Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell promised his caucus would engage in political terrorism on raising the debt ceiling, and on Monday Senate Republicans delivered. 

On a party-line vote, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bill to avert a government shutdown, provide new disaster relief funding, and raise the debt ceiling to allow the federal government to pay its bills. The federal government is funded through midnight Thursday, and the nation will default on its debt sometime in October unless the ceiling is either lifted or suspended. 

Senate Republicans filibustered the House-passed measure—which would have passed by a simple majority with Democratic support—for no other reason than to undermine President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats. A government shutdown is one thing, but the U.S. defaulting on its obligations to pay its debts would be globally catastrophic while potentially triggering another national recession. 

It’s nothing short of political terrorism. Led by McConnell, Republicans have insisted that Democrats clean up the mess they made during Donald Trump’s tenure. Not only did Republicans pass an unpopular tax cut for the rich that added some $2 trillion to the national debt, they also added nearly $8 trillion to the debt overall. 

But instead of voting to raise the debt limit in a bipartisan vote—the standard course of action for more than half a century—Republicans are demanding Democrats raise it alone while also blocking their ability to do so. As McConnell told Democrats last week while promising to play Russian roulette with economy, “don’t play Russian roulette with our economy.”

Democrats must now scramble to pass a continuing resolution by Thursday to keep the government funded while also finding a workaround for raising the debt ceiling. McConnell said Republicans would support passing a “clean continuing resolution” to fund the government, so long as it did not include a provision to raise the debt ceiling.

“We’ll see if Washington Democrats actually want to govern,” McConnell said Monday. That’s rich coming from a guy whose only real legislative accomplishment during Trump’s four years in office was passing the tax gift to wealthy Americans via reconciliation on a party-line vote. Other than that, McConnell succeeded in stealing two Supreme Court seats—a boon for his party, to be sure, but it has nothing to do with legislating.

As Majority Leader Chuck Schumer noted, “After today, there will be no doubt which party in this chamber is working to solve the problems that face our country — and which party is accelerating us toward an unnecessary, avoidable disaster.”

Later on Monday, Schumer stressed the fact that Republicans have now opened an unprecedented new front in its political sabotage of the country.

“Let me be clear, what the Republicans in the Senate did tonight is not normal,” Schumer said. “This isn’t your typical Washington fracas and it shouldn’t be treated as such. It has far more severe consequences than the typical political cat fight.”