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- Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz told the NYT that confrontations with the debt ceiling only put the economy at risk.
- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has blocked Democrats’ attempts to raise the ceiling.
- This forces Democrats to find a solution to prevent the United States from defaulting on October 18.
As the United States heads toward default on its debt, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made a firm claim that Democrats need to raise the debt ceiling on their own without help from Republicans. Hawaii’s Democratic Senator Brian Schatz told the New York Times that these confrontations only brought the country closer to economic disaster.
“I’ve learned over many years that we can’t negotiate on things like whether or not to destroy the economy,” Schatz told The Times. “American politics have gone mad because a party has gone mad,” he added.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Congress last month that it has until Oct. 18 to raise or suspend the debt limit before the United States runs out of money to pay its bills. Democrats have since attempted to pass legislation that would increase the limit, but McConnell led his party to block the measure, remaining adamant that the GOP will not help fund the 3,500 social spending program. billion dollars from Democrats by raising the debt limit.
Insider reported Monday that McConnell accused Democrats of “sleepwalking” toward default in a letter to President Joe Biden – even after he blocked all measures they tried to raise the debt limit – by saying that “the two-party system is not a light switch. that President Pelosi and Chief Schumer can borrow money and spend it. “
“The Republicans’ position is simple. We don’t have a list of demands,” he wrote. “For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wants to govern alone, it must also manage the debt ceiling alone.”
The House plans to introduce a debt ceiling suspension measure on Wednesday that will likely be blocked again by McConnell, as he wants Democrats to use reconciliation to raise the debt ceiling, which can be done without any votes. republican.
But Biden said in Monday’s remarks that going down that route would be “an incredibly complicated and cumbersome process,” and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer echoed the president’s remarks on Tuesday, telling reporters that Democrats “don’t have the luxury of using a long, convoluted, risky process.”
“If Republicans could just get out of this damn path, we could get there,” Schumer said.
As Insider previously reported, while the government has raised the debt ceiling 57 times to avoid default since 1917, it has become more of a political tool than a real threshold. For example, in 2013, under President Barack Obama, the GOP refused to increase the debt ceiling unless the Affordable Care Act was paid off, which resulted in the government shutting down for 16 days.
This time around it’s different, given that the GOP hasn’t demanded anything from Democrats other than using reconciliation, but the showdown means Democrats must quickly find a solution within a tight deadline before the country defaulted on its debt for the first time in history.
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