White House insists looming debt ceiling crisis be dealt without conditions
business-standard.com/article/international/white-house-insists-looming-debt-ceiling-crisis-be-dealt-without-conditions-123011800104_1.html
January 18, 2023
The White House on Tuesday insisted that the looming debt ceiling crisis be dealt with without conditions and there is no room for negotiations on this.
This should not be political brinkmanship. We should be dealing with the debt ceiling without conditions. It is important. We're not going to work our way around this; we're not going to negotiate on this. This is the basic duty of Congress, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at her daily news conference.
In the last administration, the Democrats and Republicans were able to deal with the debt limit three times. Let's not forget that, she said.
Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a letter to Congress raised the red flag on an imminent debt crisis. Given the sharp differences between the ruling Democrats and the opposition Republicans, who enjoy a majority in the House of Representatives, not handling the issue on time might result in the United States defaulting on its debt commitment, which has never happened in the past.
Republicans have so far insisted on not raising the debt limit which currently is USD 31.381 trillion as approved by Congress last month. This debt limit is the total amount of money that the US government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations and is scheduled to reach its statutory limit on January 19.
The United States is the only industrialized nation to have such an arbitrary institution as a debt ceiling, but the players who keep ending up in the same standoff aren't exactly looking to kill it, Time magazine said Tuesday.
The New York Times warned that a default would most likely rattle markets and carry big risks, no matter how the Federal Reserve and Treasury try to curb the fallout.
In her letter to the Congressional leadership, Yellen asserted that it is critical that Congress act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit. Failure to meet the government's obligations would cause irreparable harm to the US economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability, she warned.
Indian American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, who is a Democrat, has called for an increase in the debt limit. If we don't raise the debt ceiling, we'll go into default, and only one default is enough to nuke the economy, he said.
Opposing an increase in the debt limit, Republican Congressman Ralph Norman, said that USD31.4 trillion is a massive amount of debt. The government owes this money because politicians in Washington simply will not stop spending. This has been the case for decades, and Republicans are just as much to blame as Democrats, he said.
We'll have to see how negotiations play out, but the bottom line is this: Republicans need to see some degree of incremental spending cuts in these debt ceiling negotiations. An agreement without some reasonable cuts is unacceptable, Norman said.
Our national debt is approaching a level not just harmful to economic growth and irresponsible to future generations, but dangerous to our national security today. We are entering treacherous waters and must couple any debt ceiling increases with real reforms, said Congresswoman Victoria Spartz.
Huge amounts of politically directed spending and crony capitalism have created a significant oligopoly problem in nearly every market sector - not much different from oligarchs ruling in post-socialist countries, she said.
''Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a joint statement said that Congress must act on legislation to prevent a disastrous default, meet America's obligations and protect its full faith and credit.''
A default forced by extreme MAGA Republicans could plunge the country into a deep recession and lead to even higher costs for America's working families on everything from mortgages and car loans to credit card interest rates, they said.
America pays its debts. Period. There should be no political brinkmanship with the debt limit. It's reckless for Speaker McCarthy and MAGA Republicans to try and use the full faith and credit of the United States as a political bargaining chip. A default would be catastrophic for America's working families and lead to higher costs, Schumer said in another statement.
Nunes memo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunes_memo
'' The Nunes memo (formally titled Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation) is a four-page memorandum written for U.S. Representative Devin Nunes by his staff and released to the public by the Republican-controlled committee on February 2, 2018.''
The memo alleges that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) "may have relied on politically motivated or questionable sources" to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in October 2016 and in three subsequent renewals on Trump adviser Carter Page in the early phases of the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
Nunes was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at the time and was a supporter of the FISA surveillance extension. Former Trump campaign CEO and chief strategist Steve Bannon has described Nunes as Trump's second-strongest ally in Congress. In April 2017, Nunes stepped aside from chairing the House Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation while the House Ethics Committee conducted an inquiry into whether Nunes had violated applicable ethics rules with respect to his apparent secret coordination with White House officials. Nunes then began his own parallel secret investigation. The Ethics Committee investigation ended in December 2017, after which Nunes claimed that he had never recused himself.
Republican legislators who favored the public release of the memo argued that the memo presents evidence that a group of politically-biased FBI employees abused the FISA warrant process for the purpose of undermining the Donald Trump presidency. These congressmen alleged that there was excessive and improper dependence on the Steele dossier, which was funded in part by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee when the Justice Department applied to the FISA court to conduct electronic surveillance on Trump aide Carter Page during the course of the campaign.
Political allies of Donald Trump attempted to use the memo to pivot attention away from the Special Counsel investigation of the Trump presidential campaign's role in Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Prior to the release of the memo, news media reported that Trump told his associates that the release of the memo would discredit the investigation.
''A social media campaign, under the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo, emerged in mid-January 2018 to publicly release the memo despite some of its classified contents. ''
Journalists and national security advocacy groups reported that Russian-linked bots on Twitter helped spread the controversial hashtag. Trump approved the release of the Republican document over the objections of the FBI and the U.S. Intelligence Community. The FBI issued a rare statement expressing "grave concerns" about factual omissions and the accuracy of the memo. Within Congress, the anticipation of the release of the memo sparked controversy, mainly along political lines. House Republicans released the memo on February 2, 2018.
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee prepared a classified 10-page rebuttal of claims in the Nunes memo, which was initially blocked for release. After the Nunes memo was released to the public, the House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously to release the Democrats' memo. On February 9, Trump blocked the release of the Democrats' memo, saying the committee should redact classified and sensitive material before releasing it to the public. A redacted version of the Democratic memo was ultimately released on February 24.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180921061353/https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/memo_and_white_house_letter.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20180921061353/https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/memo_and_white_house_letter.pdf
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