It's a good thing that President Joe Biden is "finally negotiating" on the national debt ceiling with House Republicans, but he still needs to "step up and calm down" the markets by being more specific on a date about when a default could happen, Sen. Bill Cassidy said Sunday.
The financial markets are "all nervous" after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's warning that a government default could occur as early as June 1, but that it would come later, the Louisiana Republican said on CNN's "State of the Union."
"Is it the first or the 14th?" Cassidy said. "A quarterly payment of taxes comes to the federal government beginning on the 15th, at which point the risk of default is averted."
Further, Biden has been "jacking up spending" in the first two years of his presidency and is expecting Republicans to accept that as the new baseline, he said.
Cassidy also raised House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is to speak with Biden on Sunday about the spending talks, pointing out that the California Republican got fellow Republicans to vote for a debt ceiling increase who had never agreed to that measure before.
The White House has also said that a budget default could mean late Social Security checks for millions of people and has accused Republicans of wanting to cut the program, which Biden and former President Donald Trump have vowed to not let happen.
But Cassidy said that he thinks a refusal to work on Social Security should disqualify any top presidential candidate from being elected.
"You can fix Social Security and you don't raise taxes on seniors," said Cassidy. "You don't cut their benefits. and there is a way to do it that actually improves the program, but there is no leadership like that from Trump or Biden. In my mind that lack of leadership on an issue so critical to so many Americans is disqualifying."
He stressed that the program is "about nine years out from insolvency" and said there is a bipartisan plan for a $1.5 trillion fund that uses investment returns to fund it.
"Insolvency, when it comes in nine years, people who are currently receiving Social Security benefits will get a 24% cut," he said. "That is the reason you want to act now. If you wait until the deadline then the cuts are bigger and the tax increases are greater."
"When Joe Biden came out in the State of the Union speech and began to talk about Republicans trying to take away your Social Security it all fell apart," said Cassidy.
The senator on Sunday also expressed doubts that Trump can win in a general election and said the motive for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to say that only he, Trump, or Biden can win an election, was to discredit other strong candidates, like Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.
"On the other hand, during the last election cycle, we saw in all the swing states, almost all, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona, the candidates for Senate that Trump endorsed all lost," said Cassidy. "If you had taken the votes that went to other Republicans and put them together, those Republicans would have won...if the past is prologue, that means President Trump is going to have a hard time in the swing states, which means he cannot win a general election."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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