Posted on 05/28/23
| News Source: KKTV
With days to spare before a potential first-ever government default, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Sunday were finalizing a deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling while trying to wrangle enough Republican and Democratic votes to pass the measure in the coming week.
The compromise announced late Saturday includes spending cuts but risks angering some lawmakers as they take a closer look at the concessions. McCarthy and Biden were set to put the finishing touches on the agreement in a midafternoon call once the final legislative text was drafted. Biden told reporters at the White House upon his return from Delaware that he was confident the plan will make it to his desk and that no sticking points remained.
The days ahead will determine whether Washington is again able to narrowly avoid a default on U.S. debt, as it has done many times before, or whether the global economy enters a potential crisis.
A U.S. default could shatter the $24 trillion market for Treasury debt, cause financial markets to freeze up and spark an international financial crisis. In the United States, analysts say millions of jobs would vanish, borrowing and unemployment rates would jump, and a stock-market plunge could erase trillions of dollars in household wealth.
Anxious retirees and others were already making contingency plans for missed checks, with the next Social Security payments due soon.