| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. A deadline crisis appears to be approaching for Congress: Legislation is needed to temporarily fund the U.S. government into October, and to raise the debt limit so that the government doesn't default at some point this fall. In fact, it's unlikely that either disaster will happen. But that's not the whole story. Start with the possibility of a government shutdown. The fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, and therefore new funding is needed for all government operations and programs that rely on annual appropriations from Congress. As is usually the case at this point, Congress isn't ready to pass the necessary appropriations bills. But all that is needed is a temporary measure to keep things going, and there's no sign so far of any significant problem getting that done; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he supports a stand-alone bill (a "continuing resolution") to keep things funded. The immediate problem is that Democrats in Congress are currently bundling together the spending bill with a debt limit increase and some emergency spending (for recent natural disasters and Afghan refugees), and Republicans are objecting to the debt limit part. But if the combined bill fails, there's nothing to keep Democrats for bringing the bill back without the debt limit increase. Presumably, given that Republicans don't object, that would pass, and the government would stay open. It's not plausible that President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would insist on keeping the government closed more than a few hours when they had the votes to keep it open. Even if public opinion turned against Republicans — no sure thing — that would be forgotten rapidly, while any economic damage from a prolonged shutdown could last, and would surely hurt the incumbent party regardless of who was at fault. Congress can process continuing resolutions quickly, in hours if necessary, as long as no one objects. So government shutdowns don't happen by miscalculation or accident. Every extended shutdown has taken place because one group wanted a shutdown and the others didn't have the votes to avert it. That's not the case this time. Democrats don't want a shutdown, and they have the votes to keep the government open. It's possible that they'll hold out until the deadline is close in order to make a (perfectly correct) point about Republican obstruction and irresponsibility, but there's no sign that a shutdown is coming. And dealing with the debt limit? Yes, the Republican refusal to cooperate with what should be a routine matter is terrible. As the out-party, the GOP is within its rights to force Democrats to come up with the votes to raise or suspend the debt limit. But only if it can be done by a simple majority. As Bloomberg's Steven Dennis said on Twitter Monday: "Dems don't need Republicans to actually raise the debt limit. They just need them not to actively *filibuster* it." Instead, by filibustering the bill to raise the debt limit, Senate Republicans are making Democrats act as a majority but at the same time preventing that majority from functioning by requiring 60 votes for passage. Something will have to give, and putting the combined bill on the floor and watching Republicans vote to defeat it by filibuster can only be the first step. The next step will be to open another crack in the filibuster. The smallest crack would be if Democrats wind up including the debt limit increase in the full reconciliation bill (which is protected against filibusters) already being negotiated. But that bill may not be ready on time. A somewhat larger crack, and what's probably the most likely method, would be if Democrats pass the debt limit increase as a stand-alone additional reconciliation bill, which would be the second one for the budget year. That's allowed under the rules, but the norm has been to do just one a year, so this would strengthen reconciliation as an option — and since reconciliation is a way to get around filibusters, anything that makes reconciliation more robust is a way to limit the power of the filibuster. The problem for the Democrats with this method, as Dennis points out, is that it would be costly in Senate floor time, which would make it harder for Democrats to take care of other priorities. The most intriguing possibility is that Democrats could raise the debt limit by either eliminating the filibuster, or more plausibly, punching a new hole in it. That can be done by majority vote, but so far at least two Democrats, Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have been reluctant to mess with the filibuster. Faced with a choice of the filibuster or the economic chaos and disaster of a government default, it's possible that filibuster fans would feel compelled to impose reform by majority rule. After all, if Republicans insist that the majority acts without their help, then making it possible for a simple majority to act makes plenty of sense. Of course, the arguments for and against the filibuster don't have to make sense; they just have to have the votes. And it's likely that Manchin would prefer the reconciliation workaround, despite its costs, to creating a new precedent that debt limit increases cannot be filibustered, let alone a new precedent that only a simple majority is needed to defeat any filibuster. But it's possible that what Schumer and Pelosi are doing is at least trying to set up the choice of default or filibuster in the hopes that Senate Democrats will unify in favor of majority-imposed reform. And by the way? It's not impossible that McConnell is seeking that outcome, too. Just as McConnell in 2013 refused all compromise and pushed reluctant Democrats into joining their reformer colleagues in eliminating the filibuster for nominations, he may be deliberately pushing for the same result this time. It's also possible that McConnell didn't and doesn't believe that Democrats would really go through with majority-imposed reform. If so, he was proven wrong in 2013. We'll see what happens this time. As far as the politics of the situation, Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent of the Washington Post are correct: Democrats who fear this supposedly tough vote are worrying about nothing. There's no evidence that voters care about the debt limit. There's little evidence, for that matter, that voters care about federal budget deficits. In this particular case, the Democrats who may be attacked for inflating deficits will have already voted for trillions of dollars of spending in a pandemic relief bill, an infrastructure bill that's passed in the Senate, and at least the budget providing for a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. In other words: If spending is a problem for voters, the Democrats have a lot more to worry about than a debt-limit vote. And if spending isn't a problem, then it's impossible to imagine the voters who would approve of those three major bills but vote against Democrats because of the debt limit. The debt limit has never made any sense. One way or another, Democrats are going to have to prevent a government default. It should be the last such vote. They should repeal the debt limit, or suspend it for a million years, or set it to an impossibly large figure (I'm suggesting calling it the constitutional option and raising it to 1787 to the 1787th power; others have even sillier suggestions). That would be good politics, but it would also be good policy. 1. Rick Hasen on the biggest dangers to U.S. democracy and what can be done about them. 2. Dan Drezner on Afghanistan, a month after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. 3. Judith Kelley on the World Bank scorecard scandal. 4. Sarah D. Wire on increasing threats of violence against members of Congress. 5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Justin Fox on working from home and the fate of cities. 6. Alex Samuels and Mary Radcliffe on multiple-loss politicians. 7. David Wasserman on the future of minority-majority House districts. 8. And Adam Serwer on Texas politics. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. 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