EXCLUSIVE — The White House is ending its hands-off approach to the debt ceiling standoff between Democratic and Republican leadership on Capitol Hill and is pressing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to stop “playing political games” with the economy.
McConnell, despite pleas from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, said in April that Republicans would not vote to raise or suspend the debt ceiling and that Democrats must include the measure in budget reconciliation.
“America must never default,” the Kentucky Republican reiterated in an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal published Thursday. “The debt ceiling needs to be raised. The issue is who should do it. And under these uniquely unprecedented circumstances, it’s their obligation to do it. And they have the votes to do it, and they will do it.”
The White House had previously avoided commenting on this issue in public but still held closed-door briefings with Hill Democrats in early September on potentially tying a debt suspension to a continuing resolution the administration has called for in hopes of avoiding a government shutdown. Aides familiar with those discussions say the White House’s strategy is to essentially dare Republicans not to vote for a measure that would not only raise or suspend the debt limit but temporarily fund the government, the ongoing resettlement of Afghan refugees, and extremely needed relief for regions devastated by a string of recent natural disasters.
However, following Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s Wednesday announcement that the U.S. would default on its debt if Congress didn’t take action by Sept. 30, a White House spokesman told the Washington Examiner that Republicans must “fulfill their obligation to cover the very debt they all helped create under President Trump.”
“We agree with Senator McConnell that failing to raise the debt limit would throw an ‘unnecessary wrench into the gears of our job growth and thriving economy.’ That’s why Senator McConnell and his colleagues should do what McConnell has already done 32 times during his career and vote to raise the debt limit — including three times as the previous Administration racked up nearly $8 trillion in debt — instead of playing political games with our economic recovery and the financial well-being of middle class families,” Mike Gwin, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement on Thursday. “If McConnell and Senate Republicans fail to fulfill their obligation to cover the very debt they all helped create under President Trump, they will be solely responsible for America’s first default and the economic catastrophe that would almost surely result.”
“Mitch McConnell and Republicans’ shameless attempts to play politics with the financial stability of our country as the economy continues to recover is not only dangerous but a reminder that Republicans only care about serving their own political interests,” Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, added. “When Donald Trump added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt, largely to give tax cuts to the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, Senate Republicans had no problem voting three times to suspend or raise the debt limit. The lives of millions of working families hang in the balance and instead of protecting them, Mitch McConnell is threatening to create an economic disaster.”
White House officials privately expressed frustration to the Examiner that McConnell and Republicans voted to suspend the U.S.’s debt limit in 2017, 2018, and 2019, adding $8 trillion to the national debt over former President Donald Trump’s four-year term. The majority of House Republicans voted to suspend in 2017 and 2018, while roughly one-third voted to suspend in 2019.
Those same officials said Republicans should listen to their past remarks on the subject, put politics aside, and cooperate with Democrats to do something that’s occurred nearly 80 times in the past 61 years. One claimed that doing so would jeopardize the country’s post-pandemic economic recovery.
McConnell himself has voted to suspend the debt limit 32 times throughout his 36-year senatorial career. Furthermore, the 46 Republican senators who pledged not to help Democrats raise the debt ceiling ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline have previously voted to do so 185 times throughout their Senate careers.
During the lead-up to the 2019 debt suspension vote, McConnell again touted the “need to address the debt limit and secure the full faith and credit of the United States” and conceded “that any bipartisan agreement on funding levels would not appear perfect to either side.”
“First and foremost, it ensures our federal government will not approach any kind of short-term debt crisis in the coming weeks or months,” he said at the time. “It secures our nation’s full faith and credit and ensures that congress will not throw this kind of unnecessary wrench into the gears of our job growth and thriving economy.”
McConnell, Senate Republicans, and even a couple of Senate Democrats have balked at the spending levels and tax hikes proposed in Biden’s “Build Back Better” budget reconciliation plan. It would appear that the GOP is using a similar playbook to one the party employed during spending and debt negotiations with former President Barack Obama.
“What we’re saying is that the biggest problem facing the country is our excessive spending,” McConnell said of those negotiations in a 2013 interview with NBC. “We’ve watched the government explode over the last four years. We’ve dealt with the revenue issue, and now the question is will the president lead? Why should we have to be bringing him to the table?”
“I wish the president would lead us on the discussion rather than putting himself in the position of having to be dragged kicking and screaming to discuss the single biggest issue facing our future,” he continued. “You know, until we adjust the entitlements so that they meet the demographics of our country, we can’t ever solve this problem.”
Yellen’s Wednesday warning, delivered in a letter sent to Pelosi’s office, flat-out claimed that failing to suspend or raise the debt ceiling would result in a U.S. default, the first in history. She also went so far as to claim that even delaying negotiations “calls into question the federal government’s ability to meet all its obligations [and] would likely cause irreparable damage to the U.S. economy and global financial markets.”
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“Once all available measures and cash on hand are fully exhausted, the United States of America would be unable to meet its obligations for the first time in our history,” Yellen wrote. “Given this uncertainty, the Treasury Department is not able to provide a specific estimate of how long the extraordinary measures will last. However, based on our best and most recent information, the most likely outcome is that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted during the month of October.”
“At a time when American families, communities, and businesses are still suffering from the effects of the ongoing global pandemic, it would be particularly irresponsible to put the full faith and credit of the United States at risk,” she continued. “We fully expect Congress to act promptly to suspend the debt limit and protect the full faith and credit of the United States and we expect them to do that in a bipartisan way just as they did three times during the prior administration.”
