Durbin on the debt ceiling: “We’ll get there”

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“We’re going to get there, and we’re going to do it responsibly and deal with it as soon as we get back next week,” Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, told CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday on “State of the Union.” .

“It would be fatal for our economy. It would cost us six million jobs,” Durbin said of the debt ceiling.

Still, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have said they will not.

Pressed by Bash on whether Democrats would use reconciliation and avoid filibuster to protect the U.S. economy, Durbin said McConnell was “playing games with a loaded gun here” insisting that “filibuster be done. applied to the debt ceiling “.

“This may be the first time in history that this has happened,” Durbin said, adding that McConnell’s tactics could come “at the expense of this economy.”

Durbin said he believed that if McConnell’s strategy won out, the result “would be disaster, financial disaster.”

“If he thinks he is going to score political points by defaulting on US debt for the first time in history, Senator McConnell is wrong,” Durbin said.

While Democrats don’t necessarily think McConnell is bluffing, they aren’t willing to let him dictate the terms of what happens next, according to officials and congressional aides.

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CNN previously reported that there was no appetite for debt ceiling negotiations, according to several people familiar with Democratic thinking, although McConnell has yet to make any requests. He is unlikely to do so, allies said, having laid out his position in July without planning to waver.

Durbin said on Sunday that economists and financiers had warned of the danger of the first US default in history.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent a clear and disastrous message to McConnell, warning that the U.S. economy, still emerging from a pandemic-triggered collapse, cannot afford self-inflicted disaster.

For their part, Democrats have sought to emphasize McConnell’s hypocrisy and have doubled the role of Republicans in perpetuating the country’s debt.

“This debt is Trump’s debt,” Schumer told the Senate in July, as the debt ceiling debate intensified. “It’s Covid debt. Democrats have joined three times during the Trump administration to do the responsible thing and the bottom line is Chief McConnell shouldn’t play political games with full faith and the credit of the United States. Americans pay their debts. “

And this summer, President Joe Biden weighed in on McConnell’s insistence that Republicans not vote to increase the U.S. borrowing limit.

“I was hoping it wouldn’t,” Biden said in July.

“You know, in the last four years, they just extended the debt limit. The reason for the large debt is because of their, their debt, their tax cut,” Biden said, doing so. alluding to the 2017 GOP tax review.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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