'What kind of an offer is that?' Sen. Mazie Hirono rips into Mitch McConnell's debt ceiling proposal

published 6 October 2021

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) has some very strong feelings about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) debt limit olive branch.

Earlier on Wednesday, McConnell, the leader of Republican resistance in the ongoing debt limit war, acquiesced to "the immediate threat of federal default" and said Republicans would allow Democrats to raise the government's borrowing limit into December, The New York Times reports. He refused, however, to allow a long-term increase in this fashion, and instead suggested Republicans would "assist in expediting" the reconciliation process for further raising the limit later, Politico says.

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While the concession does offer something of a "way out" for both Democrats and Republicans, it leaves "Democrats with the prospect of a politically uncomfortable vote that some of them had wanted to avoid, embracing a set dollar amount by which they would raise the debt cap," writes the Times. Lawmakers must raise or suspend the government's borrowing limit by Oct. 18 or risk defaulting on the nation's debt. Democrats have insisted on proceeding in a regular legislative fashion, while Republicans have demanded that Democrats use the reconciliation process and go it alone.

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Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.

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