At a press conference heralding a new federal investment in local research Tuesday, Congresswoman Summer Lee said she was confident that Congress will raise the debt ceiling and avert a global economic crisis.
However, she decried Republicans’ willingness to take the country “to the brink of economic catastrophe” to win budget concessions, fueled mainly by deep spending cuts that would have affected “working class people, the vulnerable, people they were willing to use as pawns … to get all of their diabolical plans through,” she said.
President Joe Biden struck a compromise with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over the weekend. The tentative deal would raise the debt ceiling for two years, limit non-defense spending in 2024 and 2025, and end a pandemic-era policy that froze student loan repayment, among other things.
The months-long negotiations between lawmakers included debates about the addition of work requirements for recipients of social safety net programs such as SNAP. Some of that was excised or amended in the deal, but Lee said she and her colleagues remain concerned.
We want to make sure “we are not adding more bureaucratic red tape to the people who are the most in need,” she said.
Her fellow Allegheny County Democrat, Chris Deluzio, also decried GOP tactics without committing to a position on the Biden/McCarthy deal, which was set to get its first test at a gathering of the House Rules Committee this afternoon.
“Congressman Deluzio believes that the United States defaulting on its debt is unacceptable and would hurt a lot of people in Western Pennsylvania,” said a statement from his office. “With this in mind, he is not rushing this decision and will be watching closely to see what happens in the Rules Committee today and whether the bill is amended before a final vote.”
Lee discussed the debt ceiling fight after an event to announce a new multiyear, multi-million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to Carnegie Mellon University and its partner universities, including the Community College of Allegheny County. The $20 million grant will allow CMU to create a “university transportation center.” The venture is part of a Congressional program that began in 1987 which tries to harness new research and technology to improve the country’s transportation system.
CMU is widely acknowledged to be a leader in the world of connected transportation and self-driving technology. But with the new grant the university aims to advance equity, access to transportation and critical services, and reduce traffic fatalities to zero, instead of merely furthering research.
Raj Rajkumar, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering, and a longtime pioneer of self-driving car research and development, told Lee before the press conference that the goal is make Pittsburgh the global hub for self-driving technology.
“Creating jobs of all kinds, from the high-end to the low-end,” Rajkumar said. “We make the world safer, but all the jobs are created right here.”
“That’s ambitious,” Lee said. “We like it.”
