President-elect Donald Trump lashed out at former Speaker Kevin McCarthy as Congress faces a looming deadline to raise the debt ceiling just as the 78-year-old is preparing to return to the White House.
Addressing the debt limit could be one of the first and most challenging hurdles Trump and Republicans face early next year with almost no room for error if they want to avoid economic catastrophe.
Trump has been demanding that lawmakers move to raise the debt limit before he is sworn in, so he does not have to deal with it at the start of his second term, but some GOP lawmakers have pushed back.
Now the president-elect is turning his ire on the top Republican who reached the deal with Democrats to kick the debt limit negotiations into 2025, which was McCarthy when he was speaker.
Trump on Sunday said the debt ceiling deal reached between the former speaker and President Biden in 2023 will go down ‘will go down as one of the dumbest political decisions made in years.’
President-elect Trump slammed McCarthy reaching a deal with President Biden to suspend the debt ceiling in 2023 as ‘one of the dumbest political decisions made in years’
The president-elect vented his frustration in a post on Truth Social ahead of lawmakers returning to Washington at the start of the new Congress this week.
‘There was no reason to do it – NOTHING WAS GAINED, and we got nothing for it – A major reason why that Speakership was lost. It was Biden’s problem, not ours. Now it becomes ours,’ Trump said.
Republicans in the House will hold only a two-seat majority and a three seat majority in the Senate in the 119th Congress, meaning they will likely need the help of Democrats to pass some key pieces of legislation.
McCarthy and Biden reached a deal to avert the U.S. government defaulting on the debt in May 2023 with just days to spare.
In the end, 165 Democrats joined 149 Republicans to approve the bill so the U.S. could avoid the economic disaster.
The bipartisan legislation suspended the debt ceiling until 2025 while also capping federal spending and clawing back some COVID relief funds.
But the move drew harsh criticism from some GOP lawmakers who did not think Republicans demanded enough in the compromise legislation and threatened McCarthy’s gavel.
McCarthy speaking at a press conference with other Republicans after passing the debt ceiling bill in May 2023. McCarthy was ousted by hard-right Republicans as speaker that October after reaching an agreement with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown
The suspension of the debt limit ends on January 1, so Congress will need to move quickly to reach a deal.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote a letter to Congressional leaders just days after Christmas warning that the U.S. was nearing default.
‘Treasury currently expects to reach the new limit between January 14 and January 23, at which time it will be necessary for Treasury to start taking extraordinary measures,’ she wrote.
Such extraordinary measures are temporary steps the Treasury can take to move around funds to help avoid the U.S. hitting the limit and defaulting, but those efforts are temporary and limited.
‘The Democrats must be forced to take a vote on this treacherous issue NOW, during the Biden Administration, and not in June,’ Trump wrote in his post.
The U.S. has never hit the debt limit since it was enacted, but Congress has had to scramble to reach agreements to avoid it on numerous occasions in recent years as the U.S. debt has ballooned.
Trump with McCarthy in February 2020. During the Trump administration the debt ceiling was suspended three times as roughly $8 trillion was added to the national debt during his first term in office
During Trump’s first term in office, the debt limit was suspended three times including in 2017, 2018 and 2019. McCarthy was House majority leader the first two times it was raised under him.
The third time it was suspended during Trump’s first term in September 2019, the then-president signed legislation kicking the deadline down the road two years into 2021.
Under Biden the debt limit was raised once in 2021 and then suspended again in 2023, setting the stage for the latest showdown just as a new administration is set to begin.
Earlier this month, as lawmakers were rushing to pass a spending deal to avoid a separate government shutdown days before Christmas, Trump left members of Congress and Speaker Mike Johnson scrambling in the 11th hour when he suddenly publicly demanded the deal include a provision to address the looming debt limit.
Democrats were enraged when Republicans scuttled a bipartisan deal and opted to vote on a GOP only bill that also addressed the debt limit, but it failed miserably in the House when some Republican lawmakers joined Democrats to reject it.
In the end, Johnson put forward a slimmed down deal that addressed government spending but left out the debt limit provision. It passed just in time to avoid the government shutdown heading into the holidays.
But lawmakers will now have to address the debt limit moving forward, and Johnson’s move could come back to haunt him in his own caucus as some question whether he should remain speaker even as Trump has endorsed Johnson to remain in the position.
The House is set to vote for a speaker for the new 119th Congress on Friday.
