President-elect Trump said Thursday he supports lifting the debt ceiling, pushing the issue to the center of government spending talks with just days left to avoid a government shutdown.
playing cards told NBC News He said in an interview that the “smartest thing” lawmakers could do would be to eliminate the debt ceiling. Trump had said a day earlier that lawmakers needed to raise the debt ceiling as part of any deal to fund the government.
“Democrats say they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I'll lead the charge,” President Trump told NBC News.
The president-elect claimed that the debt ceiling “means nothing except psychologically.” The debt ceiling limits the amount the federal government can borrow to pay for existing spending, but does not allow for new spending.
President Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) reached an agreement in May 2023 that would raise the debt ceiling for two years and apply a new cap to federal spending over the same period.
That would raise the issue next June, when Trump and Republicans hope to extend tax cuts first passed in 2017.
President Trump and his allies watered down the roughly 1,500-page bill announced Tuesday night. The bill was a compromise between congressional leaders that would extend government funding through March and fund a variety of other priorities.
Central to Republican opposition were a number of additions to the continuation of government funding through March 14th.
President Trump has expressed opposition to raising lawmakers' pay and other provisions, but has increasingly focused on the debt ceiling, saying he wants to avoid any confrontation on the issue when he takes office next year. There is.
Bharat Ramamurti, a former economic adviser to President Biden, argued that Democrats should use the conflict to push for an end to the debt ceiling.
Ramamurti: “Democrats will never use the debt ceiling to extract policy concessions from Republicans.'' Post on social platform X. “Their sole purpose is for Republicans to threaten the global economy and extract concessions from Democrats. Let's end this travesty and win a victory for economic stability in the process.”
