Recent news finds the U.S.government in a tricky situation as a warning from the U.S. Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, says the federal government will run out of money sometime in October.
This warning comes just hours after a blockage by Republican Senators to increase the debt ceiling, and elaborates that if Congress fails to reach a consensus and raise the debt ceiling it will likely cause the government to default on its debt for the first time in U.S. history.
The course of action needed to prevent a government shutdown has been met with starkly different viewpoints from republican and democratic figures. Mitch McConnell, a republican Senator from Kentucky and the Senate Minority Leader, tweeted out on Sept. 28, “Democrats won’t get bipartisan help paving a path to partisan recklessness. If they want to use fast-track, party-line procedures to ram through trillions more in socialism and inflation, they can use the same tools to handle the debt limit.”
McConnell goes on to state that Democrats should pass an extension to the debt ceiling on their own. President Joe Biden, however, claims that Republicans are intentionally negating the debts they themselves incurred during the previous presidency. “Republicans won’t vote to raise the debt limit to cover their own policies under the previous administration. It’s reckless and dangerous,” he says in a tweet on Tuesday, using the $8 trillion added to the debt under the Trump Administration as evidence.
Regardless, a government shutdown has been temporarily averted as of Thursday, Sept. 30, when Joe Biden signed a short-term appropriations bill that will keep the government running up until Dec. 3.
Though this prevents a total shutdown of federal operations for the time being, a decision to raise the debt ceiling still needs to be made before Oct. 18 to prevent a default on U.S. debt that could result in economic losses. As of the time of this story, though, Republicans remain in direct opposition.
The Eagle Eye is the student run newspaper of Lock Haven University.