Free Republic

California water managers announced they're sharply limiting deliveries to just 15 percent of what most urban and agricultural water agencies requested.This comes after 20,000 cubic feet of water per second poured into the ocean because of inadequate storage. https://twitter.com/KevinKileyCA/status/1760766235980279943

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) indicated Tuesday he would support moving the bill to raise the debt limit to the floor for a full House vote, a pivotal step as House leaders race to rally enough support to send the bill to the Senate this week. Massie, one of nine Republicans on the House Rules Committee, had been holding out on taking a firm stance on the bill, which includes some of Republicans’ desired spending reductions and other provisions. The spending hawk became known this year for wearing a debt limit counter on his suit jacket, which shows the national debt...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has extended the probable date that the U.S. will default on its sovereign debt payments absent legislation from Congress to raise the debt ceiling, according to a letter she wrote on Friday. The new date is a revision from her earlier estimation of June 1 as the default date.

No deal yet: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Republicans during a closed-door meeting Tuesday that they’re "nowhere near" a bipartisan deal with President Joe Biden, according to sources. 52 min ago Republican negotiators say "significant gap" remains on debt ceiling talks From CNN's Kristin Wilson, Haley Talbot, Nicky Robertson and Morgan Rimmer After another day of negotiations on Capitol Hill, there is still a "significant gap" between House Republicans and the White House on how to resolve the looming debt ceiling deadline, according to the GOP negotiators. Reps. Garret Graves and Patrick McHenry said that until the president and the...

During an interview with NewsNation on Thursday, House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) noted that then-House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tied fiscal and spending talks to raising the debt limit in 2019 and refused to pass a clean debt ceiling increase, and that Pelosi, along with President Biden, have opposed past debt ceiling raises without fiscal changes and that Pelosi and Biden did so back when the national debt was lower than it is now.

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) stated that President Joe Biden is acting like people are going to starve and be deprived if the federal government goes to the funding levels that existed four months ago when he complains that the cuts Republican debt ceiling bill will hurt people. McCarthy said, “Remember what they did with that omnibus at the end of the year last year, they jammed it through and they increased spending…what we simply do is we pull the dollar figure back to 2022, what we were spending just...

The White House on Tuesday punted a question on why President Biden won’t set up another meeting with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) over raising the nation’s debt ceiling instead blaming Republicans for the stalemate. “It’s the Speaker, McCarthy, and the MAGA wing of the Republican party that is doing this, we’re not doing this. They’re the ones who are saying they want to hold the American economy hostage,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked if the president risks rattling financial markets if he doesn’t meet with the Speaker. Biden is “saying to House Republicans, you need to do your...

House Republicans’ go-it-alone debt limit bill would pair a $1.5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling expected to last into next year with $4.5 trillion in savings, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Wednesday. The bill unveiled Wednesday, dubbed the Limit, Save, Grow Act, proposes reverting discretionary spending for non-defense programs to fiscal year 2022 levels, while proposing limiting growth to 1 percent annually over the next decade. It will raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or through March 31, 2024, whichever comes first, McCarthy told reporters.

H.R. 187 – Default Prevention Act H.R. 187 guarantees the sovereign debt of the United States Government by authorizing the Treasury Secretary to continue to borrow to pay interest and principal due on the debt, even in the event of an impasse concerning the debt limit.

Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D) met with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) Wednesday to urge the House Republican leader to negotiate with President Biden on legislation to raise the debt limit, a sign the senior West Virginia senator could play a pivotal role in bipartisan talks. Manchin’s meeting with McCarthy comes at a time when other Democrats, including Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pa.), the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, say that Democrats should not negotiate over the debt limit.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress on Friday that the U.S. is projected to reach its debt limit on Thursday and will then resort to “extraordinary measures” to avoid default. In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Yellen said her actions will buy time until Congress can pass legislation that will either raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing authority or suspend it again for a period of time. Those measures include divesting some payments, such as contributions to federal employees’ retirement plans, in order to provide some headroom to make other payments that are deemed essential,...

The federal government is closing in on the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit, meaning a high-stakes fight over raising the debt ceiling is fast approaching. An estimate from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation places the nation’s debt at $31.39 trillion and counting on Wednesday, just a hair below the limit set more than a year ago. That doesn’t mean the debt ceiling will have to be lifted this week — or even this month. The Treasury Department can generally use what are known as extraordinary measures to put off an actual debt crisis. But it’s clear the fight is edging closer,...

CNN President Chris Licht will reportedly not allow employees to drink during the network’s broadcast of New Year’s Eve. Licht, who will be in CNN’s control room on New Year’s Eve, is trying to rebrand the network as a serious news channel. A part of the changes under Licht’s direction will be sobriety among CNN’s employees during the New Year’s Eve telecast, according to Semafor’s Max Tani:

The National Transportation Safety Board is recommending new speed limiter technology. According to a CNN Business report, an electric car equipped with this intelligence speed assistance program knows the speed limit wherever the particular car is traveling. A video demonstrating this speed-limiting program on the CNN Business website showed New York City Deputy Mayor of Operations Meera Joshi is driving a vehicle equipped with the program. While demonstrating the speed limiter program Joshi, formerly FMCSA’s acting administrator, said, “I’m pressing the pedal, but you see actually the number is going down.”

Former President Bill Clinton said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” podcast that “there is a limit” to how many migrants the United States can accept before it causes disruption. ZAKARIA: Let me ask you about another issue you guys are going to take up at CGI, refugees. And one of the things that I think the right has hammered at, with regard to the Democratic Party and President Biden, is this issue of refugees coming into the United States. And I think it’s fair to say that the asylum system seems to be broken. This was meant to be a...

A Russian government official has threatened that Russia will limit its vital food exports to only nations it considers “friendly”. Dmitry Medvedev, a senior Russian security official who previously served as the nation’s president, has threatened that Russia may soon cut off the West from food exports.A major player in the global market for wheat and other agri-food products, Russia will instead focus on keeping itself fed, according to Medvedev, alongside supplying its friends and close allies. Posting on his Telegram, Medvedev said that cutting off the likes of North America and the European Union from its agricultural produce would...

Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) discussed the nation’s borrowing limit in a meeting on Tuesday, as an impasse over the debt limit drags on in the upper chamber. Mnuchin said the matter came up during a brief meeting with the leader in his office early Tuesday. “I was over having breakfast with a bunch of Republican senators this morning. And then I came over to spend time with Leader McConnell and we talked on a range of subjects,” he told The Hill.

**SNIP** The calls for taking the near-annual fight out of lawmakers' hands are coming from prominent voices such as House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who want to eliminate the debt limit in its current form. They argue that members of Congress should not be able to use the threat of a debt default as political leverage ever again - an approach that would respond to GOP stonewalling by playing some hardball of their own. Although lawmakers are poised to stave off a national default barely a week before the Oct. 18 deadline, when...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday she supports abolishing the federal debt limit, calling it a “very destructive” threat to the full faith and credit of the U.S. In congressional testimony, Yellen argued it made no sense to limit the Treasury's ability to pay bills already approved by Congress and the president with an arbitrary cap on how much debt it can issue. “When Congress legislates expenditures and puts in place tax policy that determines taxes, those are the crucial decisions Congress is making,” Yellen said during a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee, where she appeared beside Federal...

In fact, if Democrats so desired, they could have easily raised the debt limit back in March, when they passed their first $1.9 trillion spending spree. But they didn’t, and now they are begging for Republicans to bail them out politically for their own borrow-and-spend ways. Republicans should refuse.