Sen. Ron Wyden (R-Ore.) on Monday said Democrats shouldn’t help Republicans tackle the debt ceiling this Congress, after a recent forecast warned the government was at risk of defaulting during the summer.
“The economic agenda for Trump and Republicans is about running up the debt and inflicting pain on working families to make billionaires like Elon Musk even wealthier,” the Finance Committee ranking member said in a statement on Monday.
“Democrats should not make their job any easier by helping them raise the debt ceiling,” he said.
His statement came in reaction to a projection released by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a prominent think tank, earlier on Monday.
In the recent report, the group warned that the so-called “X-Date” would likely arrive between mid-July and early October.
Congress last suspended the debt ceiling, which caps how much money the Treasury can owe to pay the country’s bills, as part of a bipartisan deal struck between former President Biden and GOP leadership in 2023. The deal staved off the threat of national default through early 2025.
Then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in January that the government would have to implement “extraordinary measures” after the government was expected to reach the new limit later that month.
Republicans have had ambitious hopes of using a special maneuver known as budget reconciliation to handle the debt ceiling, along with extending President Trump’s signature tax cuts set to expire this year, without Democratic support.
The debt ceiling timeline could present another wrinkle to those plans, however, particularly as some Republicans already warn the agenda could face delays because of internal GOP divisions.
