On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell(R-Kentucky) told President Joe Biden that Republicans won’t vote for another debt ceiling increase when the temporary suspension ends in December.
“Last night, Republicans filled the leadership vacuum that has troubled the Senate since January. I write to inform you that I will not provide such assistance again if your all-Democrat government drifts into another avoidable crisis,” McConnell wrote in the letter to the president.
McConnell’s letter comes as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) recently criticized Republican lawmakers for playing a “dangerous and risky partisan game” while the Democratic party tried to save the country.
The Senate majority leader’s remarks infuriated Republicans, including McConnell, who called Schumer’s behavior “childish.”
“This childish behavior only further alienated the Republican members who helped facilitate this short-term patch,” McConnell stated in the Friday letter. “It has poisoned the well even further.”
“I am writing to make it clear that in light of Senator Schumer’s hysterics and my grave concerns about the ways that another vast, reckless, partisan spending bill would hurt Americans and help China, I will not be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement,” he added.
On Thursday, the Senate voted to temporarily suspend the U.S. debt limit until December, a measure to avoid a national default. The vote passed 50-48 in the Senate.
The debt crisis surfaced as Biden’s ambitious spending bill faced a deadlock inside Congress. Refusing to increase the debt limit was a Republican’s initial effort to stop the Biden administration from passing the $3.5 trillion bill.
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona), two Senate Democratic centrists, now hold keys to the Democratic’s most ambitious bill in generations.
In a 50-50 Senate, the Democrats can’t lose a single vote from their side if they want to pass a bill through budget reconciliation.
