The debt ceiling fight gripping Washington this month bears echoes of a similar clash in 2011, when a Democratic president squared off against a Republican House in a fight that dragged on for months, pushed the country to the brink of default and led to the first credit downgrade in U.S. history. Except this time…
Author: Mike Lillis
George Santos is indicted: Five takeaways
Federal prosecutors brought the hammer down on Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) on Wednesday, charging the embattled first-term lawmaker from Long Island with 13 felony counts that include wire fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds. The move was not unexpected. Santos, who maintains his innocence, has faced intense scrutiny since even before his swearing-in…
GOP, McCarthy now face even heavier debt ceiling lift
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) pulled out all the stops last week to move a debt ceiling bill through the House, twisting arms, modifying language and cutting last-minute deals with leery Republicans to send the package to the Senate by the narrowest of margins. That might have been the easy part. The next step — finding…
House GOP inches closer to winning votes for debt ceiling package
Republican leaders on Wednesday nibbled away at the GOP opposition to their debt-ceiling bill, bringing the package a step closer to passing through the House this week. Despite a series of last-minute changes to the legislation, however, a number of holdouts remain, setting the stage for a nail-biter of a vote when Speaker Kevin McCarthy…
House GOP leaders hit snags as members harden ‘no’ votes on debt limit bill
House GOP leaders’ furious scramble to secure the support needed to pass a debt limit bill is not going well. On Tuesday evening, the prognosis for the package was looking even worse than the shaky ground it stood on before lawmakers left Washington last week. A small but consequential number of GOP lawmakers on Tuesday…
Republicans race to secure support for debt ceiling package
Republican leaders are racing this week to secure GOP support for legislation combining steep spending cuts with a debt ceiling hike — their official opening bid in the high-stakes standoff with President Biden over how to prevent a government default this summer. The vote is the first real test in the nascent Speakership of Kevin…
Key Democrat fears only a market crash will resolve debt limit impasse
A key Democrat is warning this week that only a stock market collapse will break the partisan stalemate over raising the debt ceiling and preventing a government default over the summer. Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a former Goldman Sachs executive and senior member of the Financial Services Committee, said the Republicans’ opposition to a debt…
Centrists float fallback plan if Biden-McCarthy debt limit talks falter
A bipartisan group of House centrists is floating a fallback plan to prevent a government default later in the year as the debt ceiling battle between President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has yielded no breakthroughs. The Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of 64 moderate lawmakers split evenly between the parties, has been quietly…
Democrats vow fight on gun reform, but don’t expect any wins
In the wake of America’s latest school massacre, House Democrats are pushing once again for tougher checks on firearms and new limits on who can own them. But as Congress returns to Washington this week following a long spring recess, even some of Capitol Hill’s most ardent gun reformers say they don’t expect last month’s tragedy…
Democrats seek negotiating advantage in GOP budget turmoil
House Democrats are hoping Republicans’ internal clashes over the size and substance of their budget-cutting plans will lend President Biden a tactical boost in the looming fights over the debt ceiling and government spending. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has, for months, demanded that Biden negotiate steep spending cuts and other policy concessions as a condition…