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- Democrats attacked Mitch McConnell for trying to rally Republicans against raising the debt ceiling.
- “He will not be able to hold the economy hostage,” a senior Democrat said on Wednesday.
- Republicans had previously supported raising the debt ceiling under Trump.
Congressional Democrats on Wednesday criticized Kentucky Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for threatening to oppose an expansion of the United States ‘ability to pay its bills, a move that could undermine the United States’ economic recovery. United if Congress does not act.
Senator Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters that the national debt swelled under President Donald Trump due to the pandemic and a 2017 Republican tax law that slashed tax revenue from the countries from large companies. Debt increased by $ 7 trillion under the Trump administration.
“Now Mitch McConnell wants to avoid paying the bills, we’re not going to let him do that. He can’t hold the economy hostage,” Wyden said. “We are going to act just as quickly.”
Wyden said Democrats made no political demands in return for their support for raising the debt ceiling while Trump was in power. He described McConnell’s move as a “dropout”.
“Mitch McConnell is playing Russian roulette with this economy,” Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second Democrat in the upper house, told reporters.
The Kentucky Republican said in an interview with Punchbowl News on Monday that Republicans would not strike a deal with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling, the legal limit the federal government can borrow to pay its bills.
McConnell said Democrats should do it on their own through reconciliation, a legislative path that only requires a majority vote and would therefore be possible to pass without Republicans’ support.
Wyden declined to respond to Insider when asked if it would be difficult to involve the 50 Senate Democrats. Still, there were signs that the Biden administration had no intention of making a deal with the GOP.
“We expect Congress to act in a timely manner to raise or suspend the debt ceiling, as it did three times on a broad bipartisan basis during the last administration,” the press secretary said on Wednesday. from the White House, Jen Psaki. Yet Democrats have yet to decide how to raise the debt ceiling just nine days before it expires.
“They have to decide what the strategy is, but I think it will be easy to involve the Democrats,” Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a member of the Senate Budget Committee, told Insider on Wednesday.
The United States is expected to hit the debt ceiling on July 30, two years after its last extension. But the Treasury Department has the ability to repay US debt on its own for a limited period of time and avoid a default with potentially catastrophic consequences for the economy.
The non-partisan congressional budget office predicted on Wednesday that the Treasury would “likely” run out of cash in October or November.
Other Democrats simply ignored McConnell’s threat.
“‘Meh’ is my official response,” said Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a Democrat sponsoring a bill to end the debt ceiling, in an interview. “Regardless, we’ll run our own business. It’s something the Hill freaks out about every year. We won’t negotiate about it, we won’t concede, and we won’t fail to do our job.
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