only a couple of days to spare, washington has averted a crisis. earlier this afternoon president biden signed into law the bipartisan bill that raises the debt limit. that prevents the federal government from defaulting on its debts for the first time in u.s. history. many experts warn that would have been catastrophic for the u.s. and global economies. cnn s priscilla alvarez joins us live from the white house. president biden was pretty blunt in terms of how close to disaster this country came. what did he have to say? reporter: and jim, the setting almost said it all. he said his message, delivered his message from the oval office. his first evening address from the oval office in his presidency. really underscoring just how close we were to a default, and also just how important this moment was. president biden laying bare during those remarks last night that the stakes were high. passing this budget agreement was critical. the stakes could not have been higher. if we had fail
florida, members of congress who served in the military. gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us. let s start on the debt ceiling bill signed into law by the president today. congressman, you voted against it. why weren t you part of thebourn effort to avoid default? the bipartisan effort to avoid the default? look, there were good compromises in there, there were good measures. i certainly given kevin mccarthy credit for advancing us from having zero conversation about our out-of-control spending to at least getting the measures in that we did. but at the end of the day, in my view, the number-one job of the federal government is to keep the country safe. and with china on the march coming like a freight train, with a massive military build-up, a war in europe, iran with racing toward a kim jong-un with the finger on a nuke, i felt the defense budget that we accepted was woefully
those two areas we re going to talk about today when i have an exclusive interview with kevin mccarthy, the house speaker will join me at the top of the hour to tell us whether or not he has spoken to the president while the president travels from japan back and when he is expecting to meet and what are the areas of difference. because the president has tried to look tough because we don t know who is running this negotiation, is it bernie sanders, a lot of the ideas coming out of the white house seem to be socialist and bernie sanders ideas. so we ll see in fact we do get an agreement but there s absolutely no expectation that we are going to see america default on its obligations and that s why markets have been trading well. they have not been selling off. because as soon as there s any expectation that the nation will come close to default this market will spiral out of control, sell off. there are massive implications for that we ll talk about that with the speaker of the house. w
has the votes to pass this bill, as we saw when he ran fo speaker, of 15 times, he sometimes doesn t count so bad mccarthy is still working to win over some republicans wh believe we should parables, an some of the chaos caucus members who don t seem t understand or care about the disastrous effect if america default. so, to be clear, it would be disastrous for you and me, the american people. that is who gets harmed by taking the american econom hostage to extract pop unpopular policy changes tha republicans could neve actually get passed on the merits mccarthy can only lose fou republican votes today, the house democrats top super pac now launched this tv ad in six competed new yor districts, including four that were flipped by republican during the midterm election. defaulting on our debts, in our homes, we try to avoid it. but in this house, mascara publicans are so extreme the are ready to let america default, sinking us into recession, driving middle clas costs up, our retireme
some of the republicans in congress are threatening to have america default on the debt if i don t agree to the cuts that they want. democrats have never ever done that, by the way. let s talk about what our national debt is, like what we spend this year versus last. the national debt is a total debt and interest accumulated over 220 years. you hear me, over 200 years? every single year that we went and spent more than we took in it added up, so the federal debt you re hearing about is not the yearly debt. it s 220 or so years of accumulated debt. democrats, republicans, everybody, but here s the deal. our credit has been good.