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- Rep. Kevin Brady said Democrats should not rely on House GOP support to lift the debt ceiling.
- “Unless they have a conversation with Republicans… there will be no Republican support in the House.”
- The House GOP could follow the lead of the Senate GOP under McConnell in opposing an increase in the debt ceiling.
A senior House Republican has indicated that GOP lawmakers are unlikely to support lifting the debt ceiling and instead fall on Democrats to do so, increasing the risk of a perilous showdown that could engulf both houses of Congress this fall.
Rep. Kevin Brady, ranking Republican on House Ways and Means, said in an interview on Monday that Republicans were increasingly frustrated with Democrats bypassing them on a $ 1.9 trillion stimulus bill using tactics legislative process known as reconciliation. They are also ready to put together a multibillion dollar social spending plan on their own.
“Considering that they haven’t had a single spending, stimulus, or debt conversation with us to date, I think they, through their behavior, have taken responsibility for going through this on their own.” Brady told Insider in an interview Monday night.
The Texas Republican continued, “Unless they have a conversation with Republicans, there certainly won’t be Republican support in the House. Take it or leave it, no conversations, no collaboration – it is their responsibility, unfortunately. “
Brady’s comments serve as a barometer of the GOP’s position in the lower house on the debt ceiling, given his influence as the architect of the Republican tax law of 2017. House Republicans could end up taking it. the head of the Senate GOP under Mitch McConnell, as most Republicans in the upper house rally to oppose an increase in the debt ceiling.
Some Senate Republicans are demanding spending cuts in return for their support, even as the GOP has backed raising the debt ceiling on several occasions under the Trump administration.
The previous suspension of the debt ceiling expired on July 30, prompting the Treasury Department to take “extraordinary measures” to help pay government bills. Raising the debt ceiling does not increase federal spending – it only allows the US government to pay its current debt.
The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the Treasury can keep the government afloat until October or November, although Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the pandemic makes it more difficult to accurately project when the Treasury will exhaust its powers to emergency.
The office of Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy did not respond to a request for comment. In July, McCarthy signed a letter from Republicans on the House Budget Panel calling for “spending limits.”
Reconciliation makes it possible to speed up certain bills and pass them by simple majority. Republicans used the same procedure to enact a significant corporate tax cut under President Donald Trump. The GOP also embarked on an unsuccessful effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act in the same year without the backing of Democrats.
Other high-ranking Republicans wouldn’t go as far as Brady. Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the leading Republican on the House Budget Committee, only said that Democratic leaders in Congress had not responded to the letter they sent.
“We heard crickets,” Smith told Insider on Tuesday. “The Democrats have failed in their leadership, they don’t even negotiate or even communicate, so apparently they don’t care about the debt ceiling.”
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