Maryland state lawmakers say members of Congress are pointing a “double-barreled shotgun” at their state by threatening not to raise the debt ceiling.
“It is possible no state would be hit as hard as Maryland by a failure to raise the debt ceiling,” said Sen. Jennie Forehand, D-Rockville, as Maryland faces a possible credit rating downgrade dependent on how Congress handles the federal debt ceiling.
Forehand and Del. Tom Hucker, the co-chairmen of Maryland’s federal relations committee, implored the state’s congressional delegation on Thursday to vote for an increase in the debt ceiling without the preconditions of spending cuts.
“Political brinksmanship” threatens Maryland and the “millions of dollars in critical funding support” already “assigned to improve our schools, repair our crumbling roads and bridges, expand our overburdened mass transit systems, and clean the Chesapeake Bay,” the committee wrote in a letter to their representatives.
“Failure to raise the debt ceiling would undermine decades of fiscal discipline and unjustly punish all Marylanders,” said Hucker, D- Silver Spring.
