- Democrats may need to help Republicans raise the debt ceiling this year.
- If that happens, Democrats aren’t going to do it for free. They’ll likely demand concessions.
- Rep. Ro Khanna, a Silicon Valley Democrat, says his party should demand a federal minimum wage hike.
At some point in the next few months, Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling.
For now, Republicans are planning to do it on their own. But if past is prologue, they’ll probably need votes from across the aisle — and Democrats are likely to demand something in return.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who represents Silicon Valley, told Business Insider this week that he believes the price should be an increase in the federal minimum wage.
“We should force Republicans to vote on it,” the California Democrat told BI.
Khanna did not specify a particular level at which he’d like to raise the wage, but Democrats generally support a $15 per hour federal minimum wage. Some, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, have proposed pushing it even higher, to $17 per hour.
Democrats should demand we give Americans a raise in exchange for voting to raise the debt limit. Let’s force a vote on increasing the minimum wage which the vast majority of Americans want.
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) January 14, 2025
President-elect Donald Trump said in December that he would “consider” raising the minimum wage, but several Republican lawmakers later told BI that they opposed the idea.
Scott Bessent, Trump’s nominee for secretary of the treasury, said at a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday that he does not believe the current $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage should change.
It’s not clear if Democrats will follow Khanna’s lead, though he told BI that he would “make the case to the caucus.”
Minimum wage increases tend to be popular among both Democratic and Republican voters — in November, several Republican-leaning states passed minimum wage hikes via ballot measures.
Democrats still have to figure out their price for helping Republicans
As of now, Republicans want to avoid handing any leverage to Democrats in the first few months of Trump’s presidency. They plan to include a debt ceiling hike in a broader party-line “reconciliation” bill containing a smattering of Trump’s priorities on energy, immigration, border security, and taxes.
But there’s a good chance that won’t work, given some hardline Republicans’ deep reservations about raising the debt ceiling without dramatic spending cuts. Some Republicans have never voted to raise the debt ceiling before, and in December, dozens of them openly defied Trump’s call to raise the debt ceiling after Elon Musk helped tank a government funding bill.
If Republicans can’t do it themselves, Democrats will have the chance to make demands, lest the country breach the debt ceiling and trigger a fiscal crisis.
“I’m not a cheap date,” Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts told BI. “The idea that we’re just going to help them out when they can’t get their own members to cooperate, those days are gone.”
Of the several House Democrats that BI spoke to, only Khanna was willing to name a specific price. Others demurred, saying they were waiting to see what negotiations would look like in the coming months, and underscoring that Democrats would have to decide on their approach collectively.
“The sentiment from our caucus is: If you need our help on anything, you’re going to have to help us,” Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told BI. “All of this, I think, is subject to many of our internal conversations.”
Democrats could also use their leverage to try to halt the deep cuts to federal government spending that Republicans may pursue in the coming months, rather than making an affirmative policy demand.
“There’s clearly a whole host of things that I think the caucus would have as priorities,” Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle of New York told BI.
