Democrats Balk At Donald Trump’s Surprise New Demand As Government Shutdown Looms

WASHINGTON ― House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Thursday said “hard pass” on President-elect Donald Trump’s suggestion that Congress get rid of the debt ceiling as part of a government funding bill.

“GOP extremists want House Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so that House Republicans can lower the amount of your Social Security check,” Jeffries wrote on social media. “Hard pass.”

The statement from Jeffries suggests Democrats are in no mood to help House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) out of the mess he created by apparently abandoning a government funding bill he finalized with Democrats this week. Absent a deal, the government will partially shut down at midnight on Friday.

At a press conference, Jeffries said Congress can avoid a shutdown if Republicans “stick with the bipartisan agreement that they themselves negotiated.”

Jeffries declined to rule out eventually supporting a slimmed-down version of the agreement, however. He said the debt ceiling demand was “premature at best.”

The “continuing resolution” agreement Johnson unveiled Tuesday would have kept the federal government open until March, provided billions in disaster aid and assistance to farmers, given lawmakers their first raise in years, and transferred a piece of federal land to the D.C. government for the potential development of a new football stadium.

Billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy launched a campaign against the legislation on Wednesday, encouraging Republicans to reject the deal, and by the end of the day Musk, who is in close contact with Republicans, including Johnson, declared it was dead.

Trump then announced he wanted Congress to pass the continuing resolution with just the farm and disaster aid, and he added a new term: the elimination of the federal government’s borrowing limit, a legal requirement that Congress authorize the federal government to borrow money that lawmakers already ordered it to borrow in prior legislation.

Trump’s debt ceiling demand was surprising ― nobody on Capitol Hill had been talking about it since the next debt ceiling deadline won’t be until early next year. And it’s something Republicans have long used as leverage to extract concessions from Democrats, such as spending cuts to government programs. Democrats have always hated the debt ceiling and many have said it should be eliminated altogether, just like Trump suggested.

“The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge,” Trump said in a Thursday interview with NBC’s Garrett Haake.

To some progressive Democrats who have long pushed for getting rid of the debt ceiling, that sounded like welcome news.

“I agree with President-elect Trump that Congress should terminate the debt limit and never again govern by hostage taking,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said.

“This is a long-term goal, critical to derisking the U.S. economy, and, ironically, protecting us from the dangers of reckless Republican hostage taking,” added Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).

However, it’s unclear whether eliminating the debt ceiling for good is actually on the table. House Republicans are reportedly drafting legislation that would fund the government and raise the debt ceiling for two years, making Trump’s life easier during his second term by helping pass his agenda of tax cuts.

It’s also unclear whether the bill includes any spending cuts — as conservative lawmakers have demanded in prior years in exchange for lifting the debt limit. Johnson will need their support if he wants to pass anything at all.

“The Republicans lie more often than they accidentally tell the truth, and so I don’t have at this point much clarity that they’re serious about anything,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told HuffPost. “I wouldn’t take them at their word on anything, and I want to understand if they say suddenly they’re for eliminating that limit, why they wouldn’t just put it right back in place the next day.”

Other House Democrats seemed to agree with Jeffries, saying they might favor getting rid of the debt ceiling, but not as part of this funding deal.

“Where was this demand to raise the debt ceiling during all the negotiations until yesterday?” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) told HuffPost. “I agree with getting rid of it all together, but the timing right now is crucial.”