Statement: Congress must avoid default

Media Contacts

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy reached a deal over the weekend to suspend the debt ceiling for two years and avoid defaulting on the nation’s financial obligations. 

In response, Doug Phelps, president and executive director of The Public Interest Network, released the following statement:

“The debt ceiling should not be used as leverage for working through partisan differences on the federal budget.  Nonetheless, it’s obviously good news for the country that President Biden and Congressional leadership have managed to find, and propose, a compromise to avoid a default. 

“By their nature, a divided electorate and divided government requires compromise.  No one loves the result, including us. For one, it doesn’t significantly attack our nation’s long-term debt. For another, it includes unrelated concessions to special interests which weaken core protections for clean air and clean water. It doesn’t include substantive bipartisan spending cuts, even where there is potential common ground on reforms to entitlement programs, defense spending, wasteful subsidies and improvements to the efficiency and effectiveness of discretionary programs. But until the public in overwhelming numbers demands an end to extreme partisanship, a flawed deal is THE only deal, so we hope a majority of lawmakers in both parties set aside their respective disagreements, send the legislation to President Biden’s desk, and move on to tackling other issues as problem solvers, not ideologues.”

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