A group of House Republicans and President-elect Donald Trump talked about tying wildfire aid to a debt ceiling increase Sunday night, as the fires spreading across huge swaths of Los Angeles are estimated to become one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.
Of the nearly two dozen House Republicans who attended the Sunday dinner at Mar-a-Lago, where this option was discussed, several are caucus leaders and appropriators with major influence in upcoming budget reconciliation and government funding negotiations.
House Speaker Mike Johnson was not at the dinner, and no final decisions were made about the way forward, according to two people with direct knowledge of the private meeting, who were granted anonymity to discuss it.
Yet addressing the looming debt cliff will be one of Johnson’s biggest challenges in the coming months, especially as Trump continues to agitate for lawmakers to address it quickly.
The Sunday night discussions prove Republicans are desperately looking for a plan before the nation is due to exhaust its borrowing authority in June — though Democrats and some Republicans are sure to balk at the prospect of linking disaster relief dollars to a politically charged exercise like extending the debt limit.Many Republicans also fear adding a debt ceiling increase to their major party-line reconciliation package of border, energy and tax policy will sink the massive bill given internal GOP divisions, forcing leadership back to the drawing board repeatedly to come up with other ideas.The federal government’s disaster relief coffers are currently flush with cash, thanks to the $100 billion in disaster aid Congress cleared at the end of last year.
But the scope and scale of the fires engulfing Los Angeles has elected officials wondering if more money at some point might be needed.
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