WASHINGTON — A day after dropping his party’s blockade and allowing action to temporarily increase the federal debt ceiling, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, warned President Biden on Friday that he had no intention of doing so again, reviving the threat of a first-ever federal default in December.
In a phone call with Mr. Biden, Mr. McConnell, who toiled to corral the votes needed to break his own party’s filibuster against the debt limit increase — and voted himself to do so — said Democrats should not expect such help in the future, according to a Senate Republican aide briefed on the conversation.
“I will not be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement,” Mr. McConnell wrote in a scathing letter that the aide said restated what he had told the president during the call. “Your lieutenants on Capitol Hill now have the time they claimed they lacked to address the debt ceiling.”
The Senate passed a bill on Thursday to lift the statutory limit on federal borrowing by $480 billion, which the Treasury Department said would last until at least Dec. 3. Republicans opposed it en masse, but 11 of them, including Mr. McConnell, broke ranks to provide the 60 votes needed to advance it past a filibuster.
debt limit, which would shield it from a filibuster and allow it to be passed without any Republican votes. Democrats, who are already using that process to advance a sprawling multitrillion-dollar domestic policy package, have refused, arguing that it would be too time-consuming and cumbersome.
The Republican leader argued that by allowing the short-term increase to move forward this week, he was calling Democrats’ bluff, offering them plenty of time to use reconciliation to enact a longer-term solution.