National Report
Today, President Joe Biden (D) met with the bipartisan Congressional leadership on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-20, Bakersfield), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies (D-08, NYC), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to discuss the pending default on our nation’s debt by forgoing further extension of the debt limit or elimination altogether.
The attempt by McCarthy to tie the current budget and the forthcoming negotiations to the debt limit is an untenable position, akin to calling for a game of Russian Roulette, rather than a rational response of paying the nation’s bills which are already owned. If the artificial conflict is to be truly measured then the increases in debt due to the income tax reductions during the Donald J Trump (R) administration should be front and center and the COVID period a paramount consideration. As we have said previously if the federal government followed our state and established a Capital Budget then a significant number of obligations can be separated from the federal debt and become bonds.