As House Republicans play politics on debt limit, Democrats take steps to keep our options open

Imagine for a moment if next month the interest rates on your credit card, student loans, mortgage, or car loans spiked. Or your health care was no longer affordable. Or your retirement savings took a major hit. How might this affect you and your family?

Every day the Republican House majority refuses to responsibly raise the debt limit, we get closer to these hypotheticals becoming reality.

Raising the debt ceiling allows the United States to pay the bills we already owe, including Social Security and Medicare benefits and military salaries. If we do not raise the debt ceiling, we default on our debt — for the first time ever in U.S. history — which would almost certainly trigger a recession and precipitate a global financial crisis according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

Whether we need a debt limit at all is a conversation for another day (the U.S. is among the only countries with a debt limit like the one we have), but all experts agree that right now we need to raise it.

Seventy-eight times, under both Democratic and Republican administrations and majorities in Congress, we have successfully raised the debt ceiling and avoided catastrophe. Even as the debt surged by a total of $7 trillion under ex-President Trump in part due to his tax giveaway to the ultra-rich, Republicans in Congress had no problem voting three times to raise the debt ceiling. Now, highjacked by its far-right faction, the majority party is using the threat of default as a political weapon to extract broad spending cuts that will hurt older Americans, children, and working families.

In California alone, these arbitrary cuts, which should have nothing to do with the debt ceiling process, would risk the loss of Medicaid coverage for over 2.5 million people, result in higher college costs for over 870,000 students, cut 2.2 million outpatient appointments at VA medical facilities, and eliminate preschool and child care for at least 35,200 children. We’d also see rail and air safety plummet, and thousands of clean energy and manufacturing jobs would be at risk.

Since Democrats aren’t willing to accept this false choice to sell out millions of Americans or risk economic ruin, how can we move forward?

Seeing firsthand the extremism and division of House Republicans, in what has been called an outside the box solution, I introduced a bill earlier this year that could be used to address any number of urgent issues facing our country, including an assault weapons ban, abortion rights, or this Republican-made default crisis. Given Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent announcement that Congress may only have until June 1 to raise the debt limit to avoid default, last week House Democrats teed up my bill to be available to circumvent Republican obstruction through what’s called a discharge petition.

If this discharge petition gets the majority of House member signatures — in this case every Democrat and five Republicans — it would force a floor vote on Democrats’ alternative plan to raise the debt ceiling. With talks between the White House and Republican leadership still at an impasse, having this course of action as an option remains prudent.

I’ve been in politics at the local, state, and now federal level for some time. I know politics is sometimes messy. I know there are ideological differences on the left and right. I also know I have worked successfully with my colleagues across the aisle on a number of important issues. From my experience, I know there are far more than five Republicans who understand the stakes of a debt default.

With over 7 million jobs and $10 trillion in household wealth on the line, according to Moody’s Analytics, the question is whether five of these Republicans can find the political courage to join all 213 Democrats in doing the responsible thing for the people we represent, the country, and global financial security. You have my word that I’m trying to find them.

Mark DeSaulnier represents the 10th District, mostly in Contra Costa County.