U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says Congress must increase the nation’s debt ceiling to avoid financial disaster.
“America has paid its bills on time since 1789. And not to do so would produce an economic and financial catastrophe,” Yellen said Feb. 6 on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“And every responsible member of Congress must agree to raise the debt ceiling. It’s something that simply can’t be negotiable.”
Less than a week prior to Yellen’s comment, Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) said the exact opposite.
“Democrats’ demands that Republicans vote for a clean debt limit increase to accommodate trillions of dollars of new spending Republicans opposed is nothing more than an irresponsible, cynical, political stunt,” Hern, chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, wrote to committee members on Feb. 1.
Republicans are seeking spending concessions in exchange for increasing the debt ceiling. President Joe Biden has refused to enter into negotiations on the subject because failure to raise the debt ceiling would put the full faith and credit of the nation at risk.
Nevertheless, Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) met to begin talks on the subject on Feb. 1.
The following day, Biden and McCarthy sat side by side at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, and both spoke cordially about their initial discussion. Yet both remain committed to their respective positions.
“We will not pass a clean debt ceiling without some form of spending reform,” McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol later in the day.
The debt ceiling is the statutory limit on government borrowing. The current debt ceiling is $3.4 trillion.
Since the United States has operated on a deficit budget in all but four years since 1970, ongoing borrowing is required to meet the spending obligations already passed by Congress.
The United States approached its debt ceiling in January. To forestall a financial crisis, Yellen took “extraordinary measures” to keep the nation below that limit until sometime in June.
So far, Republicans have avoided giving specifics about the spending cuts they plan to make. However, they have said that Social Security and Medicare would not be targeted for reductions.
Those programs total more than $1.8 trillion annually, more than all discretionary spending programs combined.
The president will release his budget on March 9.
Yellen, despite her dire warning of financial catastrophe if the debt ceiling is not raised, is optimistic that it will be. She said that Congress has always recognized that this is their responsibility, and it “needs to do [so] again.”
