House Republicans tell Senate to pass its own bill on debt limit

WASHINGTON – House Republicans challenged the U.S. Senate to pass a debt limit bill of its own and sought to maintain pressure on President Joe Biden to hold talks on spending cuts they’ve linked to an increase in the nation’s borrowing limit.

A Republican-only debt proposal passed by the House last week would cut $4.8 trillion in domestic spending as the price for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling. Biden has insisted the two topics shouldn’t be linked and his administration has warned that a U.S. default would be disastrous for Americans and the economy.

“For all that we hear from our Senate friends, they’ve yet to pass anything,” Rep. Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “If they’ve got a better idea, I want to see that bill and tell them to pass it through the Senate.”

The stalemate in Washington risks pushing the Treasury toward a U.S. payments default by an “X date” that may arrive as soon as June.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s success in passing the Republican bill created an opening for the GOP to put the ball in Biden’s court.

“The president has been in hiding for two months,” Scalise said, referring to the last meeting between Biden and McCarthy.

At the same time, Scalise and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said in Sunday television interviews that Republicans won’t allow the U.S. to default on its debts.

Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware who’s a co-chair of Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign, cited the president’s previous offers to discuss “annual spending, the appropriations process” with Republicans. Negotiations on “the mix of revenue increases and spending cuts that make sense going forward” are on the table, he said on “This Week.”

Republicans “are demanding hostage negotiations where they will crash the full faith and credit” of the U.S., Coons said.

The risky impasse has prompted calls by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin for Biden to meet with McCarthy for talks and is leading some Democrats to look to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for possible Republican help in the Senate to raise the borrowing limit.

McConnell could suspend the impasse by getting the Senate to a point where the U.S. continues paying its bills while Congress negotiates, Sen. Chris Van Hollen said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“What you’ve got to do is not threaten the detonation of the economy,” the Maryland Democrat said.