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Debt Ceiling
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, for 2\1/2\ months, the Republicans have provided a clear and consistent roadmap for Democratic government to raise the debt ceiling. Democrats have had 2\1/2\ months' notice to use the fast-track, party-line reconciliation process, which they have already used happily this year and already intend to use once again. But the Democrats who run Washington have done nothing. They have squandered week after week after week. The Senate has been voting on midlevel nominations. And 2\1/2\ months later, our colleagues complain that time is running out to do their job. They are frantically asking our side for shortcuts.
Now, in the past 2 days, I have had the surreal experience of watching both the President of the United States and the Senate majority leader be asked about the future of the U.S. economy. Their respective responses were ``That's up to Mitch McConnell'' or ``Ask Mitch McConnell.'' Well, what about the third Democratic leader, the Speaker of the House? Well, she has headed to Europe--headed off to Europe. I can only presume she hopes the full faith and credit of the United States will get sorted out without her.
That is the level of leadership and accountability the country is getting from the Washington Democrats who run the country. These are the leadership skills of people who spent 2\1/2\ months doing nothing and then complain they are short on time. That is the attitude that has gotten Democrats a self-created inflation crisis, border crisis, Afghanistan crisis, and free-falling favorability with the American people.
Now, it is not clear whether the Democratic leaders have wasted 2\1/
2\ months because they simply cannot govern or whether they are intentionally playing Russian roulette with the economy to try to bully--bully--their own Members into going back on their word and wrecking the Senate. Either way, it is exactly the kind of recklessness that has this unified Democratic government's public approval in total free fall--free fall.
Even now, while the Democratic leader complains that he is short on time, he continues to waste time with partisan stunts that are dead on arrival. He has scheduled yet another vote this afternoon which he knows will fail. The majority has known for 3 months that show votes like this would go nowhere.
This year, Democrats requested and won new powers--new powers--to repeatedly reuse the reconciliation process. In the past few days, Democrats in both the House and Senate have publicly admitted their party could handle--could handle--the debt limit that way. Our colleagues have plenty of time to get it done before the earliest projected deadline. There would be potential for time agreements to wrap it up well before any danger. But the Democratic leaders haven't wanted solutions; they have wanted to turn their failure into everybody else's crisis. Playing risky games with our economy; using manufactured drama to bully their own Members; indulging petty politics instead of governing--their entire failed approach to governing in a nutshell, on full display for the country to see.
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 176
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