U.S. Lawmakers Preparing Plan To Avert Debt Ceiling Crisis

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers is preparing a plan to defuse a looming crisis over the nation's debt ceiling by changing it from a fixed dollar amount to a percentage of national economic output, the group's top Republican said, Jason Lange reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: US Representative Brian Fitzpatrick is the Republican co-chair of the moderate Problem Solvers Caucus.

The proposal would replace Washington's current federal debt ceiling - currently set at $31.4 trillion - with a rule that would instead limit debt to a share of national economic output, said US Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, the Republican co-chair of the moderate Problem Solvers Caucus.

Fitzpatrick - appearing on Fox News Sunday with Democratic Problem Solvers co-chair Josh Gottheimer - said Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy will be taking the lead in negotiations with the White House over the debt ceiling.

But he and Gottheimer were "putting meat" on the bones of their proposal to help avoid a crisis. "We're just going to offer up ... a possible bridge building solution," Fitzpatrick said.

The US government on Thursday came close to its statutory borrowing limit. The Treasury Department warned that its extraordinary cash management measures could only allow the government to pay all its bills through early June, at which point the nation could be at risk of failing to meet its obligations, including on its debt securities.

House Republicans want to use that critical deadline to force spending cuts, while the White House has said there should be no negotiations over lifting the debt limit. Republicans' narrow House majority has given outsized influence to the party's most hardline voices.

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