Trump said at a CNN town hall this week that the GOP should “default” if they don’t get spending cuts to raise the debt ceiling. Senator JD Vance defended Trump’s comments to Axios, saying he was only giving “political advice.” Still, other Republican senators said default is not an option. Loading Loading something.
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Former President Donald Trump weighed in on the debt ceiling crisis this week, and he believes Republicans’ best bet is to face the economic catastrophe head on. Ohio’s freshman Republican senator is listening.
During a CNN town hall Wednesday night, the network’s anchor Kaitlan Collins he asked How Trump sees the current debt situation in the country. Since January, both sides of the aisle have been fighting over the best approach to raising the debt ceiling and ensuring America can keep paying its bills, but the country is getting dangerously close to running out of money, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said. could default on his debt from June 1.
Trump thinks Republicans should not change the bill that trades a debt ceiling increase for big spending cuts, even though President Joe Biden has maintained he will accept nothing more than a net increase, with no cuts attached .
“I say to the Republicans, congressmen and senators, if you don’t get massive cuts you’re going to have to make a default,” Trump said. “And I don’t think they’ll do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely give in because you don’t want that to happen. But it’s better than what we’re doing now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors.”
“You might as well do it now because you’ll do it later,” he added. “Because we have to save this country. Our country is dying. Our country is being destroyed by stupid people, by very stupid people.”
Senator JD Vance argued that Trump was only trying to help his party. Vance he said Axios that “what the president does is really give political advice…not financial advice.”
“It’s basically saying that if Democrats are going to play a game of chicken, Republicans have to be willing to play that game as well,” Vance said, adding that “I think what President Trump is doing is fundamentally the right thing, which is Republicans can’t preemptively break ranks here or we’re going to have a terrible negotiating position in the talks with Biden.”
Still, most lawmakers in both parties agree that a default would be bad, and Congress should do its job to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley, for example, he said Axios that he disagreed with Trump’s comments and that “there is no world in which [a default] Fellow Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis echoed that sentiment, saying “a flaw has to be avoided, period.”
“I think we should do our job,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, previously told Insider. “I think we shouldn’t be paying off our debt. Congress should be doing the job that, without exception, we’ve done up until now.”
Biden was scheduled to meet with top congressional lawmakers on Friday for the second time this week to discuss the debt ceiling, but multiple reports said the meeting has been adjourned so staff can continue to move forward with negotiations on their end. Politician reported that potential areas of compromise could include energy-allowing reforms and the rollback of unspent pandemic funds, but people familiar with the administration told Politico that Biden will not change student loan forgiveness and Medicaid and assistance food
