TRANSCRIPT: Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Remarks At A Press Conference On Speaker McCarthy’s Repeated Failure To Show His Plan And Pushing The US Towards A Catastrophic Default

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the importance of avoiding a catastrophic default. Senator Schumer called on Speaker McCarthy to show his plan to the American people, end the hostage-taking and put an end to the brinkmanship. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks:

Alright, look: one thing is clear from this morning's theater at the New York Stock Exchange: Democrats want to avoid defaulting on our country's debts. Meanwhile, Speaker McCarthy continues to bumble our country towards a catastrophic default, which would cause the economy to crash, cause monumental job loss, and drastically raise costs to the American people.

He went all the way to Wall Street and gave us no more details, no more facts, no new information at all.

I'll be blunt: if Speaker McCarthy continues in this direction, we are headed to default. The main way we've avoided default in the past is to avoid and reject brinkmanship and hostage-taking and instead work together in a bipartisan way.

Speaker McCarthy, in his speech, invoked President Reagan. Ronald Reagan was never as reckless as Speaker McCarthy is being. Ronald Reagan said “[debt ceiling] brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans’ benefits… The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations.” Speaker McCarthy, you said you wanted to go to the stock exchange because Reagan did? Well, listen to what he said! Listen to what he said.

And despite the Speaker's stated concerns about costs, nothing would do more to raise costs for American families than an unnecessary Republican default crisis.

Speaker McCarthy should know that when you insist on attaching things to the debt ceiling, something President Trump never did, and which Republicans under Trump never did, you risk catastrophic default.

Speaker McCarthy insists on cuts. Well, there's a time to discuss what kind of cuts folks are looking for, or taxes they want to raise. It's called the budget. It shouldn't be part of this conversation. That kind of discussion, the cuts, belongs in a discussion about the budget. Not as a precondition for avoiding default.

To date, after countless requests, Speaker McCarthy has yet to produce any concrete plan as to the cuts he would make. One that details the specific cuts he wants, and that has the support of 218 Republicans in the House.

Democrats have called on Speaker McCarthy over and over and over: show us your plan. I think you've heard me say that before. Well, what we got today was not a plan. It was a recycled pile of the same things he's been saying for months, none of which has moved the ball forward an inch. He has not shown us a real plan. And when I say us, I don't mean me. Or Senate Democrats, or even his own caucus. I mean, the American people. Americans deserve to know what he wants to cut, when, and by how much – in specifics. Talk about cuts, you have an obligation to say what they are to the American people.

And I'm not alone in thinking this. This weekend, a member of the House leadership even said he believed ‘At this point, there is no choice for Republicans and the Speaker to bring forward some type of proposal.’ He's right. I wholeheartedly agree. We sure didn't hear that at Wall Street this morning.

Amazingly enough – this one really knocks my socks off – amazingly, one of the few specifics Speaker McCarthy has presented is his terrible idea to kick the can down the road for just one year and undergo the same crisis again. Why would anyone want to undergo this crisis again, and again and again?

President Biden and I are happy to meet with the Speaker when he has something to talk about – a plan. I'm sure most democratic leaders are willing to meet with him, but we first need to see his plan so we can start there and work to avoid catastrophic default. As I said, if he comes there without a plan, what are we going to talk about, the furniture?

The solution here is straightforward. Republicans should work with Democrats in good faith to avoid default together, just as we did under President Trump, just as what President Reagan talked about. No blackmail, no brinksmanship, no default.

Meanwhile, House Republicans are steering us directly into a default and catastrophic collapse of the global economy, including skyrocketing unemployment and huge cost increases up and down the line for the American key consumer.

So, today, I heard the Speaker quoting a great Yankee, New York Yankee, Babe Ruth. He said, ‘you just can't beat the person who never gives up.’

First, Speaker McCarthy don't quote a Yankee to me in New York City.

Second, he's right, he's never given up. That's because he's never even started. No plan, no progress, no persistence.

So when it comes to the recycled rhetoric of his non-plan, I think there's another Yankee who said it best. ‘It's deja vu all over again,’ Yogi Berra, applied to Speaker McCarthy, ‘deja vu all over again.’

Show us your plan. Work to deliver for the American people, Speaker McCarthy.

It's time for the Speaker to stop the partisan games and political grandstanding and show the American people his plan and how he's going to get the votes to get there.

So in sum, to sum it all up, Speaker McCarthy plays a risky and dangerous game when insisting on imposing severe cuts, which would hurt the American people, raise our prices, and threaten our economy before we avoid default. In addition, he can't even reveal what those cuts are.

If Speaker McCarthy doesn't change his course, he could well take this country to default.

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