House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said Sunday that he does not believe “we’ll have a debt limit suspension” a few days after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on Congress to raise the debt ceiling by the middle of the summer.
“I don’t think we’ll have a debt limit suspension because Republicans like to revisit this conversation,” Cole told NewsNation’s Chris Stirewalt on “The Hill Sunday.” “Look, if it was up to the Democrats, they agree, they’d love to get rid of the debt limit … I’ve talked to them.”
“You do that, that’s like never talking about your credit card when you go to the limit. And we like to get to a limit and we’ll have a discussion, and then at least have some reforms to change the trajectory of the debt,” he added later.
Bessent told House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Friday that there is “reasonable probability” that the government’s “cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted in August while Congress is scheduled to be in recess.”
“Therefore, I respectfully urge Congress to increase or suspend the debt limit by mid-July, before its scheduled break, to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” Bessent said in a letter to the House Speaker.
Republicans have been hopeful they will be able to bring up the debt limit via a process called budget reconciliation, aiming to raise the debt ceiling within the same vehicle being assembled for the advancement of large portions of President Trump’s agenda with only GOP votes.
Bessent said in his Friday letter that “prior episodes have shown that waiting until the last minute to suspend or increase the debt limit can have serious adverse consequences for financial markets, businesses, and the federal government, harm business and consumer confidence, and raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers.”
