the government has got to stop spending money. as you say, they wasted three times, this would be the fourth time. so, what is the meaning of it? unless they actually stop the spending. dana, i saw that you have, or started working on a new book, i keep my eye on you like you keep your eye on me that s right your nubuck on the house republican majority to be published next year, and you that you are going into it with an open mind, with a working title, fools on the hill. and then, in your weekly column for the washington post, you wrote, quote, save the world economy or his own job, mccarthy can t decide. please, explain the dimension here. i disagree with some of what rick said, but he is right. i think mccarthy got a pretty good deal. you know what? you have a lot of leverage when you have a lot of people in your caucus who don t mind shooting the hostage. you know, matt gaetz is even saying he s holding the debt limit hostage, and that s what
all of this points to positive signs, but it s still important to remember, as americans are watching this, we have just a couple of weeks left until that projected default deadline in which so much could good wrong. we are already seeing signs of catastrophic impacts that could happen because of the threat of a default. republicans sticking to their guns, wanting spending reforms in conjunction with the deadly ceiling hike. president biden and democratic leadership, meanwhile, saying that republicans are holding the debt limit hostage. here is what one democratic congressman, barbara lee, had to say to all evil she earlier, when asked about what motivations she thinks speaker mccarthy has done all of this. we don t know what kind of agreements he made, but we do know that his very fragile. he s going in trying to paying our bills, our debt, raising the debt ceiling to budget cuts, and he s holding the american people hostage. what he s trying to do is to wreak havoc on the lives
jeopardize social security payments and payments to members of the military. it would cause interest rates to spike. we want to do what the republicans have done multiple times in previous administrations which is raise the debt limit, and by the way i would note in 2019 the shoe was on the other foot. democrats controlled the house and there s a republican in the white house, a republican in the senate. even though democrats had deep misgivings about the trump administration s economic policy you didn t see democrats holding the debt limit hostage in order to get their agenda through. that would be irresponsible. what we want is the same set of conditions this time around. would president biden rather the u.s. default on its debt obligations than accept a build that includes any spending cuts? that s not the situation before us as we speak, and i would note that if we pass the bill that the republicans want, that, too also, do incredible economic harm. remember m economic analysis
aisle. take a listen without exaggeration. american debt is a ticking time bomb. that will detonate unless we take serious, responsible action. yet. hours president biden reacted to this issue. he has done nothing. he went all the way to wall street and gave us no more details. no more facts. no new information at all. i ll be blunt if speaker mccarthy continues in this direction. we are headed to default. the white house is also slamming mccarthy, calling him irresponsible and dangerous for trying to take the debt limit hostage. their official position is that republicans should raise the debt ceiling without any conditions. that s something republicans did multiple times under former president donald trump. so we ll see if this new kevin mccarthy strategy of passing a house gop only bill works and if it changes the minds of the white house, alex
pointed out, and you pointed out, he wants to do it without conditions, and republicans say no, there needs to be conditions. and an op-ed in the wall street journal said in holding the debt limit hostage, treasury secretary janet yellen says republicans could do harm to the u.s. economy. at what doesn t does not raising the debt ceiling become less irresponsible than continuing current policy and allowing the country to go broke? the current federal debt is more than $31 trillion. i remember back in the days of the waning weeks of the clinton administration, they were crafting a plan to pay down the then $5.7 trillion debt. i mean we got no hope of ever paying this thing off, but it s just going to continue to balloon out of control and out of sight. that s exactly right. look, senator graham makes a good points, the irresponsibility here is not putting the country back on a