Rep. Crawford: “We don’t know what to expect” as debt deadline approaches

JONESBORO, Ark. (KAIT) - Arkansas District 1 Representative Rick Crawford and the US House of Representatives await a solution to the debt ceiling crisis from President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the US would be forced to default on its debt on June 1 if a deal is not reached.

Rep. Crawford said he’s hoping a deal can be made before the deadline, as no one is sure what will happen if we default.

“We don’t know what to expect if we default because we’ve never defaulted. It’s purely speculation what might happen, but we don’t want to run that risk,” Crawford said.

Crawford recalled how he questioned President Biden’s priorities after taking an out-of-country trip last week.

“Well, here we are in the 11th hour. Meanwhile, he [Biden] jets off to Japan when he should’ve been here staying in our town and engaging with Speaker McCarthy and trying to arrive at a workable solution,” he said.

The congressman explained this issue isn’t new, as there’s been time to fix this issue, and it hasn’t been done.

“I campaigned on this, and here we are. We saw this coming a decade ago and didn’t take it seriously and have spent ourselves into this situation. Now we’re faced with raising the debt limit.”

Crawford sides with McCarthy on debt ceiling solutions, saying the ceiling needs to be raised, but not without cuts.

“If we’re going to put more debt burden on our kids and our grandkids, surely we can take some steps to prevent from loading up the credit card again. I think it’s entirely appropriate and reasonable to think that we could pair a debt ceiling increase with some spending cuts and start to take our debt seriously.”

He explained even though we are down to the final days before the June 1 deadline. He’s confident a deal will be made.

“I think we’re going to prevail here, and cooler heads will prevail. I think it’s going to be okay, but the reality is this should’ve been handled when the spending bill was passed, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

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