The White House on Thursday called on congressional Republicans to raise the debt ceiling quickly so the government can borrow more money and maintain its current level of spending, and asked that the GOP deliver this “without drama.”
“I do think we’re getting perilously close to the level of drama and delay that we believe is unnecessary, to put it mildly,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. He spoke hours after the Treasury Department announced that the U.S. would bump up against the legal debt ceiling by Nov. 3, and said failing to lift the debt ceiling would put the U.S. at risk of “not being able to pay our bills.”
“There’s no reason for us to engage in that kind of irresponsible brinksmanship; and it’s why Republican leaders in Congress need to accept the responsibility that they have to act without drama and delay to raise the debt limit,” he said.
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An increase in the debt ceiling is a sore point for Republicans, but the last few times the U.S. has been in this situation, the GOP managed to authorize more borrowing “without a lot of drama,” he said.
Without raising the debt ceiling, the government would be forced to spend only the money it takes in, and thus would likely have to cut back a range of federal programs. Many Republicans have wanted to use the debt ceiling as a point of leverage to negotiate more spending cuts.
But Earnest argued that raising the debt ceiling wouldn’t authorize any new spending, an argument Democrats have made in favor of another increase beyond the current ceiling of $18.1 trillion.
“It simply allows the Treasury to pay for expenditures that Congress themselves already have approved and we want to make sure that those expenditures are paid in full and on time,” he said.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said he wants to bring the issue for a vote before he relinquishes the speaker’s gavel after Republicans settle on a successor.
“I think people on both sides of the aisle have acknowledged the significant economic risk of failing to do so, that it would throw the U.S. economy and the U.S. financial system and potentially the global economy into chaos for Congress not to handle this basic fundamental responsibility,” Earnest said.
