Momentum grows for Biden to tell Republicans to blow up the debt ceiling

President Joe Biden has the power to tell Republicans to pound sand on their demands over the debt ceiling, and Democrats are getting louder in saying he should do just that. Congressional Democrats are getting more and more worried that Biden is caving the debt ceiling negotiations he promised would not happen, and that he’s inevitably setting Democrats up to make unacceptable concessions. That will have reverberations down the line, when the next fight comes along.

Biden continued the semantical game the White House has been playing during a Wednesday press conference. “To be clear,” he said, “this negotiation is about the outlines of what the budget will look like, not whether or not we'll in fact pay our debts.” If that’s the case and defaulting on our debts is not on the table, then Biden can prove it by ending the farce of negotiations on the budget and take the debt ceiling off the table unilaterally.