'Threatening your paycheck': Chris Murphy nails Republicans' 'unserious' debt ceiling brinksmanship

19 April 2023

United States Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) on Tuesday tore into Republicans in the House of Representatives for clinging to a "laundry list" of right-wing demands in exchange for raising the Treasury Department's borrowing limit.

In a video address posted to Twitter, Murphy cited examples of what Republicans want to enact in exchange for not detonating the global economy:

What's going on with House Republicans and the debt ceiling? You probably saw some news yesterday that Kevin McCarthy, the new Speaker of the House, gave a speech in front of a bunch of Wall Street corporations and billionaires about Republican demands for what they need in order to keep America paying its debts. Every couple years, Congress has to raise the ability of the federal government to borrow money so that we don't default on our debt.

This is normally a pretty routine exercise. It happened a bunch of times under President Obama, a bunch of times under President Trump. But this time is different because Republicans in the House are saying that they will not raise the debt ceiling – forcing a default on American debt – unless Congress enacts a whole bunch of unpopular Republican conservative priorities.

Murphy then explained the dangers posed by the GOP's brinksmanship:

Now, McCarthy's speech yesterday was apparently an attempt to start fleshing out their demands, but nothing's on paper. It's still not clear what they want. But it looks like they want massive cuts in programs that feed poor children, that educate our kids, that house the homeless. It also looks like they want a laundry list of oil and gas company priorities. It, it's still unclear, but however you slice it, this is a terrible idea to basically say to the country that you are willing to crater the American economy by defaulting on American debt unless you get your laundry list of political priorities enacted into law. Because if that becomes the precedent, everybody will do it.

What's to stop me from saying, 'well, unless you pass universal background checks, unless you codify Roe versus Wade, I'm gonna crater the entire economy?' Everybody has important political priorities, but we don't threaten to blow up the entire economy in order to get our agenda into law. And so it's important for you to know the tactics that Republicans are using. They are threatening your paycheck. They are threatening your local services in order to get their unpopular agenda into law.

This has never been done before because the precedent it would set is absolutely disastrous, and it's not like the debt default's gonna happen in a year. It's gonna happen in thirty to sixty days. And so the fact that Republicans are just now giving us their demands tells you how unserious they are about what could be an absolute catastrophe for the US economy.

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