WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats’ position “remains the same” on the need to pass a “clean” bipartisan increase in the government’s debt ceiling, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday.
In his speech on the Senate floor, Schumer gave no timetable for a possible Senate vote on a debt limit bill with no spending cuts attached.
“Our position remains the same. Both parties can do what we have done in the past, the last three times default faced us. Both parties should pass a clean, bipartisan bill to avoid default together before we hit the critical June 1 deadline,” Schumer said in a speech to the Senate.
On Monday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, in a letter to Congress, said the federal government could be unable by June 1 to meet all of its payment obligations without legislation to raise Washington’s borrowing limit.
Democrats have warned that would trigger a historic government default with significant consequences for the U.S. economy and global markets.
In response, Democratic President Joe Biden on Monday called the top four Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress to a White House meeting set for May 9.
So far neither Democrats nor Republicans, who demand steep spending cuts as part of any debt limit increase, have moved off of their positions.
The No. 2 Senate Republican, John Thune, called for a compromise and warned: “No matter how much President Biden would like his word on the debt ceiling to be law, the fact of the matter is that in our system of government, the president does not have absolute power.”
Late on Monday, Schumer began navigating two bills through the Senate: a clean debt limit extension, which could be followed by a potential bipartisan budget bill.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Katharine Jackson and David Morgan; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
