{"id":4888,"date":"2025-01-14T18:33:47","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T18:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/johnson-backs-away-from-go-it-alone-debt-ceiling-plan\/"},"modified":"2025-01-14T18:33:47","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T18:33:47","slug":"johnson-backs-away-from-go-it-alone-debt-ceiling-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/johnson-backs-away-from-go-it-alone-debt-ceiling-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnson backs away from go-it-alone debt ceiling plan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a> on Tuesday backed away from a plan to address the approaching federal debt cliff in a party-line reconciliation package, acknowledging several major challenges that may force Republicans to deal with the borrowing limit in bipartisan talks with Democrats.<\/p>\n

Those obstacles include fractious House conservatives and ongoing strategic disputes with the Senate. Addressing the debt limit in reconciliation is not \u201ccompletely foreclosed,\u201d Johnson said at a Blue Light News Live event, but he said House leaders were \u201clooking at all options.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m not wed to any of them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Striking a deal with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling would enrage the House\u2019s conservative hard-liners. But President-elect Donald Trump \u2014 who has urged Johnson and other leaders to quickly address the debt cliff \u2014 appears to be softening to the idea, according to House Republicans who attended meetings with Trump at Mar-a-Lago this weekend.<\/p>\n

Several members raised the pitfalls<\/a> of the reconciliation approach in those meetings, and Trump appeared open to instead dealing with it in the bipartisan government funding talks \u2014 potentially by tying it to federal disaster aid that could benefit wildfire-stricken Southern California.<\/p>\n

The Treasury Department has not given a precise date when the federal government will potentially default, but Congress might only have a few months to act.<\/p>\n

Conservative hardliners are demanding deep spending cuts in exchange for supporting a debt limit hike, a major challenge if Johnson is going to keep his tight majority united. They want Johnson to uphold a plan GOP leaders floated in December<\/a> to make $2.5 trillion in spending reductions as part of any reconciliation package that increases the debt limit.<\/p>\n

But that level of cuts might only buy a short reprieve from default. Now Johnson is exploring punting the debt limit for the whole of Trump\u2019s presidency, according to a person familiar with the matter. Doing so would require Republicans making significant concessions to Democrats in bipartisan negotiations \u2014 something sure to anger the House GOP\u2019s right flank.<\/p>\n

Asked by Blue Light News\u2019s Rachael Bade whether the debt-limit-in-reconciliation plan is now dead, Johnson said \u201cit was meant to be a point of discussion\u201d and \u201cwe have to begin somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are also persistent doubts that even if significant cuts are made, some House conservatives simply won\u2019t vote for any bill that includes a debt ceiling hike. Johnson said he was confident even skeptical members would come along \u201cif the conditions are right.\u201d But he also noted some of the other political realities that could block such a route.<\/p>\n

They include ongoing disputes with the Senate. He confirmed he spoke with Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> about reconciliation planning several weeks ago, with Thune suggesting \u201cit might be a heavy lift\u201d to add a debt limit hike to the already tall reconciliation order.<\/p>\n

A growing group of senior House Republicans are now coalescing around a push<\/a> to address the debt limit as part of federal funding talks ahead of a March 14 shutdown deadline. Those talks would involve Democrats and would likely include wildfire aid to California.<\/p>\n

Asked about a possible debt-limit-for-fire-aid deal, Johnson said, \u201cWe don’t play politics with disaster aid.\u201d But he added that there should be a discussion about policy strings that might be attached to the money to prevent future fires.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday backed away from a plan to address the approaching federal debt cliff in a party-line reconciliation package, acknowledging several major challenges that may force Republicans to deal with the borrowing limit in bipartisan talks with Democrats. Those obstacles include fractious House conservatives and ongoing strategic disputes with the Senate. Addressing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}