Speaker McCarthy pressures Biden on debt ceiling

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy Thursday escalated demands for President Joe Biden and Democrats to avoid a debt-ceiling crisis by embracing the plan that House Republicans passed the day before on party lines.

“The Senate’s done nothing,” McCarthy said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power.” “They haven’t done anything on the debt ceiling and the president’s ignored this problem.”

Still buoyant from Wednesday’s passage of his proposal requiring broad spending cuts in return for raising the nation’s debt limit, McCarthy said House Republicans were the ones serious about averting a potentially catastrophic U.S. debt default in upcoming weeks.

McCarthy said Biden put the U.S. economy in “jeopardy” by not negotiating with him. The last time they met on the debt ceiling, he said, was Feb. 1 — 85 days ago. 

Senate Democrats have declared McCarthy’s debt ceiling bill, which passed 217-215, dead on arrival. And Biden continues to say he won’t entertain any strings-attached bargaining in order to raise the $31.4 trillion limit, such as spending cuts. He has indicated he may be open to “separate” budget talks.

McCarthy stressed there is room for compromise on the Republican demands but Biden must open talks.

“There’s two things I will not do, Mr. President. I will not raise taxes and we will not raise a clean debt ceiling. But we can talk about everything else,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy brushed aside doubts he would be able secure passage of an eventual compromise given his fractious GOP conference.

”That’s a great question, because that’s the same question I had all week whether I could pass this bill,” McCarthy said, still reveling in the victory. “We can get something together.”

McCarthy’s plan would increase the U.S. debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion, which would stave off a U.S. payments default until March 31, 2024 at the latest. In exchange, Republicans demand $4.8 trillion in budget cuts, defying Biden’s demands for a so-called clean increase.

Asked if he’d ever been targeted by pranksters in the way Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell was tricked into a conversation with an impostor pretending to be Ukraine’s president, McCarthy said he’d been tested but didn’t fall for the trick.

“I have had the pranksters try to get me and they did not,” he said, adding his staff double-checked “and found that they were pranksters.”