Whitehouse on Debt Ceiling: McCarthy ‘Playing with Dynamite Whose Danger He Does Not Fully Appreciate’

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (D-CA) “does not fully appreciate” the danger of Congress failing to raise the debt ceiling.

Whitehouse said, “I do think it’s very, very, very important that the president keep his constitutional option on the table in case negotiations break down. The absolute worst thing that could happen would be a default. We always use big words on television, I think it’s fair to say that that would be economically cataclysmic, not only in the United States but around the world and that Speaker McCarthy is playing with dynamite whose danger he does not fully appreciate. And the sooner he puts the pin back in the grenade and we can go back to regular order and behave like the constitution suggests we should, the better off we’ll all be.”

Mitchell said, “You’re talking about the 14th Amendment. It would be litigated forever, could the economy survive?”

Whitehouse said, “Not necessarily. I would get to the Supreme Court very quick will if I were the president of the United States with stakes like the economic cataclysm that would be pending. I think I could make a convincing argument this is a political question between the president and the Congress and the court shouldn’t get involved. They should call it a political question and walk away and let the branches handle it. And what that does is it de-fuses the hand grenade forever.”

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