Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, delivered a floor speech denouncing Speaker McCarthy’s extremist debt ceiling bill:

See an excerpt of the speech below, and the full speech HERE.

“Thank you very much, Congressman Jackson.

“In just a matter of months, the United States is on track to default on its debt for the first time in history. This is because Speaker McCarthy has unveiled a bill that he claims will fulfil our debt obligations, but in reality, it will cut access to critical social programs supporting education, food assistance, health care and housing, devastate our economy, and because we all know it is a dead on arrival bill, it will crash our global financial markets.

“According to Moody’s, under McCarthy’s legislation, 780,000 Americans will lose their jobs and our nation’s unemployment rate will surge. And we all know that this pain will be borne disproportionately by people of color. Republicans must put an end to this needless political theater and raise the debt limit as they did three times with no problems under the twice-impeached and now indicted former President Donald Trump, who signed $4.7 trillion in new deficits into law. Not only that, but they must do so without any cuts or reductions to housing funds given the terrible state of affordability in America.

“And so, I would urge my Republican colleagues who care about our economy – or who say they care about our economy – and the American dream, to get serious and work with Democrats to avert a catastrophic default by supporting a clean bill to raise the debt limit…”

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