Senate Majority Leader John Thune has deputized a folksy Louisiana lawmaker known for his blunt political observations and creative analogies to take the lead in convincing President Donald Trump to develop a strategy for raising the debt limit later this year.
That Senate envoy, Sen. John Neely Kennedy, says Trump isn’t ready to focus just yet — and that attention deficit could have reverberations across the global economy.
Kennedy confirmed in an interview that Thune asked him a few weeks ago to lead shuttle diplomacy with Trump about the GOP’s options for preventing the U.S. from defaulting on its $36 trillion-and-counting debt later this year. Since then, Kennedy said, he has asked Trump and Vice President JD Vance “point blank” to start thinking about a plan for lifting the nation’s borrowing cap to head off a default — a breach that top economists predict would irreparably mar America’s reputation as a reliable borrower.
“I’ve done it publicly and privately, and it’s clear to me that the president is not ready to focus that much on the debt limit,” Kennedy said about his discussions with Trump.
“I think the president is clearly aggravated having to deal with it,” Kennedy, a member of the Senate Banking and Budget committees, continued. “And I don’t blame him. His attitude is: ‘Why didn’t y’all fix this before I took office?’”
Trump asked Congress to include a debt ceiling increase in its year-end government funding package in December, but dozens of House Republicans balked at the idea, leaving the unfinished business for the new president.
Thune, in a brief interview Monday, called Kennedy a “good advocate” in the debt limit discussions and said that several other Republicans are also involved in trying to unite the White House and GOP lawmakers around a plan.
A White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, called Trump a “master dealmaker” who is “always engaged in negotiations on Capitol Hill.”
But Senate Republicans have been pressing Trump since January to back a debt limit strategy, noting that time is of the essence. The day before the president was inaugurated, he sat down with Senate Republicans for a “very fulsome” discussion and spent 20 minutes talking about the debt limit, according to Kennedy.
Yet Kennedy said he wasn’t encouraged by Trump’s remarks: “I don’t have the slightest idea what he said. He was splendid in his evasiveness. And that’s when I concluded back then, and in subsequent conversations: I concluded that he’s not ready to focus on it yet.”
Congress is still waiting for the Treasury Department to issue a prediction for when the U.S. could default on its debt, with top lawmakers operating under the assumption that the so-called X-date is likely to hit sometime between June and August.
If tax receipts come in lower than expected this spring, Congress could face the fiscal cliff with little warning, as it did in 2023. So Senate GOP leaders are anxious for Trump to endorse some sort of plan — especially as they decide whether to raise the nation’s borrowing cap as part of the massive domestic policy package they hope to pass along party lines later this year.
If Trump and GOP leaders seek to raise the debt limit through that process, known as reconciliation, they would need to make the hard sell to fiscal conservatives demanding steep spending cuts in return — and then potentially deliver a similarly forceful pitch to more moderate lawmakers who could be spooked by the political ramifications of those reductions.
One of the deficit hawks, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), said the “White House is very well aware” of his demand for returning to pre-pandemic spending levels as a condition of raising the debt limit.
“I know the president doesn’t like this issue. But he has to understand: There are those of us who realize that that’s the only leverage we have to bring down spending, and we don’t want to give up that leverage,” Johnson said in an interview.
House Republicans have already provided for a $4 trillion increase in the U.S. borrowing cap in their budget framework. If that gambit falters, GOP leaders will have to seek Democratic votes to avert a debt default outside the reconciliation process, opening up negotiations that could lead to higher government funding levels or other concessions to the minority party.
Unlike the House Republican budget, the Senate’s budget framework does not allow for raising the debt limit. But many Senate Republicans now endorse the idea of including such language as they decide their next steps toward actually writing their sweeping package of tax cuts and energy policy, along with border security and defense spending increases.
“The only question is whether we can get the votes in both the House and Senate to do it in reconciliation. Right now, that’s the plan,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who is close with Thune, said in a brief interview.
Asked if Senate Republicans have the support for keeping a debt ceiling increase in the reconciliation plan, Hoeven quipped: “If you could find that out and let us know, that would be really helpful, because that’s the question.”
Across the Capitol, several senior House Republicans have also privately acknowledged that they will need a backup plan if they can’t whip enough support for a party-line package that raises the borrowing limit.
Speaker Mike Johnson, Thune and top congressional tax writers are now meeting weekly with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to discuss the broader reconciliation effort.
“There are other potential vehicles — any spending bill is an option,” Thune said. Asked about the possibility of pairing it with a disaster aid package — another must-pass item on the 2025 legislative agenda — he added, “We’ll see.”
One thing is clear: There’s no real discussion of including a debt limit increase on the most pressing vehicle — the stopgap spending bill that is expected to move through Congress this week.
Johnson and senior House Republicans have no other plans for the debt limit right now other than to push for it to stay in the budget plan their chamber narrowly approved two weeks ago — and they are largely miffed the Senate is contemplating anything else.
When billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk lunched with Senate Republicans last week the debt ceiling briefly came up in conversation, but no decision was made on a strategy.
Senate Republicans also discussed the issue during a lunch last month with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. There, Kennedy told Wiles she and Trump ought to be thinking about the best way to handle it. Wiles, Kennedy said, didn’t commit to a specific path for dealing with the debt ceiling and instead said she would talk to Trump about it.
“I just want to make sure that the president understands that if we do it outside of reconciliation, we’ve got to pay bribes,” Kennedy said about the prospect of having to strike a debt deal with Democrats. “There are two doors: Door No. 1 and door No. 2.”
