This morning I was listening to NPR, as we liberal elitists are wont to do, and they brought on Senator Michael Bennett to talk about the debt ceiling. He and host Steve Inskeep were discussing how the competing bills would go back and forth between the two chambers, and Inskeep said (I'm paraphrasing here), "You still need to get 60 votes in the Senate." Bennett agreed.
We haven't been paying much attention to the Senate in the last few days, but we're apparently still operating on the assumption that just as they have filibustered every bill of consequence for the last two years, Senate Republicans will filibuster any debt-ceiling increase, regardless of what it contains. We're four days away from setting off an economic catastrophe, and we all just assume that, of course, Republicans will try to kill a solution by filibustering it. And of course, we're not going to bother questioning them about that, much less condemning them for it, because that's just the way "Washington" works these days.
So wouldn't it be nice if the next time a reporter is interviewing a Republican senator, he or she asks them about this? "Senator, given the nightmarish economic consequences we're facing, why are Republicans planning to filibuster any debt-ceiling increase?" A pretty simple question.
If Senate Republicans are going to filibuster a debt-ceiling increase -- and it would take at least 41 of the 47 Republicans to do it -- they ought to be asked why they're doing it. They ought to be responsible for making the case that it's so vitally important that they push the economy off the cliff to which we're heading that they must take the extraordinary measure of a filibuster. They ought to at least take some accountability for their own actions. And all it takes is asking them the question. Are reporters up to it?
