I thought keeping the government open and paying our debts was a good thing. But Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans seem to disagree with me. (SURPISE !)

The House Democrats seem to agree that both are good things. They put both in the same bill. Seems to me that while a government shutdown is bad, it has happened before. But failure of the United States to pay debts is unprecedented and catastrophic.

Will Republican irresponsibility and failure to take governing seriously finally be sufficient to motivate Senators to end the filibuster?

Think of all the good things that could happen with no filibuster:

• We could raise, suspend or even end the debt ceiling. My inclination would be to just end this nonsense.
• We could keep the federal government open.
• We could address voting rights. To me it seems a bad idea to allow states to overturn results in elections. It is a bad idea for states in prevet some citizens from voting. We should at least stop them from doing either in elections for federal offices.
• We could address infrastructure needs in a serious way.
• We could free the Senate to legislate again.

There are probably many more advantages to not having a filibuster, but this is enough to think about to get us started thinking in the right direction.