The House passed a clean bill increasing the debt ceiling today, showing that the Democrats have learned their lesson to refuse to negotiate with terrorists. The bill extending the debt ceiling until March 2015 passed by a margin of House voted 221-201, with the support of only 28 Republicans.

Initially Republicans had hoped to tie their vote to some concessions, such as elimination of the risk corridors form the Affordable Care Act. Their argument for this fell apart when the Congressional Budget Office reported that the risk corridors will wind up saving the government eight billion dollars. It would hardly make sense to tie a measure to the vote on the debt ceiling which would lead to an increase in the deficit.

Democrats have learned that if they give into Republican demands, they will insist upon further concessions with each vote on the budget or debt ceiling, further harming the economy. The full Republican caucus would never vote for something as basic as paying our bills (a concept that previous Republican presidents such as Ronald Reagan had no problem with). The only way that the bill would pass would be if John Boehner allowed a vote of the entire House, leading to passage primarily with Democratic votes.

By allowing the bill to go to a vote of the entire House, Speaker Boehner showed that he understood how damaging it would be to the country and/or the Republican Party to once again play chicken with defaulting on the debt. The vote also showed how few sane Republicans there are, with 199 voting against, however I suspect that some of them understood the damage which would result from defaulting but voted against the increase to appease their constituents. One danger of gerrymandering Congressional districts to keep incumbents safe is that even sane Republican Congressmen would find it safer to vote as extremists out of fear of a Tea Party challenge.

While Boehner allowed the bill to come before a vote of the entire House, there is no guarantee that he will do so on future bills, especially when the consequences are less dire. Shutting down the government in October led to a drop in Republican support in the polls, showing that to some degree public pressure can influence the Republicans, but Boehner will be under other pressures from the right to limit his ability to repeatedly bring measures before the full House. Greg Sargent believes that the era of Republican debt limit extortion is dead while Talking Points Memo cautions that the Tea Party Ain’t Over yet.

Imagine if we lived in a country where we had majority rule and a minority party was unable to repeatedly impose its will upon the rest of the country. While a certain degree of roadblocks on government are needed to prevent the “tyranny of the majority,” our current system is being abused, leading to a tyranny of the minority.

Cross posted from Liberal Values