“Après vous, Monsieur Senate.”
John Boehner should say that to his friends in the upper chamber when it comes to raising the debt limit.
I know the parliamentarians in the crowd will say that because the debt limit is at heart a revenue issue, the House, constitutionally, should go first, but there are plenty of ways to avoid a blue slip on this issue.
It used to be that the House always went first in raising the debt limit, and it usually did that by using the so-called Gephardt rule, a parliamentary device that allowed the lower body to bury an increase in the budget resolution.
Republicans did away with that rule in the beginning of this Congress in the name of transparency, and now they are stuck with the result.
Any debt-limit increase is extraordinarily unpopular with the voters. That is not a new phenomenon. Like a congressional pay raise, an increase in the debt limit is pretty hard to explain to constituents. Members can talk all they want about the need to pay the troops and send out Social Security checks, but if they are talking about this issue as they campaign for reelection, they are in big trouble.
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