On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) both spoke out against Republicans who claimed that they will not help Democrats raise the debt ceiling.
As the Democrats move toward passing their $3.5 trillion infrastructure package, with the hopes of getting it through the Senate using the budget reconciliation tool and only 51 votes, several Republicans said Tuesday that they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling.
“I can’t believe the Republicans will let the nation default,” said Schumer at a press conference, per CNN.
“Schumer noted Wednesday the White House and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen want to raise the debt ceiling in a bipartisan fashion, and that the Senate’s rules for passing a budget ‘limits what you can do there, and doing it outside gives you more flexibility,’” CNN reported.
“It has always been bipartisan to deal with the debt ceiling,” said Schumer.
Pelosi spoke out against the Republican threat as well. According to a source familiar with the situation, per CNN, Pelosi told House Democrats on a private call, “this is Trump’s money.”
“This is paying for his tax scam, this is paying for COVID, a responsibility we all share,” Pelosi said. “For Republicans to say they will never do it is typically irresponsible.”
Earlier this week, 46 Republican senators signed a letter saying that they would not vote to increase the debt ceiling, bringing about what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) predicted earlier this month.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), who passed around the letter for the lawmakers, said, “They shouldn’t be expecting Republicans to raise the debt ceiling to accommodate their deficit spending.”
In a previous interview with Punchbowl News, McConnell said he “can’t imagine there will be a single Republican voting to raise the debt ceiling after what we’ve been experiencing.”
“I can’t imagine a single Republican in this environment that we’re in now — this free-for-all for taxes and spending — to vote to raise the debt limit,” McConnell added. “I think the answer is they need to put it in the reconciliation bill.”
As The Daily Wire previously reported, “Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on July 23 to protect ‘the full faith and credit of the United States’ by extending Congress’ 2019 suspension of the debt ceiling — a measure that stops the federal government from taking on a certain level of national debt.” Congress, however, missed the deadline to prolong the suspension.
“If Congress has not acted to suspend or increase the debt limit by Monday, August 2, 2021, Treasury will need to start taking certain additional extraordinary measures in order to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations,” Yellen explained in a letter. “The period of time that extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty due to a variety of factors, including the challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the U.S. government months into the future, exacerbated by the heightened uncertainty in payments and receipts related to the economic impact of the pandemic.”
“CNBC reports that the Treasury Department should be able to fund the government for two or three months without taking on new debt. If Congress does not act, however, the United States may risk defaulting on its debt for the first time in history,” according to The Daily Wire.