House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are staring down the double-barreled threat of multiple, critical deadlines and the knowledge that the House is going to be turned over to a raft of incompetent maniacs in a little more than one month’s time. The two leaders allowed their members to come back from the election on Nov. 8 and accomplish very little, then take the full Thanksgiving week—and the days book-ending it—off. That wasted time is now biting the whole nation in the ass, with the workload increasing—along with Republicans’ determination to thwart progress.
The number one thing Pelosi and Schumer needed to deal with started a few months ago, when House Republicans began announcing their hostage-taking intentions. The over-confident GOP announced that they would force cuts to Social Security and Medicare by refusing to raise the nation’s debt ceiling next year, now likely in June. That’s the promise the U.S. government makes to all its creditors and to the American people that the payments that have been promised to them—from troops’ paychecks to monthly Social Security checks to global debt servicing—will be covered. Not extending those guarantees by raising the debt ceiling threatens the entire global economy.
The threat that they would use this tactic was reiterated and reinforced. Democratic leadership more or less ignored the threat, implying that sure, it would be nice to deal with that, but there is just so little time and so many other priorities. Well, here’s a kick in the pants to that excuse of too little time, too much to do: Senate Republican leadership is now endorsing the House maniacs’ tactics, including the direct threat to Social Security and Medicare.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD), Mitch McConnell’s number two in leadership, told a Bloomberg panel of editors and reporters that Senate Republicans are right there with the House maniacs. They want to use the debt ceiling as a cudgel to force changes to Social Security—by “changes” they always mean cuts—and other programs.
RELATED: We have to save the world from Kevin McCarthy. No, really
