As recently as last week Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) demanded the White House agree to a list of spending cuts and deregulation in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, but it appears that plan has already collapsed.
McConnell and other top-ranking Republicans in the Senate have dropped their demands and now say they're waiting for the House to act.
“We’re going to wait and see what the House does on the subject,” McConnell told reporters. He said the Senate would “respond accordingly.” [...]
Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas) said there is no backup plan to move clean debt-ceiling increase in the next two weeks if the House fails to act.
“We’re waiting on the House,” he said. “That’s the plan.”
They're waiting on the House -- the leaderless House that cannot even agree if we should default or not -- and there's no backup plan.
It would be refreshing if Republicans simply agreed to raise the debt ceiling the next time it comes up rather than go through this charade of pretending to hold the ceiling hostage in exchange for spending cuts. If they wait too long to raise the ceiling, there could be financial consequences even if we don't default.
Raising the national debt ceiling is bare-minimum status quo governance but the GOP can hardly be bothered with the minimum level of responsibility that falls on Congress.