Pressure Mounts For President, Congress To Reach Agreement On Debt Ceiling

Pressure on President Joe Biden and Congress to reach an agreement to raise the debt ceiling is mounting as the threat of default and economic calamity becomes more real — now potentially just a month away.

The partisan dispute over increasing the nation’s borrowing capacity — whether it should or should not be linked to spending cuts — has so far involved just the president and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). But on some Senate Republicans have decided it’s time to speak up.

"Joe Biden is playing Russian roulette with the American economy," said Wyoming Senator John Barrasso at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

"We are standing here today to say, we need to deal with the fiscal realities,” added Oklahoma’s James Lankford.

And Sen. Lankford (R-OK) and his colleagues said the reality is that the federal government has hit its credit limit and spending reform is badly needed.

“That’s what happens with American families, if you max out your credit card, you have to have reforms in spending,” said Sen. Barrasso, and that’s exactly what the Republicans in the House of Representatives have done, they come out with a reasonable, responsible proposal."

Democrats don't agree that the cuts called for in the Limit, Save, Grow Act, which the House narrowly passed last week, are reasonable or responsible. On the contrary, they said the GOP is putting the economy needlessly at risk.

“We pay our bills and we should do so without reckless hostage taking from some of the MAGA Republicans in Congress,” said President Biden this week.

Biden has invited congressional leaders, including Speaker McCarthy, to sit down and talk; he said they should handle the debt issue, then separately discuss spending cuts.

“We’ve seen that movie before,” said Lankford, suggesting the administration couldn’t be trusted to follow through on such a promise.

Lankford said linking budget reforms to debt hikes has been done before, most recently in 2011 when Biden was Vice President and the national debt was half what it is now.

“It’s time to be able to deal with this,” Lankford insisted, “we don’t have to solve it all at once, but we do need to start the process of resolving structural issues.”

President Biden is set to meet with McCarthy and the others next Tuesday at the White House.