![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Screen-Shot-2024-12-31-at-9.45.32-AM.png\")
<\/p>\nBy\u00a0Garrett Haake,\u00a0Rebecca Shabad\u00a0and\u00a0Sahil Kapur<\/p>\n
President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that Congress should get rid of the debt ceiling,\u00a0a day after he came out\u00a0<\/a>against a deal reached by congressional lawmakers to fund the government before a shutdown occurs.<\/p>\n In a phone interview with NBC News, Trump said getting rid of the debt ceiling entirely would be the \u201csmartest thing it [Congress] could do. I would support that entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge,\u201d Trump added.<\/p>\n Trump suggested that the debt ceiling is a meaningless concept \u2014 and that no one knows for sure what would happen if it were to someday be breached \u2014\u00a0\u201ca catastrophe, or meaningless\u201d \u2014 and no one should want to find out.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean anything, except psychologically,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The debt ceiling is the limit lawmakers set that determines how much the federal government can borrow to pay its bills. It doesn\u2019t authorize any new spending.<\/p>\n On the possibility of a shutdown, which would occur at 12:01 a.m. Saturday if a funding deal isn’t reached, he said, \u201cIf there\u2019s going to be a shutdown, we\u2019re going to start it with a Democratic president\u201d \u2014 suggesting that the fight playing out in Congress now is necessary to clear the decks before his administration begins in January.<\/p>\n Asked if he still has confidence in House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Trump responded: \u201cWe\u2019ll see. [The funding deal]\u00a0they had yesterday was unacceptable,\u201d\u00a0<\/a>referring to the speaker\u2019s continuing resolution. \u201cIn many ways it was unacceptable. It’s a Democrat trap.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump said he had discussed his views on the short-term funding deal with Elon Musk prior to the X owner’s posts Wednesday.<\/p>\n \u201cI told him that if he agrees with me, that he could put out a statement,\u201d Trump said. \u201cHe\u2019s looking at things from a cost standpoint.\u201d He described their views as in line and\u00a0\u201cvery much on track.\u201d<\/p>\n In his call Wednesday for Republicans to ditch the negotiated bipartisan short-term spending bill, Trump also demanded that lawmakers increase the debt ceiling \u2014 something that hadn’t been on the table at all.<\/p>\n Congress last raised the debt ceiling in June 2023, suspending it through Jan. 1, 2025. Typically, the Treasury Department is able to extend the deadline using so-called extraordinary measures to buy more time for lawmakers to address it.<\/p>\n Before lawmakers passed the last increase, the White House released a\u00a0st<\/a>a<\/a>tement<\/a>\u00a0warning about the consequences of failing to lift it and defaulting on the nation’s debt, saying that a default would “likely cause severe damage to the U.S. economy.” The statement said that analyses by the Council of Economic Advisers and outside researchers showed that if the government defaults on its obligations, “the economy would quickly shift into reverse, with the depth of the losses a function of how long the breach lasted.”<\/p>\n