Just end the debt ceiling for good

It’s ridiculous to keep the debt ceiling — which serves absolutely no useful purpose but could blow up the world economy — laying around like a loaded weapon for partisan cynics:

Back in 2011, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell famously described the debt limit as a “hostage that’s worth ransoming.”

The Kentucky Republican meant that the threat of financial Armageddon from the United States defaulting on its debts was a useful weapon for Republicans to extort concessions from Democratic presidents, as Republicans tried to do to Barack Obama, with some success.

Here’s a prediction: If Republicans take control of the Senate, McConnell will again decide that the debt limit is a “hostage that’s worth ransoming.”

Only this time, the target will be President Biden. And if McConnell miraculously doesn’t end up doing this in 2023, Republicans will rerun this playbook some other time in the near future.

Democrats should take this moment to end the debt limit once and for all, to spare themselves — or, more accurately, the country — from having to go through this ever again. They know what will happen if they do not do this, because Republicans have already shown us.

This is more likely than not the last chance a Dem trifecta will have to govern this decade, and a lot is very likely to be left undone because a few hacks prefer maintaining an anti-democratic procedural anachronism to governing.