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Now that it’s been made abundantly clear to everyone that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy only holds his position as long as the Freedom Caucus will allow him to, panic is setting in about what exactly will happen when the debt ceiling is reached later this year—likely in July, but possibly as late as September. The full week of Freedom Caucus maniacs holding out on electing McCarthy as speaker through 15 votes (and who knows how many concessions) demonstrated that, yes, those people are fully capable of letting the nation default on its debts and McCarthy is fully incapable of stopping them. (And yes, we told the Democrats so all the way up to the bitter end of the lame duck session last year.)
Responsible people are trying to figure out what comes next, and for at least some lawmakers, it’s exploring the discharge petition. That’s a House rule that lets a simple majority of lawmakers force a bill out of committee and onto the House floor. According to The Wall Street Journal’s reporting, a number of Republican lawmakers are talking to Democrats in “early, informal conversations.”
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) told the WSJ that people in the Problem Solvers caucus are “very much so” discussing the possibility. Then he immediately created a problem, saying, “We’re going to have to marry it with some kind of controls on deficits. So that’s what we’re going to have to figure out.” He is contractually obligated as a Republican to say the deficit is out of control and to rule out not making cuts to vital programs. But he’s also looking at a solution that is not going to be simple.
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