The warning comes at a time when the White House and Republicans in Congress can’t agree on how to raise the debt limit.
Elon Musk, the CEO of both Tesla and Twitter, has been asking the US government to cut its spending. On Wednesday, he said that a debt default was just a matter of time.
“Given how much the government spends, it’s not a question of if we’ll default, but when,” Musk wrote in response to a White House tweet that said the Republican plan might be to let the US default on its debt.
In a speech at the New York Stock Exchange earlier this week, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, said that the US debt couldn’t be paid and is a threat to the country. He said that Republicans wouldn’t let the country stop paying its debts, which was a jab at President Biden for not being willing to talk about ways to cut costs.
McCarthy also said that the House of Representatives would soon vote on a bill to raise the debt cap through 2023.
US Vice President Joe Biden asked the Republicans to first share their budget plan. The White House made it clear that it would not talk about raising the debt ceiling until the GOP released its response to the administration’s March budget plan.
Late last month, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the Republicans were threatening to wreck the US economy. She said that it was time for the GOP to “stop playing games” and agree to pass a “clean” debt ceiling bill.
The US has hit its $31.4 trillion debt limit, so the Treasury Department told Congress in January that “extraordinary measures” would be taken until June 5 to keep paying the government’s bills. Then, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asked lawmakers to “act quickly” to raise the limits on borrowing so that the government wouldn’t have to stop paying its bills.
