Top GOP negotiator: US won’t default if Biden, Senate ‘recognize the gravity’ of situation

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) on Sunday gave a conditional guarantee that the U.S. won’t default on its debt, as long as President Biden and the Senate “recognize the gravity” of the situation.

“Can you guarantee as a leader in the United States Congress that the United States of America will not default on its debt?” host Dana Bash asked Emmer on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I can, assuming that our president and the Schumer Senate recognize the gravity of the problem. This is no longer about politics. We have passed a debt ceiling solution,” Emmer said. “House Republicans will not allow America to default on its debt. We showed that last week. The solution is in the Senate right now.”

The House last week passed a bill to raise the borrowing limit that includes sweeping spending cuts. But the legislation, headed now to the Senate, has little chance of getting through the Democratic-controlled chamber.

The White House has been clear that it wants a “clean” debt limit increase not tied to any spending cuts or policy changes and has knocked the House GOP bill seen as the party’s opening offer.

Emmer on Sunday accused the White House of having “had no ideas whatsoever, except jacking up taxes and spending even more money” since the start of this Congress.

“And … the Schumer Senate, they have no ideas either. It’s just repeated rhetoric. So, to say that it’s dead on arrival in the Senate, when you have got even Joe Manchin suggesting support for this type of approach, I think that’s not exactly accurate,” he said of the House Republicans’ bill and referring to the Democratic senator from West Virginia.

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