President Joe Biden touted the administration's economic achievements in a Virginia speech, while bashing Republicans for their handling of the nation's debt ceiling.
The Thursday speech followed the release of the latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers showing the U.S. economy expanded at a 2.9 percent annual pace in the last quarter, from October to December, slightly better than expected.
"I'm not sure the news could have been better. Economic growth is up, stronger than experts expected," Biden said of the report. "Jobs are the highest in American history. And wages are up, and they're going faster than inflation."
"Over the past six months, inflation has gone down every month, and God willing, we'll continue to do that," Biden said.
The President also took the opportunity to criticize the opposition party for its position on the debt ceiling. Republicans have said they would be willing to raise the nation's debt limit in exchange for spending cuts. But Democrats led by President Biden have maintained they would not make this sort of concession.
"I will not let anyone use the full faith and credit of the United States as a bargaining chip," President Biden said in his speech."I'm not going to get into the reckless threats that take the economy hostage in order to force an agenda that's going to only limit American workers and weaken us internationally."
"I won't let that happen," Biden added.
The Treasury Department implemented extraordinary measures after the U.S. hit its debt limit last Thursday. Those measures are expected to last only until June, at which point Congress will have had to act to avoid a default.
The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner has stepped down from her role at the agency over Department of Government Efficiency requests.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says her government is not ruling out filing a civil lawsuit against Google if it maintains its stance of calling the stretch of sea between northeastern Mexico and the southeastern United States the “Gulf of America.” Sheinbaum, in her morning press conference on Thursday, said the president’s decree to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico is restricted to the “continental shelf of the United States” because Mexico still controls much of the body of water. “We have sovereignty over our continental shelf,” she said.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
President Donald Trump is hitting foreign steel and aluminum with a 25% tax. If that sounds familiar, it’s because he did pretty much the same thing during
