Sunday, June 4, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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One hundred and seventeen people who swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution — by that I mean the American way of life as we know it — voted to default on the just and lawful debt of the United States.
Hmmm.
Just as there is no room for explanations on a scorecard in golf — just the cold, hard number you earned on the hole — there is no room for a responsible explanation from the congressmen and women who voted to tear asunder the full faith and credit of our country.
The whole world sees just a number (117), devoid of reasons or reason. And from that it draws conclusions about the seriousness, stability and safety of the United States of America as the top financial player on the world stage.
The Senate almost set a speed record passing the legislation — without the drama we witnessed in the House. It, too, however, posted a vote that had over one-third of its members voting for a default.
President Joe Biden wasted no time signing the bill that he deftly negotiated with Speaker Kevin McCarthy. They came to an agreement through the same kind compromise that the president has always said was missing in Washington when he took office.
The message: compromise and responsible respect for the institutions of government can be ours — again.
Had the House not passed this bill, though, the concern I raise here would be minuscule compared to the magnitude of the failure that the GOP- controlled House would have wrought.
To be clear, there is no reasonable expectation of a unanimous vote in Congress. We aren’t built that way, nor should we be.
We are designed for discussion, discord, debate and dissent. And there is no doubt we have plenty of that up and down the hallowed halls of Congress. But we are also designed to come together as best we can when the demands of governing require it — as much and as best we can.
That brings me back to the number 117, and the number one.
One is the margin (7-6) by which the debt ceiling bill passed out of the House Rules Committee, which allowed the full House to vote on the bill.
If you remember the long, drawn-out vote to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, one of the deals made in the dark was to name three members of the House Freedom Caucus — I call them the “just say no” gang — to that committee. That way there would be a block to almost anything the hard right naysayers deemed antithetical to their constituents back home, who by my reckoning also live in the dark — ages, that is.
One of those committee appointees, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, broke ranks with his brethren-in-arms against sane government and voted to move the bill forward. He is, in some way, an illogical hero in this story full of villains.
As for the 117 people who voted against raising the debt ceiling and, conversely, in favor of defaulting on our debts, there were a number of principled people who just couldn’t find their way clear to a “yes” vote. That’s the way democracy works in a large, multifaceted, multicultural country.
There were also a great many unprincipled people who voted “no” just because they could. They may blame it on ideology, which may be partly true but I believe it is based more on a desire to hurt an America that is because they yearn without hope for an America that was.
Regardless of the reason for voting “no,” the resulting impact on the rest of the world is the same. Those we hope to lead, those with whom we want to do business, those we want to have some measure of control over when reason doesn’t work and those we want to help because that’s what America does — all watched the vote.
And they saw more than one-third of elected representatives vote against paying our debts. If ever there were a time for people to vote for something — even when they would have to hold their noses — this should have been that time.
When the whole world is watching — and it was — it is exactly the right time to prove that the full faith and credit of the United States can be trusted.
The House vote — while admirable in its rare showing of bipartisanship — sent the wrong message.
The next time this debt ceiling vote comes up — and for certain there will be a next time — we should all consider the negative message it sends to the world and the unseen harm it causes for every one of us.
Right down to our pocketbooks where, I am told, America likes to vote.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun
