WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has instructed his aides to convene a panel of experts to make default risk “a thing of the past,” the White House announced Thursday.
“As the President has said, now that the latest debt ceiling crisis is behind us, it is necessary to explore all legal and policy options to prevent Congress from again holding the full faith and credit of the United States hostage,” he said in a statement.
The administration’s debt ceiling task force will “analyze the economic and financial harms associated with the debt ceiling,” learn lessons from other countries’ experiences, and offer recommendations to avoid any future debt ceiling freezes, the White House said.
Earlier this year, Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached an agreement to raise the US debt ceiling, averting a default that experts say would have upended the global economy. Some Republicans had said any legislation raising the nation’s credit limit should be passed alongside spending cuts, while most Democrats insisted on a “clean” increase in the debt ceiling.
Other standoffs over the debt ceiling have occurred in the past, and some Democrats have called for eliminating the budget limit altogether.
The White House didn’t say in its statement whether its panel would endorse the proposal, though it said the panel would consider “other approaches to avert a future crisis in the absence of congressional action” — potentially a dog’s bone for some Democrats who had implored Biden to lift the debt ceiling by invoking the Constitution’s 14th Amendment during the latest deadlock.
The task force will be co-chaired by White House Counsel Stuart Delery and Assistant to the President and National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard, the White House said, and it will include Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young and Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jared Bernstein.
The panel “will also consult with experts outside government in a variety of fields, including law, economics and history,” he added.
The debt ceiling agreement reached by the two sides in May followed months of political slander and weeks of frantic negotiations.
The final bipartisan deal came under heavy criticism from hardliners in the GOP, who argued that its spending cuts and conservative provisions were too weak.
He also faced opposition from some Democrats, who balked at additional work demands and non-defense spending cuts.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com