As U.S. nears debt-ceiling ‘cliff,’ Senate Democrats to vote again By

By Richard Cowan and David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Democrats planned a third attempt on Wednesday to get Republicans to vote to raise the federal government’s borrowing authority and head off a catastrophic default, as one member warned they were “on the precipice now of the cliff.”

After a months-long standoff in which Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell repeatedly said his party would not vote to lift or extend the $28.4 trillion debt limit, President Joe Biden on Tuesday suggested he was open to changing the Senate’s filibuster rule to bypass the roadblock.

Hours before the planned vote, McConnell on Wednesday again said he thought Democrats should use the Senate’s reconciliation process to raise the debt ceiling without Republican votes.

With less than two weeks to go before the Treasury Department expects to run out of ways to meet the government’s expenses around Oct. 18, Democrats are looking at all their options.

“We’re on the precipice now of the cliff, and as you know, any day now, you could have a downgrade in our credit rating, our national credit rating,” said Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen. “And that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, trillions over time. So time is of the essence and that’s why we need to act.”

McConnell has been pushing Democrats to use reconciliation, as it did earlier this year to pass Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package and plans to use again to pass a multi-trillion-dollar bill to bolster the social safety net and fight climate change.

Democrats have refused, saying Republicans should vote to raise the limit, since the debt includes about $8 trillion in spending approved during Republican Donald Trump’s presidency.

MCCONNELL SEES ‘MANUFACTURED DRAMA’

While reconciliation can be a long process, sometimes involving all-night “vote-a-rama” sessions, McConnell said it could be sped up.

“There would be a potential for time agreements to wrap it up well before any danger,” he said. “But the Democratic leaders wanted … to turn their failure into everybody else’s crisis, play at risky games with our economy using manufactured drama.”

Biden said on Tuesday that it was “real possibility” that Democrats instead might use their current razor-thin majority to drop the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires 60 of the chamber’s 100 members to agree to pass most legislation.

Biden, himself a former Senator, had previously opposed changes to the filibuster, which is meant to help maintain government stability through election cycles.

If Democrats follow through, they could easily suspend the debt ceiling before Oct. 18. That would head off the risk of a crippling default and allow them to focus on passing two mammoth spending bills that make up the bulk of Biden’s domestic agenda.

In an effort to underline the severe…