Democrats should call the GOP's debt ceiling bluff

Ever since the last debt ceiling fight, Republicans have insisted that the next showdown would be different. Though they came away with zero concessions in October, surely, they said, they could score some policy victories in the future.

"We don't want 'nothing' out of this debt limit," Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in December.

With a deadline to raise the debt ceiling approaching this Friday (though Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has said he can manage until the end of February), House Republicans are indeed talking about what they'd like in exchange for upping the nation's borrowing limit. However, their internal talks aren't going so well.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The GOP's two leading ideas for handling the debt ceiling — tying it to a provision mandating the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, or one tweaking ObamaCare — fell apart Wednesday due to a lack of Republican support. Both would have included a one-year extension of the debt ceiling.

More from The Washington Post's Robert Costa:

Sound familiar?

It should. Republicans folded twice last year on their debt ceiling demands after realizing that threats to plunge the nation into potential financial chaos aren't too popular with voters.

Just a few months ago, Republicans entered the debt ceiling and government funding talks with a fantastical list of demands. The ask rapidly shrank, though, when Democrats refused to budge. Yet House leadership, fearful of angering the party's right wing, refused to give in either.

The plan backfired, and Republicans came away with nothing except historically low poll numbers:

For Republicans to think they have any more leverage now is just delusional.

President Obama has insisted that Congress send him a clean debt ceiling bill, meaning one free of any extraneous provisions. Public opinion is on his side. A recent CNN survey found that 54 percent of Americans would blame the GOP if the debt ceiling isn't raised. Only 29 percent would blame Obama.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) reportedly has a Plan B in the works that would swap the debt ceiling hike for the restoration of some military benefits. Yet there is no guarantee the plan could overcome the objections on the right, since it would technically raise spending, something anathema to Tea Partiers. And even if it were to somehow get the support of a majority of the GOP caucus, House Democrats reaffirmed Wednesday that they wouldn't bargain, period.

The whole standoff is reminiscent of Rep. Marlin Stutzman's (R-Ind.) oblivious remark about the debt ceiling standoff back in October: "We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is." Republicans want something, anything, in exchange for a debt ceiling vote, but they can't even settle on what that something might be.

The bottom line is that since Republicans caved in the past, there's there's no reason to believe they won't cave again. Boehner himself admitted earlier this week that "there's no sense picking a fight we can't win."

The GOP can't win. Democrats should call that bluff and not even give them a fig leaf.