U.S. House Republicans seek to settle debt limit

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday his “intention” is to address the country’s debt limit through the reconciliation process, pushing aside the possibility of negotiating a bipartisan compromise with Democrats.

The GOP is planning to rely on the complicated budget reconciliation process to pass sweeping changes to immigration and border security as well as tax policy, since it allows lawmakers to get around the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.

“The intention is to handle the debt limit in reconciliation, in the process. And that way as the Republican Party, the party in charge of both chambers, we then get to determine the details of that,” Johnson said.

“If it runs through regular order … then you have to have both parties negotiating. And we feel like we’re in better stead to do it ourselves.”

In December, President-elect Donald Trump called on Republicans to completely eliminate the country’s debt limit, or at least suspend it through the end of his four-year term in office.

House GOP leaders put a two-year debt limit suspension in a short-term spending bill that had to pass in December, but removed it after they were unable to get the votes to approve the altered version of the bill.

Trump said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Florida Tuesday that his view on the debt limit is predominately that he doesn’t want a default.

“What I want in terms of debt ceiling, isn’t the ceiling, I just don’t want to see a default. That’s all I want,” Trump said.

“I never talked about spending more money necessarily. All I want to see is no default because nobody knows what would happen if there was a default — it could be 1929 and it could be nothing.”

The previous debt limit suspension, negotiated between House Republicans and the Biden administration, expired Jan. 1, but Congress should have several months to negotiate a new debt limit bill before the country would default.

During that window, the Treasury Department will use accounting maneuvers known as extraordinary measures to keep paying all of the nation’s bills in full and on time. Congress failing to approve a debt limit bill before that so-called X-date would lead the country to default, ending deficit spending and likely sending the country, if not the world, into a financial crisis.

Adding the debt limit to reconciliation will force Republicans to wrap up their work on the entire package before the default date hits.

The Treasury Secretary typically provides Congress with regular updates on when default is likely to happen, revising their projections the closer the country gets to the final date. The first of those letters could come before the end of January.