President Joe Biden accused congressional Republicans of being reckless over their approach to the debt ceiling, adamant that extending the country’s borrowing limit is a shared responsibility because it is about paying off expenses already incurred.
“We always pay what we owe. We’ve never failed,” Biden said Monday in the White House. “Raising the debt limit is usually a bipartisan undertaking, and it should be.”
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“Stop playing Russian roulette with our economy,” he added, warning that he could not guarantee avoiding the “catastrophic” event of a default.
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Two weeks before the Treasury Department is expected to run out of money to meet its commitments on Oct. 18, Biden said the debt ceiling is not tied to his spending priorities. He also brought up Republican opposition to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s efforts to lift the debt ceiling by unanimous consent, a fast-track parliamentary procedure.
“Let the Democrats vote to raise the debt ceiling this week without obstruction,” Biden told reporters. “Let us vote and end the mess.”
“If you don’t want to help save the country, get out of the way so you don’t destroy it,” he continued.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell anticipated Biden’s remarks with a letter to the White House. In the letter, he insisted that Biden needed “to engage directly with congressional Democrats” regarding the debt ceiling. That would require action from the 50 senators who caucus with the Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote through the budget reconciliation process.
“Republicans’ position is simple. We have no list of demands. For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well,” McConnell wrote.
Biden said he planned on “talking to Mitch about it,” explaining that he had received the letter 10 minutes earlier.
Democrats had been hoping to use the simple majority procedure to pass their sprawling social welfare and climate spending package. That proposal has stalled because of Democratic disagreement over its estimated $3.5 trillion cost and scope, including universal prekindergarten and generous tax credits for people who buy electric cars.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki downplayed concerns last week that the debt ceiling debate was compounding government distrust as Biden struggles to unite his party behind his infrastructure-plus agenda. She contended that Biden, Schumer, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “have more experience getting legislation across the finish line than any group of Democratic leaders in history.”
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“We’re not going to let up on that, on Republicans, to do what’s responsible, to protect the full faith and credit of the United States, as has been done 80 times in the past,” Psaki said. “We’ve also been working to do it on our own. We’re going to keep working with leader Schumer to get that done.”
