Senate Dems plan hearings to pick apart GOP debt deal

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced in a Dear Colleague letterMonday morning that Senate committees will hold hearings on legislation passed last week by House Republicans to raise the federal debt limit and cut government spending.

But those hearings will not be not an attempt to move the bill forward, but to message against the proposed cuts.

“The Senate will show the public what this bill truly is. Beginning this week, our Committees will begin to hold hearings and expose the true impact of this reckless legislation on everyday Americans. On Thursday, the Budget Committee will hold a hearing on the Default on America Act,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote, creating his own moniker for the GOP proposal.

The Senate Budget Committee hearing on Thursday will feature Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and leaders of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Republicans and Democrats remain at loggerheads over debt ceiling negotiations, just as entrenched as they were before the House passed its GOP debt ceiling and spending cuts package. House Republicans were certain that their starting bid to rollback federal spending in exchange for lifting the debt limit would force President Joe Biden to the negotiating table. But last week’s action on the House GOP package has yet to move the needle much.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that Republicans are “demanding hostage negotiations” while House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told “This Week” that Biden is “running out the clock” on the debt limit.

Now the House is out of town, leaving the Senate to weigh in on the GOP proposal and how Biden should handle it. And Treasury Department officials are expected to update the public soon on the “X date,” before which Congress will need to pass a debt limit lift to avoid default, in the coming days. That will ramp up the pressure, but it’s not yet clear what will get leaders to budge.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said last week that Biden not getting in a room with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to negotiate on the debt limit “signals a deficiency of leadership, and it must change.” The West Virginia Democrat said “we are long past time for our elected leaders to sit down and discuss how to solve this impending debt ceiling crisis” and called on Biden to “negotiate now.”

Most other Democrats aren’t going that far. They are talking about talks, but have so far drawn a distinction between talks on spending and negotiations on the debt limit.

“[Biden] will sit down with Speaker McCarthy to talk about these issues in the framework of the budget and the appropriations process,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told “Fox News Sunday.” But not the president should not negotiate over the debt limit, Van Hollen said.

And Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on Sunday that Biden can “start negotiating tomorrow” on possible spending cuts but stressed that those talks can only move forward if Republicans commit to raising the debt limit.

“I’m willing to look at any other proposals. There’s a lot of waste within government. Let’s go after it. But don’t go to war against the working class of this country, lower-income people,” Sanders said.

Republicans maintain that what they view as government overspending and the nation’s growing debt are inextricably linked and that conversations about each cannot be separated.

"As we're addressing the debt limit, we also have to address the problem that got us here," Scalise said on "This Week."

The House majority leader also challenged Senate Democrats to put forth their own legislation.

“If they’ve got a better idea, I want to see that bill and tell them to pass it through the Senate,” Scalise said.