This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 23, 2011 - WASHINGTON - Refusing to raise the nation's debt ceiling -- as some tea-party Republicans are advocating -- would lead to a "doomsday scenario" that could destroy the nation's credit and have "a devastating impact" on the economy, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., warned on Sunday.
Durbin, the Senate's second-ranking Democrat, also said he was confident that Democrats could muster enough votes to block the effort by Senate Republicans -- promised by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. -- to follow the House lead and repeal last year's health-care overhaul.
"It's possible we'll face that vote" as a Republican amendment, Durbin said on Fox News Sunday. "But having spoken to my members in the Democratic caucus ... we feel there's still strong support for health-care reform." He asserted that repealing the health-care law, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, would add "over $200 billion -- maybe $300 billion -- to the deficit."
McConnell, who appeared separately on the same program, vowed that "we'll have a vote on repeal" in the Senate. "If that does not pass -- and I don't think anyone is optimistic that it will -- we intend to go after this health-care bill any way that we can. It's the single worst piece of legislation that's been passed in my time in the Senate."
Most of the Senate's 47 Republicans have said they would support repeal. In a statement last week, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said he and other Senate Republicans would "work to repeal and replace this flawed legislation. I'm committed to examining all of the tools at our disposal to bring this fight to the Senate floor where the American people expect to see an up or down vote."
On the topic of increasing the nation's debt ceiling, McConnell dismissed doomsday predictions, saying "nobody's going to put a gun to anybody's head here." He said Republicans viewed the debt-ceiling and government funding votes in March as opportunities "to do something significant about the issue raised by the president's request to raise the debt ceiling, which is: we're spending too much." He suggested that riders might be attached to both bills to require "some significant spending reductions."
But the House majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., went a step further in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," vowing that Republicans "are not going to vote for this increase in the debt limit unless there are serious spending cuts and reforms." He said the GOP would use the debt-ceiling vote as leverage to gain spending cuts.
For his part, Durbin warned that "we don't need to play any kind of brinksmanship or doomsday scenario when it comes to the debt ceiling." Refusing to raise that ceiling in late March, he said, could "risk foreclosure on the full faith and credit of the United States" and "would have a devastating impact on people across America."
Durbin said some spending cuts may be feasible this year, but he warned on Sunday -- as well as in a speech Friday in Chicago -- that "hitting the deficit brake too soon" might have the unintended consequence of hurting the still-struggling economy. He pointed out that the president's bipartisan deficit commission had warned last fall to avoid deep spending cuts until "we're clearly out of the recession."
As a precedent, Durbin cited the Great Depression, when Congress started slashing government spending in the 1930s before the economy had fully recovered, which he said led to "a double dip recession and higher unemployment."
Durbin said he expected President Barack Obama to emphasize the need to create more jobs in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday evening. Describing the current jobless rate as "unacceptable," Durbin said "we are at least moving in the right direction."
To remain competitive in the world economy, Durbin said, "we've got to focus on educating and innovating. We can't be so laser-focused on the deficit that we ignore the obvious. ... You can't end the deficit unless you start putting America back to work."
But McConnell said "the president needs to pivot" to support deep cuts in spending. He argued that "the only way we're going to get unemployment down and get out of this economic trough is through private sector growth and development. I think excessive government spending, running up debt, making us look like a Western European country is the wrong direction."