Speaker Mike Johnson has been pretty firm: the best place for Congress to lift the debt limit is in the gigantic reconciliation bill that will carry President-elect Donald Trump’s legislative priorities.
But is this actually the best option? Some key Capitol Hill Republicans are beginning to ask that question.
The downsides are quite obvious to skilled congressional hands.
If Republicans use the reconciliation package to increase the debt limit, they’d have to increase the borrowing cap by a certain number – trillions of dollars – not just suspend the borrowing limit until a specific date. This would be a tough pill to swallow for many hardline conservative Republicans who hate voting for a debt-limit increase anyway.
Furthermore, there are a number of Senate Republicans — Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), most notably — who say that lifting the debt limit in the budget reconciliation package could kill the bill.
“The speaker of the House may want to, but I would say there’s 38 [House] members — most of the Freedom Caucus and some conservative members over here — who don’t want it to be part of reconciliation,” Paul told us Wednesday. Paul was referring to the House Republicans who voted no on a government-funding bill that included a debt-limit suspension.
On top of that, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) warned it would be the most difficult piece of the reconciliation package in the House. Smith was totally non-committal on whether it’s the right path, repeatedly deferring to GOP leadership’s decision-making.
Here’s what Smith told us:
Smith pointed out that there are still a couple of Republicans — Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Tim Burchett (Tenn.) — who’ve never voted for a debt limit increase in their entire time in Washington. Not to mention, there are dozens of House Republican freshmen who have never voted on the issue yet.
Smith said House GOP leadership still needs to figure out if the debt-limit piece can even get the votes since it will have to be Republicans alone without any Democratic support. “I’ll do whatever is necessary, but they just need to be realistic,” Smith added.
And part of being realistic is that House Republicans soon will be down to a one-vote margin soon – at least until April.
There’s another significant downside here: If Republicans put the debt limit in the reconciliation bill, the entire process will be driven by the Treasury Department’s deadline of when the borrowing limit needs to be increased. That’s why some Republicans have looked toward the March CR as a better alternative.
Some senior Republicans also believe that approach would pick up some Democratic support as well since there are some who’d vote yes due to concerns of a government shutdown or an even more devastating debt default.
Yet the problem there is that Democrats won’t approve the kind of spending cuts Republicans will need to offset extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts without further increasing the deficit.
