Recently, I wrote about the Speakers dilemma in terms of dealing with the debt ceiling and his own caucus.  Actually, there is a way to solve his problem, but I’m not sure he is creative enough to do it.

There is currently underway a democratic-inspired, so-called “discharge petition” which, if a majority of the Members of the House sign it, requires that a bill come to the floor.  That could be accomplished if Speaker McCarthy were to encourage a dozen or so Republicans to sign the petition so that it would come to the floor primarily based on what Democrats did.  He could then take that bill and bring it to the floor under a so-called open rule, which would allow amendments, and is a procedure the minority party always wants. Once that was accomplished, amendments would be offered that would entice Republicans to vote for them. There could even be amendments that the Democrats couldn’t resist voting for and, in the end, would result in a bill that included the debt ceiling increase and other things with support from both Democrats and Republicans.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that McCarthy has the skill to do this without angering the crazier people in his caucus. It doesn’t seem he has the ingenuity and skill to pull that off, but it would give him a way to demonstrate that the Democrats were not willing or eager for a clean bill any more than the Republicans when presented with amendments that fit their own political purposes. It will be interesting to see what the next chapter is. Stay tuned.