Kerry spoke at length about the debt ceiling on the Senate floor Tuesday evening.
In a lengthy and impassioned speech on the Senate floor last night, Sen. John Kerry said that Congressional inaction on raising the nation's debt ceiling, with a little under a week left before the Aug. 2 deadline, is "already hurting the economy of our country."
Kerry also — for the second time — invoked a hero of many of his GOP colleagues: Ronald Reagan.
"The denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar on the exchange markets," Reagan wrote in a 1983 letter to then-Senate Majority Leader Howard H. Baker Jr. "The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result."
"Now almost 30 years later some House Republicans have turned their back on the legacy of Ronald Reagan," Kerry said. Kerry isn't the first to pull the Reagan card on the GOP; members of President Barack Obama's administration, most notably Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, have been quick to use Reagan's 1983 letter to deflate claims from some House Republicans that they were overstating the consequences of default.
Kerry went on to criticize a plan put forth by House Speaker John Boehner, which would require the President to seek Congressional approval once more before the end of 2012 to raise the debt ceiling again. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has endorsed that plan.
"There is no economic reason we have to do it again in 6 months," Kerry said.
The Associated Press reports that the two sides are inching toward each other, however tentatively, as Boehner's plan and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's plan are the closest to the center either side has come. The AP reports:
Reid held back on forcing a vote on his competing measure, which he unveiled Monday to poor reviews from Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Reid appears to hope that his measure, which promises $2.7 trillion in spending cuts and would increase the debt limit enough to keep the government afloat past the 2012 elections, could emerge as the last viable option standing and could be modified with input from Republicans.
Reid held back on forcing a vote on his competing measure, which he unveiled Monday to poor reviews from Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Reid appears to hope that his measure, which promises $2.7 trillion in spending cuts and would increase the debt limit enough to keep the government afloat past the 2012 elections, could emerge as the last viable option standing and could be modified with input from Republicans.
Republican Sen. Scott Brown, Kerry's colleague from Massachusetts, remains reticent with regard to the debt ceiling debate.
"It's changing by the hour," Brown told The Boston Globe. "My position hasn't really changed."
