer this nonsense goes on, the worse it’s going to get.

According to Fed Chair Janet Yellin, we run out of shekels at midnight on October 18th. But that doesn’t mean that the catastrophic effects will begin on October 19th. The stock market absolutely hates uncertainty. My calculus is that somewhere between October 12-14, if there is no stable path forward towards resolution of the debt ceiling, you can look for the stock market to plunge anywhere from 600-1000 points, just to let us know that they’re pissed. Before then, the Democrats must have convinced the public that they could stop this in less than 24 hours if the GOP just Get the fuck out of the way! Don’t touch that dial.

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