According to the White House, Republicans’ debt limit proposal could cause major medical harm to children and adults.
During a press briefing on Friday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the debt limit proposal unveiled by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy would “give asthma to our children” and “make it easier for oil companies to use toxic chemicals that cause severe burns, damage people’s eyes, and quite literally melt bones” — among other things.
Jean-Pierre began by praising President Joe Biden’s executive order meant to “advance environmental justice for all,” but her briefing took a quick and dramatic turn.
After briefly mentioning the executive order, Jean-Pierre said, “Speaker McCarthy unveiled a ransom note holding our economy hostage. It’s a 320-page plan to kill jobs, fill our cities with smog, and give asthma to our children,” according to the White House transcript.
The 320-page plan Jean-Pierre was referring to is the “Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023” that would raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion or through March 2024, whichever comes first.
President Biden has called the plan a “nonstarter” and said, “That’s the MAGA economic agenda: spending cuts for working and middle class folks. It’s not about fiscal discipline. It’s about cutting benefits for folks that they don’t seem to care much about,” Politico reported.
The debt ceiling puts a limit on how much debt the country can undertake to pay off its bills and other responsibilities. Currently that limit stands at around $31.4 trillion, and according to the Congressional Budget Office, that limit was reached on Jan. 19.
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Since that time, the Treasury Department has been able to take what is known as “extraordinary measures” to operate without defaulting on its debt, but those measures could run out as early as July.
Since Republicans control the House, they have the power to raise the debt ceiling, allowing the Treasury Department to borrow money to pay off its debts.
To date, however, they continue to stand firm against the president, insisting that any action to raise the debt ceiling must be accompanied by significant fiscal reform.
When Jean-Pierre commented that McCarthy’s plan would cause asthma, damage people’s eyes, fill cities with smog, and literally melt bones, she was actually talking about an economic plan that has little to do with the environment.
The plan offered by McCarthy, as reported by The Hill, would repeal Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, boost domestic oil and gas production, rescind unused COVID funds, revert funding for 2024 to 2022 levels, and impose limits on government spending.
“This responsible legislation, which is led by our Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington, would responsibly raise the debt limit into next year and provide more than $4.5 trillion in savings to American taxpayers,” McCarthy said from the House floor.
At this point, Republicans and Democrats are blaming each other for coming this close to defaulting on the country’s debt.
While Biden seems unwilling to negotiate for anything less than a clean debt ceiling increase with no stipulations, Republicans seem unwilling to back down and are calling Biden to the negotiating table.
“House Republicans have a plan. The Senate does not. And the President is ignoring the debt crisis. President Biden has a choice: come to the table and stop playing partisan political games or cover his ears, refuse to negotiate, and risk bumbling his way into the first default in our nation’s history,” McCarthy said, seemingly drawing a line in the sand for this issue.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
