House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer objected Tuesday to House Republican accusations that the Obama administration misled Congress about the debt ceiling, calling the allegations “outrageous.”
The Maryland Democrat was responding to a report Republicans released Monday in which they concluded that the Obama administration had hid its plans for making payments on the federal debt in the case that the debt ceiling prevented it from issuing new bonds.
After the House Financial Services Committee, which conducted the report, held a subcommittee hearing on the debt ceiling Tuesday, Hoyer issued a condemnation.
“It remains unconscionable that House Republicans would even bring our country to the point where the Treasury Department was asked to explore options for how to handle a default,” Hoyer said. “I’m glad we were able to avert such a crisis then, but Republicans ought to accept their role in fomenting it and learn from the Treasury’s assessment so as not to put our nation in danger again by threatening not to pay America’s bills.”
The GOP report was based on subpoenaed documents that showed communications between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Treasury. The committee got the documents only after the debt ceiling was raised through the end of President Obama’s tenure, meaning that it was too late for the Republicans’ purposes.
At the hearing Tuesday, subcomittee Chairman Sean Duffy, R-Wis., reiterated the claim that the documents showed that the Obama administration withheld its plans from the public to play up the dire consequences of not raising the debt ceiling and prejudicing the negotiations between the White House and Republicans.
“As Americans and people all over the world watched this political fight play out on the nightly news, administration officials repeatedly told the public that chaos would cripple the global economy if the debt limit wasn’t raised,” Duffy said. “They deliberately chose to hide the fact that the Treasury and New York Fed could prioritize payments, creating greater risk and uncertainty for the markets.”
