Don’t bring the debt ceiling into border negotiations

Published January 30, 2019 3:14pm ET



With a little more than a fortnight to go before the government shuts down once more in the absence of a budget deal, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has publicly touted bringing a debt ceiling deal into the mix of border security negotiations. This should really go without saying, but adding even more brinkmanship into Republicans’ common sense compromise is a terrible call.

For one thing, Democrats successfully called President Trump’s bluff in the shutdown. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., simply waited out the five-week political faux pas, banking on the fact that the public would blame Trump for making what essentially amounted to an eleventh hour demand. Although Trump’s actual demands were sensible enough, just one billion dollars more for border security than Democrats pushed for in the Gang of Eight bill in 2013, Pelosi successfully framed the narrative not as Democratic obstruction but Republicans holding the government hostage. And she won.

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