The vast majority of the time, the House majority party’s leadership controls the chamber’s floor. If a House speaker and his or her team don’t want a bill to receive a vote, it does not receive a vote.
There is, however, a notable exception. It’s called the discharge petition, and it can be used — and has been used on occasion — to circumvent the majority leadership’s position.
The basic idea behind the tactic is relatively straightforward: If a majority of the House signs on to a discharge petition in support of a specific piece of legislation, the measure would receive a floor vote, whether the sitting speaker likes it or not.
In the context of the debt ceiling, this appears to offer a possible solution: House Republicans are prepared to cause a deliberate economic catastrophe unless their unspecified demands are met, but if a small handful of moderate GOP members partner with Democrats and sign a discharge petition on a clean bill, there will be no default and we can all get on with our lives.
At least that’s the theory. It’s why there have been a variety of reports in recent weeks that have described a discharge petition as the “escape hatch“ and the “off-ramp“ in response to the Republican-imposed crisis. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently added that the whole mess would go away with just five or six “reasonable” GOP lawmakers.
In practice, however, it’s not quite that simple.
First, there are complex procedural hurdles that require an enormous amount of time. With only four months remaining before the deadline, the process would have to begin very soon — as in, this week or next — for it to succeed.
Second, to assume that there are five or six “reasonable” GOP lawmakers is almost certainly a mistake. NBC News reported overnight:
A key centrist House Republican is ruling out a fallback option to avert a calamitous debt default, which would require a small number of GOP lawmakers to sidestep Speaker Kevin McCarthy and work with Democrats on a legislative solution. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said Monday evening that using a procedural tool known as a discharge petition to force a House vote on a “clean” debt limit increase was dead on arrival.
The report coincided with a related quote from Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, who chairs the GOP’s Main Street Caucus, and who said last week, “I don’t know a single pragmatic conservative who supports a clean debt ceiling increase.”
Johnson — who has reputation as a relatively mainstream figure in Republican politics — went on to argue that if President Joe Biden refuses to pay GOP lawmakers a ransom as they threaten Americans with deliberate harm, then it would be Biden who was playing the role of “legislative terrorist.”
Even Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, arguably the House GOP’s least radical member, recently opened the door to signing a discharge petition, though he too said he expected Democrats to accept “some kind of controls on deficits” in exchange for a solution. At face value, it’s tempting to emphasize that none of these so-called pragmatists made any similar demands throughout Donald Trump’s presidency: As the Republican added trillions of dollars to the debt, Congress approved clean debt ceiling increases — three times in four years — without so much as a fleeting complaint from any of these lawmakers. They didn’t make threats. They didn’t demand concessions. They didn’t expect rewards. They simply did their jobs and protected the full faith and credit of the United States. For reasons they don’t want to talk about, these same Republicans changed their minds after a Democrat arrived in the Oval Office. But just as important is the realization that what passes for Republican centrism in 2023 looks an awful lot like extremism. The GOP is dominated by radicals who believe they’re entitled to threaten the nation with a deliberate catastrophe unless their demands are met, and they’re joined by “moderates” who endorse the legitimacy of such dangerous tactics. Those counting on “reasonable” GOP lawmakers to prevent a disaster need to consider the apparent fact that the post-policy Republican Party no longer has a governing wing. President Joe Biden will deliver his second State of the Union address on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET. Follow msnbc.com/sotu for live updates and analysis from experts and insiders.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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