Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo
Senate Commerce Committee member J.D. Vance (R-OH) speaks during a hearing on improving rail safety, on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 22, 2023.
Of all the possible rabbit-out-of-the-hat maneuvers that could enable us to avoid a default on the national debt, using a discharge petition to compel the House to vote to raise the debt limit seems to me one of the most far-fetched. It would require five Republicans to break ranks and join the 213 Democrats to bring a clean debt limit hike to the floor for a vote—over the screaming objections of Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the rest of his ilk (i.e., everyone else in the House Republican caucus).
But there’s a different issue altogether on which the discharge petition option could well work.
Yesterday, the Senate Commerce Committee voted by a 16-to-11 margin to move a rail safety bill to the Senate floor. Among those 16 were two Republicans, one of whom was actually a moving force behind the bill even though its provisions—which included increasing regulations on the industry and requiring it to accede to a key demand from rail unions—ran counter to everything he generally believes. That Republican was Ohio’s J.D. Vance, who was plainly compelled by the chemical spill from a derailed train in the Ohio town of East Palestine to show some sensitivity to the harm done his constituents and some concern about the prospect of harm to other constituents if some rail industry practices weren’t reined in.
The bill now going to the Senate floor raises the maximum fine on railroads that violate federal safety rules from $100,000 to $10 million. It sets standards for trackside safety detectors and authorizes special rules for trains carrying hazardous gas. It also requires that the major railroads employ a crew of at least two to run their trains—a key demand of both rail worker unions and anyone concerned about an engineer keeling over on a one-person train. Despite those concerns, the rail companies have fiercely resisted calls for two-person crews.
Vance said that at least five of his Republican cohorts will support the bill when it comes up for a Senate vote; it will take at least nine to enable the bill to clear the 60-vote threshold. Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is sure to bring it to a vote regardless, since voting no wouldn’t do Republicans any good in the 2024 elections.
Should the bill then make it over to the House, McCarthy would doubtless prefer never to bring it up. But the same constituent pressure that compelled Vance to back the bill will be felt as well by the ten Republican House members from Ohio, and probably by a few more across the state line in Western Pennsylvania (the fumes and smoke from the spill, after all, crossed that state line, too, creating interstate anxiety in their wake). It would only take five of those ten joining with the Democrats on a discharge petition to compel the House, McCarthy notwithstanding, to vote on the bill. For that matter, one House Republican, New York’s Nick LaLota, is already co-sponsoring the House version of the bill.
So even if the discharge option proves to be a dud when it comes to averting a debt default debacle, discharge devotees should not despair. It could well work to make the rails safer.
