For most of the past decade, Republican members of Congress LOVED the debt ceiling.
Every time it came time to raise it — essentially paying off the nation’s credit card — the GOP would use that moment as an opportunity to extract spending cuts from Democrats.
It was, these Republicans believed, one of their only points of leverage on fiscal fights — a way to force concessions from Democrats on out of control federal spending.
Which is what makes this week so funny — in a holy-shit-I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening way.
Because even as Speaker Mike Johnson was trying to pass legislation to keep the government funded through March, President-elect Donald Trump decided that now was the time to get rid of the debt ceiling entirely!
“The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it,” Trump told NBC News on Thursday. “If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge.”
Trump quickly found an odd political bedfellow in his call for eliminating the debt ceiling: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Trump doubled down on this position in a Truth Social post early this morning (he sent it at 1:16 am eastern).
What’s even more remarkable than that turnaround is that the vast majority of Republicans, who days earlier had seen the debt limit as one of their best legislative tools, simply went along with all of this.
Yes, 38 Republicans — primarily deficit hawks — voted against the bill brought forward by Johnson on Thursday night that would have extended the debt limit for two years. But 172 Republicans voted for it! (Full roll call vote is here.)
That reversal on what was regarded as Republican doctrine for the better part of the last decade is remarkable. And it’s solely because, well, Donald Trump changed his mind.
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