US: Biden Hails Averting Debt Crisis

By Staff, Agencies

United States President Joe Biden has dedicated his first public address from the Oval Office to celebrating the bipartisan passage of the country’s debt-ceiling bill, announcing a “crisis averted” from his desk at the White House.

“When I ran for president, I was told the days of bipartisanship were over, and that Democrats and Republicans can no longer work together,” Biden said in his speech on Friday. “But I refused to believe that.”

The speech was a victory lap for the Democratic Biden, who collaborated with Kevin McCarthy – the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives and his vocal critic – to forge the debt-ceiling bill last month.

The bill’s passage through the Senate on Thursday all but assures that the US will not default on its loans. The country had been rapidly approaching a June 5 deadline, set by the US Treasury, at which time the federal government would have likely run out of funds to pay off its debts.

The bill had previously passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday by a margin of 314 to 117.

“Passing this budget agreement was critical. The stakes could not have been higher,” Biden explained in his address.

He further mentioned: “If we had failed to reach an agreement on the budget, there were extreme voices threatening to take America – for the first time in our 247-year history – into default on our national debt. Nothing, nothing would have been more irresponsible. Nothing would have been more catastrophic.”

Had the US hit its $31.4 trillion debt ceiling – the limit for the federal government’s borrowing powers – experts predicted that the economic fallout could trigger a recession.

The US would have likely seen its credit rating fall and its interest rates increase, and businesses and individuals dependent on government funds might have seen their payments paused. The White House estimated a default could have cost 8 million Americans their jobs.