There are a few areas of government spending that Democrats may be willing to cut amid the debt ceiling standoff, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) signaled Sunday.
Standing by President Joe Biden's demands that lifting the debt ceiling be decoupled from spending reforms, Sanders voiced openness to negotiating the budget with Republicans separately and underscored the need to avert a default.
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"We can move toward cutting military spending. We're now spending 10 times more than any other country on Earth. Massive cost overruns in the Pentagon," Sanders told CNN's State of the Union.
Military spending is one of the areas that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Republicans left off the table in their Limit, Save, Grow Act to lift the debt ceiling, which narrowly passed the lower chamber this week. One iteration of the proposal was estimated to slash the federal deficit by $4.8 trillion over the next 10 years.
Republicans and Democrats have been at odds over how to lift the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, which was reached back in January. Republicans have demanded a rollback in government spending be paired with any increase, while Democrats have near-uniformly demanded a clean bill. Sanders laid out ideas to reduce the deficit.
"I'm certainly open to demanding that the largest corporations in this country and the wealthiest people start paying their fair share of taxes. And I'm willing to look at any other proposals. There is a lot of waste within government; let's go after it. But don't go to war against the working class of this country," Sanders added.
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Democrats have been unable to present a measure to raise the nation's borrowing authority that could clear the Senate, which is subject to the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster. The Treasury Department's "extraordinary measures" to prolong funding for government programs are projected to run dry sometime between June and August.
"Everybody in Congress has got to understand the United States of America cannot default on its debt," Sanders stressed. "We can start negotiating tomorrow, but you cannot be holding the American people, the world's economy, hostage. What the Republicans have got to say is, 'absolutely, we are going to make sure that we pay our debt.' Let's sit down and negotiate a budget."