Urging Congress to raise the debt ceiling, which passed Tuesday and is being sent to President Joe Biden's desk, House Rules Committee Chairman James McGovern, D-Mass., is sounding a warning on "financial Armageddon."
"We are the precipice of what economists have called financial Armageddon," McGovern said on the House floor Tuesday, referencing Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. "Mark Zandi has said, 'Even if resolved quickly, Americans would pay for this default for generations.'"
Although Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House, McGovern slammed Republicans for being unwilling to raise the U.S. debt ceiling by vote in Congress.
"And their answer, according to virtually all Republicans, is to go home. Really?" McGovern continued. "If we defaulted, 6 million jobs would be lost; unemployment would skyrocket to 9%; and $15 trillion in household wealth would be wiped away.
"And the only solution my Republican friends can come up with is to leave town?" he added. "Senate Republicans tried to filibuster this deal that [Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell developed to temporarily raise the debt limit. Now, House Republicans have used the tools they have here to unleash their own form of obstruction.''
The House passed McConnell's deal Tuesday on a party-line vote of 219-206, extending the debt ceiling by $480 billion. The current national debt is $28.4 trillion and would be permitted to rise to about $28.8 trillion.
"I urge my colleagues: Vote yes on this rule, vote yes on protecting the full faith and credit of the United States, and vote yes on preventing financial Armageddon," McGovern concluded.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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