{"id":26878,"date":"2023-04-27T20:55:20","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T20:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/democrats-republicans-dig-in\/"},"modified":"2023-04-27T20:59:04","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T20:59:04","slug":"democrats-republicans-dig-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/democrats-republicans-dig-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats, Republicans dig in on debt-ceiling standoff after House action"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David Morgan and Richard Cowan<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate showed no sign of moving to avoid a looming debt-ceiling crisis on Thursday, as Republicans rejected calls to raise the $31.4 trillion limit without conditions and Democrats dismissed the idea of talks.<\/p>\n

A day after the House of Representatives approved a Republican package that would lift the borrowing limit and slash federal spending, lawmakers in both parties dug in as the clock ticked toward a potential first-ever default that could cripple the U.S. economy and unsettle financial markets worldwide.<\/p>\n

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had pushed the bill through along narrow party lines in hopes of jumpstarting talks with Democratic President Joe Biden on lifting the limit, a move needed to cover the costs of tax cuts and spending previously approved by Congress. <\/p>\n

“The president is the person who now has the ball in his court. The House has passed a measure. They’ve raised the debt ceiling,” Republican Senator Mitt Romney told reporters.\u00a0“It’s time for the president to respond other than to say, ‘no’.”<\/p>\n

But Democrats countered that while Biden and McCarthy could talk at any time about spending and the deficit, Republicans should not use the debt ceiling to force concessions. <\/p>\n

“You don’t use brinkmanship on not paying our bills to back people into a corner,” Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown told reporters. “The president should sit down with McCarthy anytime, sure. But not to discuss paying our bills.”<\/p>\n

Maverick Democratic Senator Joe Manchin on Thursday disagreed, calling on Biden to negotiate with McCarthy, saying, “only the President can prevent this from becoming a full-blown domestic crisis.”<\/p>\n

A prolonged 2011 debt-ceiling standoff led to a downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating, which pushed borrowing costs higher and hammered stocks. Warning signs are already flashing on Wall Street. <\/p>\n

Lawmakers do not know precisely how much time they have left to act. The “x-date” when the Treasury Department would no longer be able to pay all its bills could come as early as June or stretch later into summer.<\/p>\n

Treasury is expected to notify Congress about a new “x-date” in coming days, after assessing tax collections.<\/p>\n

Democrats rejected outright the House Republicans’ debt-ceiling bill. It would increase government borrowing authority by $1.5 trillion or until March 31, whichever comes first, cut spending to 2022 levels and cap growth at 1% a year, repeal some tax incentives for renewable energy and stiffen work requirements for some antipoverty programs.<\/p>\n

Democrats hold a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate, where legislation to raise the debt ceiling would require 60 votes, meaning that nine Republicans would have to support it.<\/p>\n

Senate Republicans ruled out the possibility of supporting a debt-ceiling increase that does not also address spending.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think anything that is generated by the Senate will ever pass the House. An agreement between Biden and McCarthy will,” Republican Senator John Cornyn told reporters.<\/p>\n

The White House has mobilized nearly every government agency to calculate the impact of the projected 22% budget cut included in McCarthy’s legislation for their respective budgets.<\/p>\n

“The United States in our history has never failed to pay our debts,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said. “We’re not a deadbeat nation. Avoiding default is Congress’s responsibility and they should act on it immediately.”<\/p>\n

Democratic Senator Jon Tester suggested a two-track effort to address the debt ceiling and spending questions. <\/p>\n

“I would ask for a clean debt ceiling bill and make some assurances that you would put together a bipartisan committee to take a look at ways to reduce the deficit,” Senator Jon Tester told reporters.<\/p>\n

“It’s time to deal with the deficit. There’s no doubt about that,” Tester said. “But not for the debt ceiling as a backdrop, because you simply just don’t want to default.” <\/p>\n

\n

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and David Morgan; additional reporting by Andrea Shalal and Moira Warburton; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)<\/p>\n

\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3Q0ZC-VIEWIMAGE\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David Morgan and Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate showed no sign of moving to avoid a looming debt-ceiling crisis on Thursday, as Republicans rejected calls to raise the $31.4 trillion limit without conditions and Democrats dismissed the idea of talks. A day after the House of Representatives approved a Republican package […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":26882,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1221],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-26878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-top-news","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3Q0ZC-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26878"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26883,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26878\/revisions\/26883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}