A division within the Trump administration over how to avoid an unprecedented default on the national debt burst into the open, with the president’s Treasury secretary and budget director publicly at odds over strategy.
The U.S. is expected to reach its debt ceiling — a legal limit on how much the government can borrow — by as soon as August. If Congress doesn’t act to raise the ceiling, the government would default for the first time in its history.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin signaled a preference for a so-called “clean” bill to raise the debt limit, one without any spending reductions or other policy riders. But Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who is also a member of Trump’s cabinet, said he’d “like to see things attached to it that drive certain spending reforms and debt reforms in the future,” in an interview with the Washington Examiner published