The House vote today (if it happens) on raising the debt limit is one of those strange things that is kind of important but also kind of meaningless. It’s obviously meaningless legislatively—whether it passes the House or not, it won’t become law. It doesn’t make any difference to the ultimate passage of the law whether a bargaining position passes one chamber at some point or not. While it does ultimately matter whether the Legislature passes legislation that allows the government to pay the money the legislature has directed it to spend (and it matters if that legislation also changes those spending directives), today’s vote doesn’t have much do to with that. In that sense, it doesn’t matter what the outcome of the vote is, or whether they vote on this “bill” at all.
On the other hand, it does matter if the Speaker of the House can count votes. It matters if the Speaker can keep the caucus together. It matters if the Party winds up ditching the Speaker in the middle of this ridiculous fiasco. It matters how much of the Party is interested in and ready to participate in governing. If the Speaker brings the “bill” to the floor and the vote fails… well, it’s not good.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.