WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: “Republicans Will Be To Blame” For Crashing America’s Economy

Following Senate Republicans’ unanimous vote against raising the debt ceiling, local and national newspapers, opinion pages, and Editorial Boards are calling out Republican senators for playing “reckless,” “self-serving,” and “hypocritical” games with the U.S. economy –– and made clear that “Republicans will be to blame” for the “epochal financial disaster.”  Here’s what they’re saying:  

Washington Post: Opinion | The nation faces financial calamity. Republicans will be to blame.

• The nation faces an epochal financial disaster if Congress fails to raise the debt limit, forcing the country to default on its obligations and inviting a global financial panic. If that happens, there will be no doubt about who is at fault: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his Republican caucus, who are playing games with the full faith and credit of the United States.

• Time’s up. It’s hard to see how anyone professing patriotism could willfully risk inflicting this kind of harm on the nation. Republicans with any sense of responsibility should band together and help pass a clean debt limit increase.

FL – Tampa Bay Times: Blocking the debt ceiling is a reckless move by Senate Republicans

• There is no reason to block an essential vote on raising the nation’s debt ceiling. Doing so is as reckless and self-serving as it is hypocritical. Both parties added to the debt — the Trump tax cuts, anyone? — and now they need to pay for it. Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida are particularly brazen for ignoring this shared sense of responsibility.

• Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling by trillions of dollars when their party was in control, and the current increase is needed to cover spending under previous administrations of both parties, not to pay for new spending bills working through Congress. And neither party wins by playing chicken and threatening the nation’s full faith and credit with default.

• That’s why it’s galling to see the very politicians who’ve bellied up to the buffet now attempt to dine and dash. Rubio and Scott both voted Monday against proceeding to raise the debt limit.
  

NC – News & Observer: McKee: Republicans are playing games with the debt and it’s hurting Americans

• During Trump’s presidency the GOP increased the debt ceiling once and suspended it twice, increasing the debt by $7.8 trillion (the third-largest increase by any president.)

• Disingenuous Republican legislators are crippling the federal government’s ability to govern in our interest. 

WI – Up North News: Johnson and Senate GOP’s Debt Ceiling Vote Could Spell Trouble for US, World Economy

• The day after US Senate Republicans including Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson blocked a bill to keep the government running and raise the debt limit, a fiscal policy expert warned that playing fast and loose with the government’s ability to honor its debts could spell trouble not only for the country’s ability to borrow the money it needs to operate, but the larger economy as a whole.

• Refusing to raise the debt limit has routinely become a political weapon used by Republicans to attack Democrats, despite past GOP support for raising the debt limit under Republican Presidents.

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