It’s well covered that the debt limit is redundant as a policy matter: Congress limits the amount of federal spending through laws creating mandatory spending programs and laws appropriating funds, it sets tax policy through laws, and those laws govern how much money the government must borrow. As a political matter, we’re fighting over whether the need to raise the debt limit should be used as leverage to extract policy concessions. My main point today is that leverage exists independent of the debt limit: Republicans control one house of Congress, and bills to fund government operations next year can’t pass without their consent. They are free to tie demands to the passage of those bills — including demands about mandatory spending or other policies not directly addressed in appropriations bills.