Mitch McConnell shrugs off Trump's taunts and attempts to defuse the debt ceiling crisis
- Mitch McConnell met with Chuck Schumer on Thursday to discuss raising the debt ceiling.
- This comes after an October showdown when McConnell maintained that Democrats must raise the debt limit alone.
With less than a month left to raise the debt ceiling before the US ceases to be able to pay its bills, Mitch McConnell appears to be having a change of heart about helping Democrats out of this pickle.
This comes after Trump called McConnell a "Broken Old Crow" in a Wednesday statement for agreeing to a two-month extension of the debt-ceiling limit back in October.
"He could have won it all using the Debt Ceiling—they were ready to fold," Trump wrote. "Now the Democrats have a big victory and the wind at their back."
But that victory was short-lived. Congress now has until December 15 before the Treasury potentially runs out of money to pay the country's bills. Though he's expressed resistance to aiding Democrats lift the debt limit, McConnell briefly met with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday to discuss strategies to take address it before the deadline.
This is a notably different approach than the one from earlier this fall, when McConnell remained adamant it was Democrats' jobs to raise limit but consistently blocked every attempt by Democrats to do just that. He waited until the very last minute in October to step in and help. He vowed he would not step in again.
"The best way to characterize it is we're going to be discussing the way forward," McConnell told Politico ahead of a meeting in Schumer's office.
McConnell's change of tune
On October 6, McConnell paved the way for 11 Republicans to vote to suspend the debt ceiling an additional two months, but at the time he made clear his help will not be available when Democrats need to confront the issue again in December.
He said at the time that his help would "moot Democrats' excuses about the time crunch they created and give the unified Democratic government more than enough time to pass standalone debt limit legislation through reconciliation."
For months leading up to the suspension, though, Schumer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said raising the debt limit should be a bipartisan task, and with Thursday's meeting, a showdown as seen in October may be avoided.
"We had a good discussion about several different issues that are all extant here as we move toward the end of the session and we agreed to keep talking and working together to try to get somewhere," McConnell told HuffPost following the meeting.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen earlier week said that after December 15, she is not confident the Treasury will have the resources to fund the government and stressed the need for the matter to be addressed in a bipartisan way.
"Should it be done on a bipartisan basis? Absolutely. Now, if they're not going to cooperate, I don't want to play chicken and end up not raising the debt ceiling," Yellen told The Washington Post. "I think that's the worst possible outcome."
But Senate Republicans aren't budging from their demand for Democrats to lift the debt ceiling through reconciliation, a party-line process that could stretch two weeks. Still, there may be signs that the GOP may try to make it somewhat easier for Democrats to undertake the process unilaterally.
"They can do it," Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania told reporters on Thursday. "I've suggested that Republicans would yield back time and not drag it out. I'm confident we would do that."