Trump Urges McConnell to Use Debt Ceiling to Derail Biden’s Spending Bill

This combination of pictures created on Feb. 16, 2021, shows then U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 27, 2020, and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Capitol Hill on Feb. 5, 2020. Saul Loeb, Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday called on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to leverage the impending debt ceiling deadline to “totally kill” the Democrats’ social welfare bill.

According to the Treasury Department, lawmakers have until Dec. 15 to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

In a statement, Trump said McConnell “must be fully prepared to use the DEBT CEILING in order to totally kill the Democrat’s new Social Spending (Wasting!) Bill, which will change our Country forever.”

“Use the Debt Ceiling, Mitch, show strength and courage. Our Country is being destroyed,” Trump added.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged lawmakers two weeks ago to raise or suspend the debt limit, projecting that the Treasury may run out of funds on Dec. 15.

If the debt ceiling is not suspended by the deadline and several extraordinary measures are exhausted, the United States faces the risk of defaulting on its debt obligations. The nation has never defaulted, but prior debt ceiling crises led to rating downgrades which resulted in billions of dollars in additional borrowing costs.

In the same statement, Trump criticized McConnell for allowing the Democrats to split their spending measure by voting for an infrastructure bill that was approved by Congress and signed by Biden earlier this month. McConnell and several other Republicans voted for the infrastructure bill.

The former president said that the passage of the infrastructure bill made it easier for the Democrats to push through the bigger social spending bill.

“Mitch and the Republican Senators had them beaten, but didn’t know it, and we ended up with the Unfrastructure [sic] Bill, which is only 11% infrastructure,” Trump said. “Worse, he allowed a splitting of the Bills (with 19 votes, including himself), which makes the Dems path for the even worse Bill a much easier one.”

McConnell reiterated his opposition to the Democrats spending bill on Tuesday, vowing that no Republican senator would vote for it.

“The single best thing we can do to fight inflation is to kill Democrats’ multi-trillion-dollar reckless taxing and spending spree,” McConnell wrote on Twitter.

“Most of us feel that the single best thing we can do to fight inflation right now would be to kill this bill,” the minority leader told a reporter earlier the same day.

McConnell and Trump have been at odds this year following McConnell’s criticism of Trump’s actions tied to the breaching of the Capital on Jan. 6.