'It's time to get to work': Kevin McCarthy turns up the heat on Biden to ... trends now
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned up the heat on President Biden to 'sit down and negotiate' on the debt ceiling on the eve before the president will deliver his State of the Union Address.
'We will continue to sit down and negotiate – just as President Biden did in the past,' McCarthy said, after noting the president helped negotiate a debt limit raise as vice president in 2011 with House Republicans.
Biden and McCarthy had their first sit-down last week where they agreed to keep the line of dialogue open but came to no solid plan forward. Biden insists Congress must pass a clean debt limit raise, McCarthy says his caucus won't raise the limit without spending cuts.
'Surely we both agree that the national debt is too high. Surely we both agree that inflation hurts American families. Surely we can trim waste and streamline programs to make them both stronger and more efficient,' the Republican speaker said.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned up the heat on President Biden to 'sit down and negotiate' on the debt ceiling on the eve before the president will deliver his State of the Union Address
Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union address tomorrow
He added: 'A responsible debt limit increase that begins to eliminate wasteful Washington spending and puts us on a path towards a balanced budget is not only the right place to start… It’s the only place to start.'
In response to McCarthy's remarks, the White House noted that Republicans have so far refused to lay out their priorities for spending cuts.
'House Republicans’ only plan is to make the deficit skyrocket by over $3 trillion with unaffordable tax giveaways to wealthy special interests. They’ve even proposed raiding Medicare so that the ultra-rich can enjoy new tax welfare,' White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement.
'Meanwhile, House Republicans are threatening to actively throw our economy into a tailspin with a default – which they have a non-negotiable, Constitutional duty to prevent – unless they can further cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It’s utterly backwards.'
The U.S. reached its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit weeks ago, forcing the Treasury to take 'extraordinary actions' to stretch dollars until June.
House Republicans have been in a stalemate with the White House and Senate Democrats amid urgent warnings from the Treasury that action needs to be taken to raise the debt ceiling.
Failure to do so could send the U.S. careening into default - plunging the global economy into a tailspin.
While Democrats are underscoring the urgency of raising the debt limit to avoid the calamity of a default, McCarthy tried to put the debt to scale.
'We are now 31 trillion dollars in debt. That is more than the size of the entire American economy - 20 percent more. Our debt is now a greater burden than it has been at any time since World War II,' he said.
'If we continue down this path, in the next ten years, we will spend over 8 trillion dollars just on interest,' the Speaker added. 'That’s more than the entire federal budget this year. By a lot.'
McCarthy then pinned high prices on the nation's debt - claiming
