leadership for votes that could come on the infrastructure agenda within days, if not weeks. all of this is happening on parallel tracks. but i think what s really important to remember here is that president biden did when he gave momentum to that possibility of the filibuster carveout last night, that was significant. we ve never seen him do that on any of these kinds of issues. i think that s the most telling development of the last 24 hours. but if that s not going to go anywhere, the white house now is in this serious position, saying, we tried everything else, we re going to have to go forward using budget reconciliation. that s exactly where the republicans want them politically and that s what the democrats are trying to avoid, chuck. we normalized congressional dysfunction. our elected leaders have normalized to the point where nobody can be shamed by shock. this isn t the way it s supposed to work? except for the last decade, this is exactly how it s worked. thank you bot
tenuous. that s why we re seeing this rise in cases across the northern border with canada. so that s what i m watching closely, to see if that further ignites to give us another third wave. it could go either way. i think it s more likely we are going to see a substantial increase again after halloween. and just because of the same patterns that we saw last year, even though we have so many people vaccinated? yeah, well, we have so many people vaccinated, but we have so many people unvaccinated. and that s why you re seeing it now in states like idaho that are getting overwhelmed, because they have some of the lowest vaccination rates equivalent to the south. it s the same politics, that same, you know, far right, health freedom, medical freedom, we re defiant, you can t tell us what to do, with these horrible self-defeating consequences. you re seeing this in idaho, montana, north dakota. so there s still a lot of unvaccinated people there.
washington where the level of government dysfunction is hitting new heights if that s possible, or maybe we should say new lows, with the fate of the u.s. economy on the line. that s all. this hour, the president is meeting with a group of business leaders in an attempt to tell them what they already know, that a default on the u.s. debt in less than two weeks would have disastrous consequences for businesses and consumers everywhere. this is not a fact that anybody disagrees with, by the way. everybody, republicans and democrats alike, believe this is true. but we re playing politics with this, anyway. even if there s not a default, what we re watching is a 100% self-inflicted congressional crisis that remains us in the world of just how unstable and dysfunctional or political system has gotten. republicans could do their part to avoid disaster, but they re message is, you re on your own and mitch mcconnell isn t trying to change any minds inside his own caucus.
should just do what we ve always been willing to do in the past. plan b is, if they re not going to do that, they should stand aside and let us extend the debt limit by a simple majority vote rather than filibustering it and requiring 60 votes. plan c is they should provide ten votes, plan “d” is, we could do a carveout of rules that would benefit both parties over the course of the future, whether the majority was democrat or republican in either the senate or the white house. if we clarify that extending the debt ceiling was a simple majority vote, it would take away the ability of any party to play hostage takers with the economy and there s a plan e and f, but we re trying to figure out what is the way we can govern responsibility and do it as quickly as possible. speaking of what could be plan e or f, this comes to the question that i m sure you ve heard from some of your
they said they re perfectly prepared to do the jobs themselves. the easiest way to do that is through the reconciliation process. as i pointed out for two months. how is that easier than republicans not filibustering them that would require getting consent from every single republican to lower the threshold to 51. i can t imagine that would happen. do you not have the power to do that? and the reason that wouldn t happen is we ve been pointing out for two months how they ought to do it. that s the way to get the job done. democrats could do this on their own. that s the problem and the political box they re in because they can do it through reconciliation. they don t want to do it that way. they want mcconnell s help so they can raise it through regular order. we do not have the luxury of using a drawn-out, convoluted and risky process. we could prevent a catastrophic