WASHINGTON — House Democrats introduced a bill Tuesday that would limit Senate debate on debt limit legislation to 10 hours, creating a loophole in that chamber’s 60-vote legislative filibuster rules.
The bill is set to go to the House floor as soon as Tuesday, along with a revised fiscal 2022 defense policy bill, though the two won’t be combined when they head to the Senate, according to a Rules Committee spokesman.
The provision would allow Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., to introduce a joint resolution, which has the force of law just like a bill, no later than Dec. 31, 2021, to increase the $28.9 trillion debt ceiling by an amount yet to be determined. It would then be automatically placed on the Senate calendar, and in order to proceed to its consideration at any time through Jan. 15.
Debate on the measure would be limited to 10 hours, with no amendments, motions to commit or move on to other business allowed. Then there would be a simple majority threshold for passage, or 51 votes if all senators are present.
The special procedure would be available for one time only, wouldn’t be applicable to any other piece of legislation and would expire Jan. 16.
It wasn’t yet clear when the debt limit measure would be introduced or taken up, or in what dollar amount it would be raised by. Some independent forecasts estimate it would take something like $2 trillion in additional borrowing authority to make it past the November 2022 midterm elections.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen has urged lawmakers to act before Dec. 15 on the limit, after which she’s said it’s possible Treasury won’t be able to meet all U.S. financial obligations on time. But she’s also said there’s a “high degree of confidence” that Treasury can make all of its required payments immediately after that date, and independent forecasters have said there may be a few more weeks of wiggle room if needed.
Congressional leaders have said they’d prefer to deal with the issue before Dec. 15, however.
“Over the past few days we have made good progress on this issue and I’m optimistic that we will be able to prevent the awful prospect of the U.S. defaulting on its sovereign debt for the first time ever,” Schumer said Tuesday morning on the Senate floor. “Nobody wants to see the U.S. default on its debts.”
The debt limit process language is tucked into a bill that would avoid several Medicare cuts that would otherwise be triggered Jan. 1, including across-the-board reductions to provider reimbursements as well as separate cuts to physician and laboratory services payments.
The broader Medicare cuts would be delayed until March 31, 2022, after which 1% reductions would kick in — half of what would otherwise take place — through June 30 unless Congress delays the cuts again.
The measure would delay a separate set of Medicare cuts as well as reductions affecting a broad range of federal programs, including agriculture subsidies, military retirement funds and several new programs established under Democrats’ $2.2 trillion budget reconciliation bill, if that’s enacted this year.
Under the 2010 statutory pay-as-you-go law, those cuts would be triggered 15 days after the end of this session; instead, the provision would delay the reductions by a year, to 2023, unless waived again in subsequent legislation.
The debt limit provision would enable Republicans to avoid voting directly for a debt limit increase, while forcing Democrats to vote on a specific dollar figure — rather than simply suspending the limit to a date out in the future. That was something Republicans insisted on for the short-term patch in October that lifted the ceiling by $480 billion.
But at least 10 Senate Republicans would still need to vote for cloture to get around the 60-vote threshold for the underlying bill. After the October bill passed, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Republicans wouldn’t help Democrats pass legislation to suspend or raise the nation’s debt ceiling again.
GOP senators so far have been lukewarm on the temporary procedural change that McConnell briefed members about Tuesday.
“How is that different than just voting to get on the measure?” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, asked Tuesday. “I mean, that was what was the option last time. It took 10 Republicans to do that. To create a rule would require 10 Republicans to do that. It seems to me that’s the same thing over again.”
On Monday when news of the proposal began circulating, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, tweeted that it would be akin to “NUKING THE FILIBUSTER!”
Democrats in October weighed temporarily changing the Senate rules to allow a simple majority for passage of a debt limit bill. But Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., among others, expressed opposition, and it was clear Republicans wouldn’t support changing the filibuster rule.
This time is different in that it would require 60 votes effectively to temporarily change the rules to allow the expedited debt ceiling process.
The legislation acknowledges it would mean changing the chamber’s rules, but also stipulates it’s applicable only in this one instance and that there’s “full recognition of the constitutional right of the Senate to change the rules ... at any time, in the same manner, and to the same extent as in the case of any other rule of the Senate.”
Keeping the measure separate from the revised fiscal 2022 defense authorization measure (S 1605), as opposed to merging the two as had been mulled earlier, may actually help gain GOP support for the maneuver.
“I think the defense bill, everybody kind of felt like is a big enough bill that needs to move on its own. National security is an issue that we’ve been batting around out here now for the past several weeks, and we want to get that bill done,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters. “And there was another vehicle available, which seems to fit.”
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(Lindsey McPherson, Laura Weiss and Paul M. Krawzak contributed to this report.)
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