Failure to hike debt ceiling would be ‘catastrophic’: White House
If Congress doesn’t raise the country’s borrowing limit, the results will be “catastrophic,” a top White House official said Sunday, the latest in a series of warnings from the Biden administration.
The comments came as Congress has been deadlocked on the issue since the federal government reached its borrowing limit in January. Since then, the Treasury Department has used an array of financial tricks to keep the government running.
“We’d be remiss if we did not worry, which is why we keep explaining how catastrophic a default would be for not only this economy, but it would have ramifications across the globe,” Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
“It would be absolutely catastrophic,” she added. “We should not play political games with it. We need to get on with the job.”
President Biden has insisted that GOP lawmakers vote to approve raising the debt ceiling with no strings attached.
On Thursday, he released a budget plan that reduces deficits by nearly $3 trillion over a decade, though House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) quickly rejected it.
Members of the House’s far-right Freedom Caucus shared their own budget plan Friday, spelling out spending cuts in exchange for agreeing to lift the debt ceiling.
Their demands including reducing discretionary domestic spending by almost 25%.
Speaking Sunday, Young dismissed the Freedom Caucus’ plan.
“They would cut programs that … working families need. They would cut and make in jeopardy our national security,” she said. “And guess what? It wouldn’t reduce the deficit by one penny.”